Saturday 10 September 2011

SE 5A Replicas of New Zealand

Following on from Issacs Fury replica's our next replica aircraft to come along was the 7/8 scale SE 5A replica of which we have had 2 in New Zealand. The SE 5A replica was developed by Gogi Goguillot for Replica Plans of Canada, and the prototype first flew in 1970. It is wood and fabric but uses modern construction techniques. The wingspan is 23 feet 4 inches (7.11 metres), the length is 18 feet 2 inches (5.54 metres) and the MAUW is 1150 pounds (522 Kgs).
New Zealand has had 2 SE 5A replicas, ZK-TOM and ZK-SET, and interestingly both builders went on to build German WW 1 replicas (Albatros D5 replica ZK-DVR built by Tom Grant, and Fokker Triplane ZK-FOK built by Stuart Tantrum).
The photos are from the Keith Morris collection.I do not have a record of who took these 2 photos because I was living overseas at the time. I am also not sure where they were taken - probably somewhere on the Western front.

ZK-TOM/B 168 (c/n 073120) was built by Tom Grant of Mosgiel and was first registered on 25/5/77 and first flew on 16/7/77. It has an O 200 motor. It is photo'd here at the 1981 AACA fly-in at Mt Hutt.
It was re-designated as a Class 1 microlight on 16/6/03 and is still owned by Tom Grant. It has not changed at all over the years as shown in this photo taken at Ashburton on 8/2/09 by Blue Bus.
ZK-SET/B4863 (c/n AACA/266/1) was built by Stuart Tantrum of Levin and was first registered on 17/1/78. It had an O-235 motor and was painted as B 4863 of 55 Squadron, RFC. It is photo'd here in December 1980 at Foxpine, flown bt Stuart Tantrum.
Somewhere along the line it was repainted in this slightly different colour scheme. It was sold to J G Pavin of Auckland on 29/4/88 and then to The SE 5A Syndicate of Auckland on 19/9/90. It crashed very publically at the 1992 Auckland Air Expo and was rebuilt by Stuart Tantrum. It was then sold to Gerald Rhodes of Christchurch 0n 3/5/93. Its registration was revoked on 19/5/98 and it is now at the Wanaka Transport and Toy Museum. Does anyone have a photo of it at the museum?
Flashback to the 1981 AACA fly-in at Mt Hutt where I took this photo of both ZK-TOM and ZK-SET together. I thought that this was quite impressive at the time.
But amazingly we now have full scale SE 5A's in New Zealand. I took this photo of ZK-SES and ZK-SEV at Masterton in March 2011 - almost exactly 30 years after the Mt Hutt fly-in.
I have previously posted about our 3 SE 5A's at http://nzcivair.blogspot.com/2009/01/wow-se5as-at-masterton.html

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