From the Shoe Box : Globemaster II 52-1038

  Douglas C124C Globemaster II 52-1038 (c/n 43947) trundled into Wellington Airport and parked over between the terminal and the crash fire building.

Photographer now unknow, but I have had these pics for over twenty yeasr and just dug them out from the bottom of one of the shoe boxes marked "misc photos".

 I do know that it went down to The Ice during the 1960 ODF season.

But I think the cars in the park post date that year. I'm thinking mid to late 1960's would fit !

 I like the "No Step" stencil on the blades.

52-1038 was eventually parked up at the MASDAC area at Davis Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona and was declared as Excess on 15-11-1974.

This is a better view of the car park.

Hiller FH1100 ZK-HCI today.

Bargeldo1 captured the Hiller FH-1100 ZK-HCI (c/n 74) outside the Heli Maintenance hangar today at Christchurch.

It is still registered to Winged Hunters Ltd.

An earlier post on this one can be seen at :- http://nzcivair.blogspot.co.nz/search?q=hci

Wittman W8 Tailwind(s) of New Zealand

Our final new type of 2 seater homebuilt aircraft for 1980 was the Wittman Tailwind.  1980 was a watershed year for new homebuilt aircraft, with our first Cavalier, our first KR 2, our first Zenith CH 200, our first VariEze and the Tailwind.

The W8 Tailwind is a high wing braced 2 seater with a welded steel fuselage and wooden wings with no dihedral, all fabric covered.  It was designed by well known air race pilot and homebuilt aircraft pioneer Steve Wittman in 1953, making it one of the older 2 seat homebuilt designs.  Steve Wittman got the design right as performance was outstanding with a maximum speed approaching 200 mph on an 85 HP Continental C-85 engine.  The Tailwind outperformed many factory built aircraft of the time, and it would be many years  before new composite designs were able to achieve similar performance with the same horsepower.  Steve Wittman later developed the W10 model with tapered wingtips.

The Tailwind was 5.87 metres (19 feet 3 inches) long, had a wingspan of 6.38 metres (20 feet 11 inches), but this could be increased with modified wingtips, and had a wing area of 84 square feet.  Its empty weight was 311 Kg (685 pounds) and MAUW was 560 Kg (1,235 pounds).

Our one and only Wittman W8 Tailwind (to date) was ZK-RET (c/n AACA/386) which was built at Blenheim by Ray (E) Thurston, and was first registered to him on 15/12/80.  Its first flight was on 20/12/80.   In this very early photo of ZK-RET scanned form an article in the July 1981 Sport Flying magazine, it can be seen that it has square wingtips.  The aircraft first flew with an O-200 engine.  Ray also mentioned that "there is a longer wing modification which I am currently looking into which is supposed to improve the climb and lower the stall speeds with no change in top speed".

In this photo taken at the 1982 AACA flyin at Taupo it can be seen that the aircraft now has the extended wingtips previously talked about by Ray.

In the late 1980s Ray Thurston fitted an inverted dry-sump Rover V8 engine to ZK-RET, and it first flew with Rover power in July 1989..  Ray was an engineer and that he managed to get CAA to approve this engine was an achievement.  The Rover engine is fitted in the above photo which was taken at a Warbirds Over Wanaka airshow.

ZK-RET was sold to NW (Bill) Izard of Masterton on 6/3/03.  It was then sold to Cliff Bellingham of Pukekohe on 11/9/03, and he re-engined ZK-RET with an upgraded O-320 engine.  Cliff was very active in the aircraft until 21/9/11 when he sold it back to Bill Izard, now of Te Awamutu.  It is still current, as photo'd at the Auckland Chapter SAANZ flyin at Kelly Field, Mercer on 21/4/12.

I think that we might see more Tailwinds in New Zealand, as I am aware of a pair of them being built in the Waikato.  It would be great to see more of them.

 

Continuing the life of Bryan

 This Piper PA-25-235 Pawnee ZK-CNJ (c/n 25-3865)
 is the one Bryan did his training in; flying for Chris Pask in 1972.

That is Will Slack in this photo; not sure where.

 

Then Bryan went on to the Cessna A188B Agwagon C ZK-DPP (c/n 188-01524) in late 1975.

 Photo taken at Bridge Pa Aerodrome.

Then on to Cessna A188B ZK-DPW (c/n 188-01515). Photo taken at Kotemaori on the Napier Wairoa road.

 

This is Ponui Station strip towards the coast from Kotemaori.

The Ponui Station strip once again with quite a dog leg in it.

This is the strip at Putorino. The same one show in an earlier posting with Fletcher ZK-EMK sowing up the strip.

 I think of all the aircraft I flew, the Agwagon I enjoyed most, even though it was a bit under powered.

 

All three of these aircraft eventually ended up in Australia.

Puma on the Prowl

As mentioned on this blog earlier in the month, Ardmore based Heli Harvest have taken delivery of the country's first AS332 Super Puma with the heavy lift helicopter registered ZK-HHL.

http://nzcivair.blogspot.co.nz/2013/05/super-puma.html

The helicopter was moved from its original spot inside the Rural Aviation hangar to a locally based repaint firm where it has had its Japanese script removed and it was rolled back to its hangar this afternoon, 21 May.