Brian's place - Classic Fighters Marlborough 2003

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Classic FIghters Marlborough 2003

There have been two Classic Fighters Marlborough airshows at Blenheim, run during Easter 2001 and 2003 (which are timed not to clash with the Warbirds over Wanaka airshow). 2003 was the first year I attended, and what a jolly good time I had!

Blenheim is another natural setting for an airshow (lots of air for a start) with beautiful surroundings, plenty of touristy things for the family to do, and it's a lot easier to get to for both Christchurch and Wellington residents. There's a lot more focus on World War One era aircraft at Blenheim, and it has quite a different atmosphere to the larger Wanaka event. There's quite a WW1 industry there, and Peter Jackson bases his beautiful Sopwith Camel Replica at Omaka. This is very close to the original, even down to the engine. Seeing this aircraft was on a par to seeing the Hurricane and Spitfire, for me at least.

This year there were a lot of delightful surprises at the show. The big thing was seeing 5 (yes FIVE!) Fokker Triplane Replicas in the air at the same time, was an amazing sight. There were a lot of other wonders too, such as the Bristol Fighter (absolutely beautiful!), the Avro 504K, Nieuport N.24, The replica Mark 1 Tank (Mark V, I am told), the replica Panzer, replica Hurricane and Stuka…

You probably can't tell but I really enjoyed this airshow (have I ever not enjoyed an airshow?). It's smaller than Wanaka, cheaper to get to and get in to! Wanaka's gone up to $50 per adult for the main airshow days in 2004 - I'm sure it's worth it but who can afford it? With more "competition" and a higher gate price I will be interested to see the attendance figures for Wanaka. Not meaning to be negative… WOW is such a world class event that it deserves support - I just won't be going two days this year. (Post rant update: Yes I did go two days, worth every cent, and can you imagine what public liability insurance for 100,000 odd people must cost, post September 11? Not sure if this is the cause of the increase, but one can imagine).

Here's the guide to the two pages for my Classic Fighters Marlborough 2003:
Page 1 (this one!) covers the World War One aircraft - Camel,Triplanes, Nieuport, Bristol Fighter, DH2, 504K, Pfalz.
Page 2 covers the Hurricane, Stuka, P-40's, Ryan STM, Tiger Moth, Panzer, P-51D, PBY, Yaks., Harvard.

A private note to Peter Jackson: What a fantastic set of resources! Surely time for a well scripted WW1 film...? <Brian grins cheekily...>

May 2004 update : Had an e-mail from the webmaster at the official Classic Fighters Marlborough website, helping me with some of the factual errors. Thanks for the help, Allan! Click on the graphic below to visit his excellent website

Here's Peter Jackson's Sopwith Camel. Such a neat wee machine, must be a real trick to fly. A genuine rotary engine so lots of power torque, no real throttle but the original cut out button on the control column to "blip" the engine off for a moment to reduce power! Makes me long for a Wolesley powered SE5A . :-) (Two years later I had my wish, thanks CFM!)

For those few of you who don't know, yes this is the same Peter Jackson who directed the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Apparently a real nice guy with some incredibly good taste in aircraft.

There's got to be enough props (pardon the pun) for a really good WW1 movie here - anybody got a good plot?.

Gene De Marco and John Lanham (I think - anybody know for sure?) did a mock combat, that gave lots of neat photo opportunities. I spent most of my time with my eye glued to the camcorder eyepiece. I have to find somewhere else to store my gum...

taka-taka-taka-taka-taka-taka!

Five Fokker Triplane Replicas… I'm still trying to understand why, but quite a wonderful thing to see. These babies have radial (Warner Scarab?) engines rather than the originals' rotary engine. Quite neat to see something with three wings, it's like watching Venetian blinds close when they turn in front of you

The Warner Scarab radials gave them a proper throttleable power plant - must have made taxiing easier.

Yes the negative shows the full tailplane, just!

The Tripe's were noisy little beggars. One of the neat advantages of the WW1 types were that they are lower and slower than the WW2 aircraft - much more time to take photographs!

The Warner Scarab engined Nieuport N.24 replica, just beautiful! According to the 'Classic Wings' magazine, this aircraft was one of 20 aircraft making it's public debut at this airshow. A highly recommended magazine, by the way.

Here's the beautiful Bristol F2b Fighter which is based in Omaka (Blenheim has two airfields, Omaka is the smaller grass field for recreational flyers) since 2001. You have to have a good look at this machine to understand what a quality piece of work it is. I would be amazed if they ever came out of the factory anywhere near this good!

I thought this aircraft was based on an original airframe, but apparently it is all replica. Thanks for the information, Allan!

Beautiful Bristol

The result of an entanglement with the Triplanes.

The Mark V tank replica was built by the props guys at Weta Studios in their spare time! It's built out of wood, and based on a bulldozer - the tracks are completely real and function correctly (i.e. right over the top of the thing). It looks very real, even close up.

The Tripe swarm arouynd a Mk V tank

A Halberstadt D.IV replica. And here I thought it was a Pfalz!

OK, surely this is a Pfalz? Neat lozenge camouflage anyway. Actually this is the Pfalz replica used in the 'Blue Max' movie.

Pfalz

		Avro 504K - this didn't fly while I was there. So nice to see such a classic shape, reminded me of the old Airfix kit I had when I was a kid.
	One of my favourite aircraft has always been the DH2. This corker wee replica was sitting quietly in the hangar, glad I ventured in there. This has since begun it's test flying in New Zealand, there's a good article in 'Classic Wings' (no I don't own shares in it!) about flying this baby.

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