NIJets - North Down

The first NIJets Jet Flying Day finally took place, not at Ballykelly as we had expected but at the North Down Club in Kirkistown.

Phelim organised a great day, and the weather stayed kind with low winds.
The North Down club provided great hospitality and kept us fed with Burgers.

Ten Jets flew, with all the NIJets pilots taking the opertunity to complete the first schedule of the New NIJets Achievement Scheme, all under the watchful eye of Robert and plenty of help to all from Gordon.

The North Down Club are one of the few clubs to be lucky enough to have use of a old WW2 airfield, which obviously is great for jets, but also means plenty of hard standing for parking and setting up models, much drier on the feet this time of the year.

It was'nt all jets, there was also the opertunity to fly prop planes and heli's.

Andreas Balsiger travelled up 200 miles from the Midlands club with his Simjet Powered Sprint.

Northern Irelands newest Jet pilot George Irwin from the Dungannon Club taking off his Boomerang powered by a Wren 54.

It was definatly the day of the Boomerang, with five Intro's, one sprint and one Elan.

Chris Robb brought along his Hawk with an impressive smoke system but unfortunatly never flew.

Phelim had also organised some prizes,

Robert got best flight of the day with his Harpoon.
(The box of chocolates were put in the van very fast, probably going to be used as browney points when he gets home.)

Gordon won the Best model with the L39
(Was later a suspect in the missing box of quality street.)

Andreas Balsiger got a prize for the longest travelled
(He said he was going to eat the whole lot by himself on the way home).

Harry and Seamus tied for the most flights of the day, He is a hard man to keep up with !
We may appear in the picture to be very happy :-), but an evil plot was being conceived by the taller one, as the apparent shared box of sweets went missing, It was heard later, that a Grey Van was spotted throwing Quality Street wrappers out the window on the way to Armagh !

A very succesful first NIJets Jet Fly-In, everyone had a great day and we have to thank the North Down Club for allowing us to take over their flying site.

Looking forward to the next one !