The Latest Student Built Vans RV 12 at Whitianga on 10-12-2023

On Sunday 10 December the latest Vans RV 12 to be built by the students of the Mercury Bay Area School at Whitianga was unveiled:

At the unveiling ceremony the new RV 12iS ZK-LCH was accompanied by the previous four MBAS RV 12 aircraft, being ZK-MBA3 registered in October 2013, ZK-ERV from February 2016, ZK-EAA3 from October 2017 and ZK-MBB3  from November 2020.  What a great effort!  And of course thanks must go to the many retired aircraft experts who have mentored the students over the years, originally led by Jim Evans who was tragically killed in his own RV 12 while flying components for the latest aircraft.

And there were four other visiting RV 12s on hand being Paul Dolley's ZK-DOL2 from Te Kowhai, Dave Campbell-Morrison's ZK-SCM and Julian Coles' ZK-JRV2 from North Shore, and Keith Weale's ZK-VLF from Ardmore.

Actually the first flight had been carried out on Friday 10 December as in the above photo.

Thanks very much to Gavin Magill for the photos.