At Ardmore on 31 December I stopped off to photograph this old girl outside Christian Aviation when a much newer relative taxied up. It was a nice juxtaposition of the old and the new, and also of a Cessna 150 and a Cessna 510. Cessna 150 ZK-BWX was one of the earliest Cessna 150's to come to New Zealand, being first registered in May 1960. It has been owned by the Brown/Dalton Syndicate of Takanini since at least 1984 and it may be for sale as it was parked in that area. It features a rather creative placement of its registration! Can anyone post the history of this aircraft?
Cessna 510 Citation Mustang ZK-LCA is owned by Graeme Lowe Aviation Ltd of Hastings, and was first registered in New Zealand on 9 June 2009. It is one of three Citation Mustangs on the New Zealand register and it is ex N2243W. It is an example of a "Very Light Jet" and it can carry 2 pilots and 4 passengers.
bwx normally parks there have photographed her every year for the last decade more or less in the same spot
ReplyDeleteBWX does indeed live on the North Side of ardmore. Dave Brown was / is Chief executive of Christian Aviation. BWX wears the same colour scheme as Christians Chieftains and Navajos but wasnt used by the airline as such, other than maybe for crew or engineering positioning. Are The PA31s still around there? CAL, CAM and ZNZ?
ReplyDeleteZNZ has long since gone. It went to Wigram and flew very briefly for a medivac crowd but I understand has since been broken up. It was replaced on the books at Christian with Cheyenne RUR, in conjunction with its owner Rural Aviation. It then went to Lowe's of Napier until their Mustang LCA came along and RUR is now in Indonesia. Christian now have the use of Aerostar MVY for any quick trips they have to do. Unfortunately the charter work has dried up for most thanks to more airline flights to most places these days so its not often you see CAL/CAM/MVY flying. The C172's (FSA and another) seem to do a bit from Ardmore to Coromandel. I've never actually seen BWX fly!
ReplyDeletecal and cam usually parked in front of the hanger never seen znz on my visits to ardmore
ReplyDelete