MAAA Wingspan

6 WING SPAN AUGUST celebrating the centenary in the west WE LEARN ABOUT K.A.M.S’ PLANS TO HOLD A MAJOR SCALE RALLY EVENT THIS NOVEMBER IN COMMEMORATION OF 100 YEARS SINCE ARMISTICE DAY “It’s a celebration of WW1 aircraft. There’s a small but dedicated group of WW1 enthusiasts in Western Australia who have been WW1 modelling for many years and they’re all K.A.M.S members, so we thought we’d capitalise on that, as it’s such a significant event with 100 years since WW1.” Richard Bloor is talking about the forthcoming, highly anticipated WW1 Centenary Scale Rally that is taking place at K.A.MS (Kalamunda Aeronautical Model Society) on November 11. It is an event that he is co- organising with Ian Johnson. “What we suspect is going to happen is a lot of WW1 aeroplanes are going to come out of the woodwork, that we don’t yet know about. They’ll be a lot of aeroplanes that have just been sitting in people’s workshops somewhere, so we believe we’ll get between 20-40 aeroplanes. There are also some people building models for the event,” he continues. “KAMS is the best place to fly WW1 models in WA as it has a huge circular grass takeoff/landing area, that is much like the airfields used in WW1.” The idea for the Centenary Scale Rally event came about as a natural extension of the annual KAMS Warbirds Over Mundijong event- that’s open to all forms of Warbirds. “It’s the big event of the year for scale modelling. We get 40-50 scale models, where everyone has a fantastic time flying their models at KAMS field,” continues Richard. “We organise fly pasts of full-size aircraft with the Sports Aircraft Builders Club, which is only about 10kms away. We often arrange for them to fly a few aeroplanes over us at Warbirds. So, because this Scale Rally is such a significant event, with it being 100 years since WW1, we thought it would be a good idea to do a similar thing but for WW1 aircraft only.” This is all of course dependent on Perth weather in November. Richard reveals that last year on November 11, it was so hot that they had a total fire ban and weren’t allowed to access KAMS field at all.