THE Katherine Model Aero Club held its first ever national IMAC competition over the weekend and the feeling at the completion of one day of practice followed by two days of full-on competition in our first ever KMAC Cracker IMAC competition was one of KMAC Rocks.
The success of this has almost guaranteed that this will become an annual event and one not to be missed both by pilots around Australia and for spectators in the Katherine area.
IMAC stands for “International Miniature Aerobatic Competition” and uses very similar rules and routines to those performed by real piloted planes in their own competitions.
The routines are based on a very high degree of precision flying and all ten manoeuvres in each sequence were judged individually and evaluated by two judges looking for the pilot who could best perform them according to set rules and regulations.
The IMAC competition is split into five different categories starting with Basic, Sportsman, Intermediate, Advanced and Unlimited sections.
Each category gets much harder as your flying abilities improve so there was a lot of spectacular flying to watch as the pros got into their routines.
We had 26 pilots from Western Australia, Queensland, New South Wales, Alice Springs, Darwin, Katherine and also the current Australian Champion Frazer Briggs from New Zealand, so truly an international event, the first of its kind in the Territory and one that we can be rightly proud of.
At the end of the competition on Sunday afternoon, Frazer Briggs and Arron Garle took to the skies in a tandem freestyle routine set to music that was nothing short of spectacular to watch.
These pilots showing off precision flying leaving the crowd of onlookers in awe of their abilities to move the planes around the sky to their chosen music.
The results for the weekend are as follows:
Basic
1st Isaac Skultety – Darwin
2nd – Kyle Orrock – Darwin
3rd – Rob Colson – Alice Springs
Sportsman
1st - Craig James – Perth
2nd – Ashley Ross – Queensland
3rd – Zac Mitchell – Darwin
Intermediate
1st – Bill Bland – Perth
2nd - Steve Richardson – Queensland
3rd – Jace Ward – Katherine
Unlimited
1st – Frazer Briggs – NZ
2nd – Arron Garle – Queensland
3rd Mark Easton – Perth
A big thanks to the public who came out to watch this most memorable event.
See you all next year.