Aerobatic plane with smoker attached

This is a 4 minute clip of the final plane doing a fairly spectacular display of throwing itself around the sky.  There is an excellent bit around 1:35 where you can see it falling out of the sky on its back while spinning around.  Best to view that full screen. 




Apologies for the shaky camera work - hand held, leaning back, zoomed in and staring towards the sun.  Not easy!

Aerobatic - short video clip

A short clip of a plane doing what looks like inverted loops.

Aerobatic competition

Every year in March an aerobatic competition is held at the Waipukurau airfield.  For around five days the air is filled with the sound of droning planes suddenly going into power dives or reaching the peak of some loop and cutting their engine out, something I am sure gives a lot of people heart attacks as the plane tends to look like this:

which is, I assure you, not a photo simply turned sideways.  Today is the first day of the event and the photo above is of the first plane.  

On the Saturday morning they usually send up a couple of planes with smokers attached which then proceed to throw themselves all over the sky in a fairly spectacular fashion.  I'll try to get a few photos of those and perhaps even a video or two.