The Australian Nationals is hosted, on behalf of the MAAA, each year in a different State of Australia.

The various mainland States are offered the Nationals on a rotational basis.

The two most populated States (New South Wales and Victoria) host the largest Nationals by far, followed by Queensland and South Australia. Western Australia, because of its remoteness and vast distance from the Eastern seaboard, has so far managed to host every Nationals in rotation, although the entries from other States is much diminished. The Northern Territory has, so far, only hosted one Nationals (50^th).

Once again Western Australia was tasked with the hosting of this prestigious event and Busselton was chosen as the venue.

Busselton is a popular seaside tourist town some 270 kilometres South of Perth and situated on the beautiful Geographe bay.

As the Nationals traditionally runs between 7 – 10 days it is essential that good accommodation is available as well as flying venues. The local Tourist Bureau very ably handled this.

Western Australia has held previous Nationals over the Xmas break, usually between 29^th Dec – 6^th Jan, as New South Wales, Victoria, and Queensland generally do. South Australia has tended to favour Easter because of the better weather and so it was decided to move the WA Nationals to this timeframe.

It would appear that the committee gambled wisely this time as the weather was unseasonably warm for this time of the year, and the rain generally held off for all but one day, and that was only a brief shower.

The general format for all Australian Nationals is that the 1^st day is used for Registration and last minute practice if required. Registration consists of fronting up to the Nats treasurer to receive the GOODY bag which also contains any badges, dinner tickets, BBQ tickets and raffle tickets which have been pre ordered as well as being checked off as an entrant. Late entries ( at double fees) are also made at this stage.

Following Registration, ALL R/C fliers must have their transmitter bandwidth tested and an approved, signed sticker affixed. Currently Australia operates mainly on the 35Mhz band at 20kcs spacing. Other legal frequencies are on the 29Mhz band but these are now generally older sets.

During this period models are checked in categories that call for pre-processing.

The Busselton regional airport was the venue for Administration, Pylon racing, All Control-line events which required bitumen surface and Radio Control Scale events. This airport is a very small, light aircraft strip and obligingly the full-size operators virtually ceased movements during the Nats, making for very few interruptions.

For example, during the 9 rounds of Half-A pylon there were only two holdups for full-size movements.

In addition, ladies from the airport club (wives & members) baked and served food and drink every day at extremely reasonable prices - a service which was very much appreciated. They also organised, and ran the BBQ meal on the Tuesday night as well as providing a variety of hot dishes on the night of the Swap meet.

Seven venues in all were provided so that the various activities would be able to run with the type of area required for those events and to minimise frequency clash problems with the R/C events.

On the night of the BBQ two helicopters fitted with lights gave a night-flying demonstration.

The top blades of the choppers are typically fitted with 3 LEDs equally spaced along the length and with 2 LEDs on the underside so that the pilot would be able to tell which way up they were. In addition chemical lights were fitted to the skids of each heli, with each one having different colours.

I think that this would be the first time that most people would have seen 3D flying and to see it for the first time at night………..

As I was involved with quite a few events I am not able to report on some of the other flying, but as a jury member for the FAI Team-Race event I am happy to report that the UK entrants of Dave Campbell and Bernie Langworth acquitted themselves well by clinching the final. In true "Mickey taking" style the other two finals teams ran off the tarmac prior to the official photograph session and came back with pillows stuffed up their shirts to stand next to Bernie who has a well developed stomach! Both UK competitors and the watching crowd greeted this with hilarity.

The events I entered were: FAI pylon, Half-A pylon, Sports pylon, Night Scramble, Day Scramble and Vintage class-A Team race.

Scramble is a FUN free flight event and is not for the unfit competitor.

Basically the model is a simple free flight model (I use an old SIMPLEX design) which is fitted with a smallish engine (the MILLS .75cc is good) and a clockwork timer which is rigged to tip the tail plane to about 45% and spoil the flight pattern bringing the model down horizontally.

The event gets under way with all contestants lined up across the paddock (field) with an energetic runner somewhere downwind. At the starters signal EVERY contestant attempts to start the engine, set the timer and launch as quickly as possible. Following a successful launch, their timekeeper times the resultant flight. Each flight MUST be between 15 secs and 2 mins to be recorded. A well setup model will time out and land within that timeframe, hopefully close enough for the runner to retrieve it, and it will be returned to the competitor, who may run to the runner. The competitor MUST return the model (with the engine stopped) to the start line to refuel, reset the timer, restart and re-launch for another flight. THIS EVENT RUNS FOR ONE HOUR.

The places are determined by the total airtime achieved within the hour.

Night Scramble is exactly the same but is run in complete darkness. The models are usually equipped with either chemical lights (cylume) or, as in my case, with 2 x AA NiCad batteries and LED’s. The pitting area is lit, often with gas lamps (in my case) or battery lights. The runner generally has a powerful torch.

As you can imagine this is a great spectator event, especially the Night Scramble, and roars and laughter from the onlookers is mingled with curses, engine noises, and crashes as the event takes its toll.

I was unfortunate in Night Scramble to partially fracture my battery connection resulting in about 8 minutes being lost trying to get the lights to stay bright. I eventually cut off the servo plugs I was using and twisted the wires together only to be beaten into 2^nd place by 46 seconds. There are many pictures on my website which may be downloaded by anyone interested, including a close-up of my Simplex (bottom left of the pictures below). www.iinet.net.au\~kirtons\models

This event is great fun and I urge you to adopt it in your club, area or association.

If anyone wants more info on this please email me on kirtons@iinet.net.au

If you would like to view the full results, then click here.

Here is a small selection from the 58 pictures of this event which can be found on Norm's website. Click on these thumbnails for a larger picture, each of which is nicely captioned.