South Australian Helifest 2019
Great success, many memories

SA Helifest is now over for this year, but it was a great weekend near to Adelaide hosted by the Adelaide Model Aerosports Club. People have attended the event from all over Australia, few of them - like Kenny Ko - arrived from other continents.

Saturday and Sunday of Helifest brought almost perfect flying weather with light winds scattered cloud for most of the time and no more rain. Saturday saw busy flight lines with people making the most of the wide open spaces and enjoying the weather.

In addition to the funfly itself on Saturday Hamish Scott one the the organisers of the event and world class pilot gave an open class to pilots of all skill levels demonstrating manoeuvres and talking through common mistakes and hints and tips to help pilots with basic moves through to complex autorotations. Over the course of the weekend I also fired up the buddybox to help out some of the pilots from different levels who were struggling with specific skills, giving them a safety net to try and bring SIM skills over to real life.

Saturday evening we had a great catered meal at the field with a roast dinner while waiting for darkness to fall and then enjoyed the action with night flying in the cold but still conditions. The final day of the event started with the pilots draw with some great prizes collected by the pilots thanks to the generous donations from local business and some manufacturers.

After some more open flying an Autorotation, closet to the spot competition was run. Each round was best of three head to head with the final coming down to Mick Dee and Jack Milsom. After some great entertainment from all of the pilots Jack just managed to come out on top.