NZ Civil Aircraft

Friday, 26 February 2016

Ashburton .....

Flying New Zealand National Championships are being held at Ashburton 23rd to 28th of February.

Here is a clipping from the local Ashburton Guardian newspaper.

And some pics all from Allan Bowman.

Below a general view of some of the visiting aircraft.

And a couple of the 'not so often seen here' aircraft.

Maule MXT-7-180 ZK-JQY (c/n 14120C) is listed with Wanganui Sea and Air Charter (2006) Ltd

The Partenavia P68C ZK-SMB (c/n 308) is from the Auckland Aero Club and the Piper PA-28-181 ZK-EBQ is from Southern Wings, Invercargill.

More DC-3 memories.

Another news Item from the Ashburton Courier newspaper. Dated 25-02-2016.

Thanks to Allan Bowman.

Floatplane ZK-FPO at Taupo

Taupos Floatplane Ltd have two Cessna 206 floatplanes based on Lake Taupo.

Here we see Cessna U206G Stationair 6 ZK-FPO (c/n 20605772) being readied for a days work.

After some preliminary cleaning and preflight inspection at its mooring near the Lake exit it is water taxied over to the daytime mooring.

And then more thoroughly washed down all over.

This airframe went directly onto the Canadian register during construction at Wichita, Kansas in 1980 as C-GGMI.

It came onto the NZ register for the Broady Syndicate of Auckland on 27-06-1988 and was transferred to Volcanic Air Safaris at Rotorua from 07-05-2007.

It was listed with its current operator Taupos Floatplane Ltd on 03-07-2013.
Their other floatplane is ZK-EFI.

Thursday, 25 February 2016

At the Great Barrier hangar at North Shore today, there was a lot of activity going on dismantling their three Britten Norman Trislanders. These aircraft have been inactive at North Shore for quite a long while.

ZK-LGF...

You can see a rack of spare wings in the background.

ZK-LOU2....

and ZK-LGC2.

These three aircraft are still registered to Great Barrier Airlines Flight Operations Ltd which is the old Great Barrier Airlines. Their current fleet (including Islander ZK-FVD in the background) is registered to Great Barrier Airlines Ltd and painted up as Barrier Air You can see more about the new airline at http://3rdlevelnz.blogspot.co.nz/2015/08/barrier-air-new-name-to-barrier-and.html.

Does anyone know where they are going?

Art Deco Saturday at Napier 20-2-2016

As well as the SAANZ flyin at Hastings the 2016 Art Deco festival was being held in and around Napier from the 17th to the 21st of February. This attracted several "art deco era" aircraft to Napier with a good contingent of warbirds from Ardmore (Mustang, Spitfire and the Roaring Forties aerobatic team) plus John Luff's Venom from Wanganui - actually they are a bit later than the art deco era, and these aircraft put on flying displays off the Napier waterfront.

But there were more appropriate art deco era aircraft giving joyrides, including the following:

Bill Harris's locally based Tiger Moth ZK-AJP.

Down from Gisborne was the Darton Field Flying Syndicate's Tiger Moth ZK-BAL.

And from Ardmore was the Stearman Partnership's Stearman A75N1 ZK-PJS.

There were several other Tiger Moths as well as Stan and Gilly Smith's Fox Moth ZK-APT from North Shore, and visiting Bucker Jungman SE-AIK that is touring around New Zealand.

Wednesday, 24 February 2016

ZK-LTB working on The Coast.

Three more pics kindly sent in by Tanya Salter-Anderson.

Taken today on "The Coast"

ZK-LTB is Pacific Aerospace Cresco 08-750 (c/n 022).

In its younger days it was better known as ZK-PKB.

Taylor J2 Cub ZK-AGD Restoration at Hastings 20-2-2016

Another special aircraft was outside its hangar at Bridge Pa airfield on Saturday as Kip Netherclift pushed his pristine restored J2 Cub ZK-AGD out into the sun. Unfortunately a carburettor problem prevented him from taxying the aircraft to the SAANZ aircraft park, so many may have missed it.

Kip has done a great job of restoration and the aircraft looks stunning. Kip told me that the colour scheme is his take on a J2 scheme and borrows from his earlier Aeronca restoration (ZK-AMW), but the 3 fuselage stripes are a J2 feature.

Three quarters rear view.

The tail features "Taylor J2 Cub" wording which you can see by enlarging the photo (click once or twice), however it is registered as a Piper J2. The aircraft has not yet flown following its restoration.

ZK-AGD has been around for a very long time. It was first registered in New Zealand in January 1938, so it is one of our oldest original aircraft. It was imported by JR (Jim) Franklin of Wanganui and was used for a time by the Wanganui Aero Club. The photos below from the Neville Drake collection show some of its early life.

I think this photo is quite early on in its life and probably was as it arrived from America.

It was then owned by HW (Bert) Lightband of New Plymouth and was painted in camouflage colours during WW 2 (but it did not seem to have been impressed into the RNZAF - I guess that is why it remained ZK-AGD). It was then owned by Peter G Hobart of New Plymouth and finally by CJL Dundon of Wanganui.

It was withdrawn from use around 1958 and then fell upon hard times, being stored exposed to the elements in a rudimentary hangar at Wanganui aerodrome as in the above photo. The hangar eventually collapsed on it on 10/4/68 after which the remains were stored by Murray Farr of Hawera for eventual rebuild. The registration was eventually cancelled on 17/12/90.

Kip Netherclift and Murray Kirkus acquired the remains around 5 years ago and the aircraft was restored over the intervening years. It was briefly re-registered to on 4/3/14 but it was withdrawn on 24/6/14. Finally it was again re-registered on 17/9/15 to the Netherclift AGD Partnership of Napier.

N415TA at TG

Two pics from Grayson Ottaway taken at Tauranga yesterday (23-02-2016) showing the Progressive Aerodyne Searey N415TA (c/n 1018) which had been in the area for a couple of days.