Knox Festival 2016

At the invitation of the KNOX City Council, KMAC grasped the opportunity to promote our activity to the broader community. There was a bit of work required in setting this up, completing Risk Assessments and understanding the compliance issues required with being part of such a large event. The event attracts around 30,000 people over the two days. We did not have high expectations of recruiting new members but saw it as a responsibility to give something back to the City in return for the use of the field and facilities provided over many years. Council provided us with a 3 meter square marquee with power, a trestle table and seats adjacent to the oval. We staked out and roped off a 150 meter diameter circle on the oval which was well watered and in good condition.

We used our temporary fencing panels to line the inside of the marque to display our models and secure them over night. It might have been easy to be overwhelmed with the scale of the festival but we have some talented people which put on a great show.

We kicked off the programme with PJ and his monster. His execution of the F2B pattern brought gasps and applause.There was no doubt that the spectators were amazed at the ability of both the pilot and the model. We had hoped to include some combat in the morning but it had to wait.

On behalf of the club I would like to pass on a special thank you to Peter Koch, Bruce MacKay, The Rowlands, Bernie Cosgriff, Peter and Pauline Byrne, Ken Maier and Tony Caselli for presenting a very positive face to control line aero modelling.

Steve Vallve

President