Leading Air Cadet Logan Keats reports on the recent RAeS Aviation Field Day that took place on Sunday 19 October 2014.
Finally the day had arrived, I was looking forward to attending the RAeS Aviation field day but also it would be fair to say I was fairly nervous too as I wasn’t sure what to expect. Unfortunately after a beautiful day in Masterton on the Saturday, Sunday delivered rain, rain and more rain. I arrived at the Sport & Vintage Aviation Society (SVAS) building, where we had to sign in and were given a copy of the agenda for the day. It was looking like a fairly packed but highly informative day, just reading the agenda and my interest was on high alert – this was shaping up to be a great day.
There were attendees from all around the greater Wellington region, with the vast majority being from other ATC Squadrons, and a small sampling of students from some colleges. On heading to our seats we were greeted with free stuff like aviation magazines. We got straight into the day, with a talk on expectations and what would be happening.
There were various presentations incorporating many different sections of the aviation world. We heard from a sky diving instructor who talked about his first sky dive and how the industry has changed, a gliding instructor, a crop duster – he even told an interesting story of how he hit power lines, thankfully he lived to tell the story.
We were then taken to the Vintage Aviator hangar for a look at some very interesting (and expensive) planes – mainly from WWI. I’m not normally into old planes but the tour around the hangar was amazing and very interesting, we saw rare aircraft … one example was of a plane that there were only two left in the world and they were both in the hanger. There was a Corsair plane there – it is a very expensive plane, costs $100,000 a year for third party insurance alone, and an additional $80,000 per year just to keep it running.
At lunch time we had a cool Drone demonstration. A drone is a large unmanned aircraft that runs by remote and is often used for filming and photography.
Part of our registration form for the event, included a competition where you had to write in 20 words or less why you should win the prize of a flight in the Massey University School of Aviation Diamond aircraft and how it would benefit your future career … in only 20 words this was no easy feat! At lunch time they announced who the winner was … I couldn’t believe it – it was me!!!
After lunch we watched a demonstration outside that involved an aerobatics display followed by an Air Tractor and a Crop-dusting helicopter. After the demonstration I got to go and enjoy my prize – a flight in a Diamond aircraft. It was much nicer than any other light aircraft that I had been in as it had Leather seats and a glass cockpit. While I was flying there was a talk from the Air Force.
So very quickly the day came to an end, in summing up we were told that to have a career in the aviation industry we needed to work hard at school as we had to be the best of the best, the cream at the top. This was stressed several times throughout the day. Overall, even though we had to switch to the wet weather program, the day was fun and has only further fueled by desire to be a pilot.
A big thank you to the RAeS for the day, I understand this was the first time they had run such an event, but I hope they do them again in the future.
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