Unregistered But Not a Microlight - Chris Henry's and Warwick Vaile's 1912 Curtiss Pusher Replica

Over the years there must have been many hundreds of guys who sat in their sheds and dreamed of building their own aircraft.  And a lot of them did just that by joining the Amateur Aircraft Constructors Association (AACA - the fore-runner of SAANZ) and starting on building their aircraft.  Back in those days (the 1960s and 70s) in New Zealand building an aircraft was very regulated. 

There were only certain types of aircraft that were approved for homebuilding and once you had your set of plans you had to get them stamped and registered with the Civil Aviation Division of the Ministry of Transport and then you were appointed a Stage Inspector by the AACA, who had practical experience with aircraft building.  Actually when you got past the bureaucracy this was a really great system and your stage inspector, who was a volunteer, became a mentor and encouraged you along.  You had a building log that needed to be signed off by your stage inspector at certain points, for example before you glued the back face on a box spar after which it could not be seen inside again (all the homebuilt aircraft were wooden in the beginning, until welded steel tube fuselages came along).  Also you had to always use release-noted aircraft grade materials which even included the spruce timber that you used.

I can imagine that some guys would prefer to just do their own thing and build their aircraft however they wanted it, and that is what a small but unknown number of aircraft builders in New Zealand did.

This was the case with a couple of young motorcycle racers from Cambridge, Chris Henry and Warwick Vaile.  Chris Henry part owned a motorcycle shop in Cambridge with his brother in the 1970s and they were the North Island agents for Ducati motorcycles. 

 I have not been able to find out why, but sometime in the 1970s Chris Henry and Warwick Vaile started building a replica of a 1912 Curtiss Flyer aircraft.  Obviously this didn’t fit in with the strictures of the homebuilt aircraft system but they went ahead and started building anyway.

I have heard reports from around that time that they built their aircraft in a workshop near to the motorcycle shop from outlines drawn in chalk on their workshop floor (shades of how the Jodel D9 was hatched), and also that there were lots of aircraft parts around the motorcycle shop over various times.  I don’t know if they ever approached CAD at the time but I suspect not as their aircraft was never registered, (and anyway I know what the answer would have been!)

 The aircraft must have been finished by late 1976/early 1977 as there is a photo on the internet of Warwick Vaile flying it which is dated March 1977.  I understand that both Chris and Warwick flew it from at least 2 farm airstrips near Cambridge.  This was after both having no prior experience of flying!  I guess that shows that Glenn Curtiss’s machine was pretty well behaved.

Warwick Vaile (above) and Chris Henry (below) flying their magnificent creation.

Now we shift our attention to Tom Krippner’s airstrip at Ngahinapouri where Chris and Warwick assembled their Curtiss Flyer, probably in 1977.  We can date this because there are home movies of it taxying there with a young Ivan Krippner in the movie aged around 5 years old.  The movies show the aircraft being taxied with verve up and down the airstrip.  Ivan’s brother Paul recalls that this spirited taxying went on over many months of weekends and led to hops (flights?) down the runway with various Waikato homebuilt aircraft pilots such as Max Clear dropping in to observe progress.  Obviously quite a few locals knew about it. 

At Krippner's Strip at Ngahinapouri, obviously on a colder day!

Sometime, probably later on in 1977, Chris and Warwick were operating the Curtis Flyer off the Ngahinapouri airstrip and a local TV crew was there.  They captured the aircraft flying but on its final flight there was a fuel pressure problem which caused a loss of power and the aircraft came to rest in the top of some tall trees beside the airstrip (shades of Richard Pearse!).  Ivan Krippner’s home movie compilation shows it in the trees and didn’t appear to be damaged much.  A crane was called from Hamilton and Paul Krippner relates that the crane operator didn’t want to come but was enticed with “you will be on TV” so the crane eventually turned up but by that time the TV crew had gone home! 

The Flyer perched at the top of the trees

And being craned down, largely undamaged.

Another contact remembers seeing this adventure on local TV and I understand that the Civil Aviation Division called round to see the boys and issued a cease and desist notice (shades of Geoff Williams who built 4 unregistered aircraft at Dunedin between the 1960s and 1990s).  However in this case notice was taken of CAD and the Flyer ended up at MOTAT.

 It was hung up at MOTAT for quite a few years where Peter Lewis saw it and he said everyone referred to it as “the MOTAT biplane” without knowing anything more about it.  The last information I have about it was when it was on display at a motor racing meeting at Pukekohe raceway in the mid 1990s, and then MOTAT seems to have lost it.  Does anyone out there know where it might be today?

Thanks to Warwick Vaile who supplied the above photos to Dave Homewood in 2024.