Our friends from Air Corps Aviation posted up an old video of ours on the test firing of the 50 Cals prior to the 2012 Warbirds over Wanaka Airshow. This has resulted in a lot of interest, comment and questions from people who have previously not seen this clip.
The P40N-1 ZK-CAG has flown at this show with the guns fitted on 4 occasions 2008, 10, 12 and 2016. The guns fitted are genuine WW11 examples that were recovered by Charles Darby during his many trips through the South Pacific. They are fitted with blank firing attachments that allow the guns to cycle using the blank ammunition which we have loaded for us. Once the show is over the guns are removed from the aircraft and stored.
Over the years we have made changes to the load to try and increase the noise and look of the firing not all of these have been successful and we are still looking for that perfect combination. We have always been a little disappointed with the size of the flame (visual effects) but when we did a frame capture from the GoPro we had set up to video a test one day we were shocked, it just looks like the human eye/brain can’t keep up. We think the shot below say’s it all.
50 Cal test.