Hawke's Bay man's radio-controlled replica plane wins global competition

Hamish McLagan ready for a day flying radio-controlled aircraft. Photo / Paul Taylor

When Napier man Hamish McLagan crashed his model Spitfire he was pretty distraught.

But from the skeleton of the wreck he decided to try something new, and ended up winning a global competition to build a radio-controlled aeroplane.

Inspired by the Red Bull Air Race, McLagan's effort, complete with a live video link from the cockpit, took him about 200 hours to build.

It landed him and wife Cherie an all-expenses trip to the United States, and VIP tickets to the Red Bull Air Race courtesy of Red Bull and the US-based Flite Test group.

"We watch those [Flite Test] guys on You Tube and they issued a challenge to do it, so I decided to give it a go," McLagan said.

While he had been flying radio-controlled aeroplanes for eight years, he had never built one himself, until the Spitfire crash.

"It was all scratch built from balsa, and I've never done that before and I had never used foam before, never cut foam before, whole lots of stuff I've never done before but I decided to go all in.

"Some of the parts were ordered online from hobby shops but some of them came out of a Spitfire I had.

"It was my absolute baby and I recently crashed that, so I ended up gutting some parts out of that."

Hamish McLagan in the US with his competition-winning entry. Photo / Supplied.

The aircraft used a video receiver to display live camera footage to a set of virtual reality goggles being worn by the pilot.

Although his winning creation, a replica of a 1939 Howard Hughes H1, is still in the US being flown by the Flite Test team for a You Tube production, he still has other aircraft in Hawke's Bay so he can continue enjoying a hobby he developed a passion for many years ago.

"My grandfather took me along to the Awatoto club when I was just a wee fella, so that was the bug and I sort of really got into it flying them about eight years ago. I pretty much go flying all the time now."