THE weather played its part in allowing Korumburra-raised Squadron Leader Lachie Hazeldine to lead the six-member RAAF Roulettes team in a spectacular display for the town on Friday afternoon.
“It opened up just in time,” Lachie said of the sky, with earlier rain and low cloud unsuited to the planned performance.
“We wouldn’t have had the visibility or the distance between the hills and the cloud to do any significant displays,” he elaborated.
Fortunately for the many enthusiastic locals who stationed themselves around the Korumburra Showgrounds, everything was able to proceed as intended.
The Squadron Leader was delighted to get another opportunity to bring the Roulettes to his hometown, knowing quite a few people there and with his dad still living in the area, and was pleased to see lots of positive feedback on social media following the display and to hear from locals he hadn’t chatted to for some time.
Korumburra’s hilly environment, particularly the hilltop towers, presents an extra challenge for the team, preventing them from flying over at the lowest level they are ever able to, of just 200 feet or about 60 metres.
Spectators were treated to a great mix of formations and manoeuvres.
That started with loops and barrel rolls, labelled by Lachie as “fairly simple formation aerobatics”, working into more advanced displays where pilots are changing formations during manoeuvres, through to dynamic acrobatics such as corkscrews and rollbacks.
Typically, the aircraft get within five metres of each other, or a bit over, but they can be as close as three metres, sometimes making it appear from the ground that they are touching.
The planes tend to be travelling at 300 knots when they start a display, that being about 550km/h, coming back to about 120 knots or around 200 km/h at the top of the manoeuvre.
During the Korumburra display, forces of 4G were typically achieved, making every part of a pilot’s body feel four times heavier than normal.
“It’s something that takes a bit of getting used to when you first start flying, but is also about what people typically do when they’re learning to be a pilot in the Air Force,” Lachie said.
All members of the Roulettes are part of the Air Force and experienced flying instructors, having to undergo an intensive five-week training course for the Roulettes on top of the low-level flying aerobatics and formation aerobatics skills they already have.
The Roulettes come from various locations around Australia, having flown a variety of aircraft, the team flying the basic trainer for the Air Force, the Pilatus PC-21.
While Lachie describes it as quite easy to fly compared to some aircraft, he explained it is reasonably complex for a basic trainer and has a cruising speed of about 240 knots or 400km/h, the PC-21 having a fast roll rate and being capable of withstanding 8G of force.
Doing displays for local communities is a great way to create public awareness while training, the Korumburra performance an excellent preparation for the Roulettes’ involvement in the weekend’s
RAAF Richmond Air Show in NSW that attracted close to 70,000 people over its two days.
Lachie tends to make it back to Korumburra every few months to visit his father.
