The Big Apple Jet Rally is an annual tradition, put on by the PARCS club of Brooklyn, NY. As always, this event was held at Floyd Bennett Field, New York’s first commercial airport, which now serves as a multipurpose park. The club flies from one portion of a former full-scale runway, offering plenty of space for even the largest models.
This year saw a good assortment of planes, with the majority being turbine-powered, and many being scale military aircraft. They ranged from entry-level wood turbines and smaller EDF planes, to massive twin turbine machines.
The event was very smoothly run with a control tower one story above the flight line. Four pilots’ stations were available, and there were four jets in the air at times. Each pilot was required to be accompanied by a caller, as well as an event volunteer with a flag and a radio to the tower. This system was used to coordinate takeoffs and landings and no incidents occurred.
Flying was suspended around lunch time and all the pilots brought their planes onto the runway. This gave the crowd a chance to walk around the aircraft and see them up close. Several planes had fully detailed cockpits, air brakes, and fake armaments.
I had two personal favorites which seemed to agree with the crowd’s interest as well. The first was a gorgeous BAE Hawk in red and white trim. It featured a complete cockpit, panel lines and rivets, and full scale markings, in addition to a machine gun suspended from the belly, which fired simulated rounds.
The second was an enormous A-10 Warthog, weighing 54 pounds dry, and just under 70 pounds fully fueled. This amazing plane had twin kerosene-burning turbines with propane starters. It was completely realistic in the air.
In addition to the usual food and drinks, a manufacturer named 2icrc.com was demonstrating their wireless buddy box solution, called the XPO Co-Pilot. This piece of hardware is mounted in the model, and connects to any two receivers. It allows traditional buddy box functionality, in addition to handing over only selected channels to the other pilot. It can also be used for redundancy using two identical receivers bound to the same transmitter. Check out this RCGroups thread for more details.
Because the local police department has an active helicopter squad based at Floyd Bennett, we were also treated to two fast passes down the runway from one of their choppers. If you’re thinking those NYPD decals make this model look realistic, think again – this is the real thing!
Flying continued on Saturday afternoon, and we got lucky that the weather held out:
All in all this was a fun event featuring a relaxed atmosphere of open flying. Even better was free admission for spectators. Check out this video from 2008 to see more of the Big Apple Jet Rally:
And here’s a few more photos from this year:
