February 2007 - Pacific Aerospace

Filmed Taupo Tandem Skydiving's 750XL doing a skydive run at 13 500ft...that's the highest we've ever had the chopper, it just won't go any higher than that! Steve did a great job to get us in the right location in order to film a complete jump run...it looked awesome when they banked right over after the last exit. That afternoon we flew over to the King Country and filmed  an Ag version of the 750XL doing cropdusting runs, amazing to see this plane at work. The pilot lands on the side of a mountain, rolls up to the top and turns around...takes seven seconds to fill the hopper with nearly 5000 lbs of fertiliser, then he ramps the engine back up, takes off back down the hill, dumps the fertiliser, comes back to the strip....and repeats the process. All day long! Jeepers these planes are tough, also visited the factory and watched one being put together. PAC machine all the parts for the aircraft themselves...it's so nice to see such a large amount of human input into these modern machines. I remember reading about PAC and seeing them on the news a few years ago, and at the time thinking "good on you guys". Funny how things intersect isn't it? Can't wait to get the video done...some cool shots in there which really show what the aircraft is capable of. We'll be adding music and graphics to the video so that it works in a show environment. Good times.