Thursday 12 June 2008

I remember when

I remember when the Department of Civil Aviation operated two Douglas DC-3's on airways calibration duties based at Paraparaumu (In what is now the Helipro hangar)
If you were in the know, it was possible to cadge a ride for the day (or longer) on what were classed as Famil Flights.
You had to pick your day with care as the continual turning combined with other meteorological phenomena could lead to periods of unwellness.
Here we are at Invercargill on 23rd April 1968 in ZK-AUJ c/n 26651/15206.
It was delivered to the RNZAF on 30-12-1944 and became NZ3530.
It joined the ZK register on 18-04-1952 with CAA, then relisted to DCA and finally to MOT CAD Division after departmental reorganisations.
It was sold in 1973 having been replaced by Fokker F27's.
It departed Auckland on 20-06-1973 and spent about six weeks in Australia before moving to Cambodia to become XW-TFJ.
I heard that it "escaped" from the Pol Pot clutches and flew into Don Muang in April of 1975 for storage and was broken up in the mid 80's.
The original B & W photograph was re-photographed with my digital camera and appears above unedited.

1 comment:

  1. Fantastic Blue Bus! Great way to post these without the long winded way of scanning etc.

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