Sunday 27 January 2019

Canadian Courier in Country

Parked behind the RAE hangar at Rangiora on Saturday and Sunday was the Helio H-295 Courier C-GZZL (c/n 1263) as listed with Louis Grenier since 14-09-2004.
This had just been boxed in from Australia where it had spent a couple of weeks touring about.
It is intended to do similar here in NZ.
 Like most Couriers it depends on which history you want to believe.
With a c/n of 1263 we know it was built at the Midstates Manufacturing Division of Helio Aircraft Corporation, Pittsburg, Kansas as one of 173 U-10D/H295's and was allocated the US Bureau  number of 66-14361 and issued to the USAF CA ANG 129th Special Operations Group with whom it operated (classified) until November 25th 1974. 
At this time it was placed in storage at Davis-Monthan.
It was released in June of 1976 and placed on the US civil register as N42112 with The US Department of Agriculture (possibly as a sprayer) and then transferred over to N2706J for the Utah Department of Public Safety (read - drug and liquor enforcement).
By 27-11-1994 it was certified to John Pollock and is known to have struck trees in September 1995 and I believe it was rebuilt using a new fuselage from an unfinished H-800 model. It certainly has the square rear fuselage window - as against the U-10D's round version and also the small fin fillet - although this was added to float plane 295's, plus the different undercarriage arrangement.
Its US registration was cancelled on 23-07-2004 for it to become C-GZZL on 14-09-2004 with Louis Grenier.
Nice one !

We have just the single Helio H250 Courier on the NZ civil register.
ZK-TCE (c/n 2503) based at Beckenham Hills Station, North Canterbury.
This has been mentioned several times on this site.  See HERE

Above I have added for interest a U-10D with the smaller round fuselage window, no fin fillet and the spindly undercarriage and the cambered wheels.

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