The 10th annual NEAT Fair took place September 18th-20th, 2009 in the Catskill Mountains of New York. More than 300 registered pilots attended this all-electric show from all over.
Updated 9/27/09: Al Ramsdell from Maine Aerial Photography Service was kind enough to let me post these three shots of the Peaceful Valley Campgrounds. The last two are taken from his Swift 16 aerial photography rig, which he had way up there. Nice flying and shooting Al!
As always, the show is run by the Silent Electric Flyers of Long Island, who come up a week in advance to set up. Many thanks for their hard work, and especially to Tom Hunt for putting on the show.
Although NEAT is primarily a fixed-wing show, there was a smaller helicopter presence who enjoyed the 2.4 GHz-only heli stations. Most pilots were 3D flyers, but we had a couple of scale models, and even one fixed-pitch Corona. At one point I watched Kyle Stacy do a warm-up flight with his Furion, which was so fast I couldn’t photograph it. His reaction time is just amazing.
The noon demos pack a lot into an hour and a half, showing off many styles of flying and a wide range of models. Unlike other shows, most pilots do not fly to music at NEAT, which allows the crowd to hear the planes in action.
Gary Graf had an impressive first-person-video rig of his own design. He used a 72 MHz transmitter with a 900 MHz video downlink. His on-screen display provided heading, altitude, pack voltage, and more. I ran his video recorder as his flying buddy helped with navigation and held a second transmitter connected by a buddy box cord, as required by the AMA. Gary won best technical achievement at the show for his efforts.
Updated: Check out a video from Gary’s Maxi Swift:
The NEAT Fair is also a great place to see some upcoming products up close, and in the air. There were more than 30 vendors present at the show, and many pilots had items to sell in their tents as well. There’s nothing like getting face-to-face time with the designer of your plane, and NEAT brings out a number of smaller kit and ARF manufacturers.
The NEAT Fair is a Northeast U.S. tradition, and I’m glad to see it still going strong in its tenth year.