All eyes to action in the sky

Press, 12 March 1982, Page 7

All eyes to action in the sky

All eyes can be expected to be turned towards the sky at Mayfield tomorrow when visitors will have a chance to see what sort of action goes into being a champion aerobatic pilot. Mr Ron McDougall, who formerly farmed at Lismore but recently retired to Ashburton, has agreed to give an aerobatic display in his Cessna Aerobat, ZK-DNO. He was not available for an interview last week-end as he was taking part in competitions at Nelson but a word to some of his fellow pilots reveals that Mr McDougall’s prowess with his-150 h.p. Aerobat is held in high regard among them. It must rate just as high among the country’s pilots, as he was judged New Zealand aerobatic champion last year.

Mr McDougall’s two-seater specially strengthened plane was a familiar sight in the sky around Lismore as he worked his working day on the farm around achieving his present ability. He is described as unique in that he was relatively old when he first gained his private pilot’s licence and continued from there to perfect the sequences necessary to make it into the aerobatics class. ■

One pilot familiar with aerobatics described it as

“like flying in a box in the sky.” “It takes a lot of experimentation to get your sequences in such an order that sets a particular line to give the maximum to the spectator,” he said. The idea is to have such an order of manoeuvres that the plane does not have to waste time between them gaining height or turning for another. Mr McDougall’s offering tomorrow is expected to include such standard

manoeuvres as loops, barrel rolls and aileron rolls. A barrel roll, for the uninitiated, is a loop with the wheels out — “like flying around the inside of a barrel” — and the aileron roll is when a plane is rotated on its axis. Mr McDougalls speciality apparently is the snap or flick roll which sees a quick speed change of from about 70 knots to 115 knots as the plane, seemingly instantaneously, is turned in another

direction. From past performances, Mr McDougall can be expected to finish his display with a cloverleaf, complete with a “cherry on top.” If a plane is seen in the country over a cross roads, there is every probability that the pilot is practising a cloverleaf, using the roads as a guide as he does loops at 90 degrees to each other. The “cherry on top” is a final half roll on top to put the pilot the right way up.