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.
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