In article ,
Ruud wrote:

On Wed, 26 Oct 2005 13:11:46 GMT, "Mal" wrote:


They have to get the prize money from someplace.

And they expect 10 to 15 thousand spectators...
(see http://www.gp06.com/news.htm )

That's a lot of prize money!

I was wondering about realistic crowd numbers. Omarama is a fairly
remote place, being close to three hours drive from Dunedin and four
hours from Christchurch.

So I looked up attendance figures for Warbirds over Wanaka. Wanaka is
even more remote. It's probably about the same time from Dunedin, but an
extra hour from Christchurch.

The very first show in 1988 attracted 14,000 visitors. The next show,
in 1990, attracted 28,000 and 1992 saw 55,000. Recent shows (it is held
at Easter every two years) have had close to 100,000 visitors.

That's the pool of people prepared to drive half a day or more to see
aviation events in the central South Island. It's entirely possible
that with sufficient publicity you might attract something around the
lower end of that to a gliding Grand Prix.

If you threw in an appearance or two by a Spitfire/ Hurricane/ Mustang/
Kittyhawk/ Yak /Polikarpov then I think you'd guarantee it. They live
only about 10 minutes flying time away. I well remember everyone
settling down to dinner in the large marquee in the evening after
practice day at the 1995 Worlds in Omarama when the distinctive sound of
a Merlin engine in a full power dive emptied several hundred people out
of the marquee in about ten seconds. We were treated to a ten minute
impromptu display by Tim Wallis before he headed home to Wanaka.

--
Bruce | 41.1670S | \ spoken | -+-
Hoult | 174.8263E | /\ here. | ----------O----------