Friday 17 December 2010

Glaser-Dirks DG-400 ZK-GPL the second.

DG0400 C-GPLS in its native land. It is now ZK-GPL2
A relatively recent import from Canada is this Glaser-Dirks DG-400. This is c/n 4-285, which makes it one of the last to come off the production line before the factory fire halted production at airframe number 290. It went new to Canada and became C-GPLS on 28-05-1992 with GPLS Ltd of Guelph, Ontario (hence the registration). My understanding is that this was a syndicate which included Bruce Findlay, then Paul Nelson of Arthur, Ontario and Tim Harrison. With less than 300 airframe hours it was inported int NZ by Tim and registered to Sports Aircraft New Zealand Ltd of Wellsford on 19-10-2010 as ZK-GPL2 - retaining the middle three letters of its Canadian registration.
Confusingly for future aviation historians the first issue of the ZK-GPL marking was also on a DG-400 - This was c/n 4-100 and had the personal "PL" registration for Peter Lyons of Hastings. This went to Australia in October of 2009 and became VH-IPL.
Also confusing could be that we now have two Tim Harrisons with NZ gliding connections, although "Timbo" who operated ZK-GMF, ZK-GLP and ZK-GTM mainly from Omarama is currently inactive due to business commitments.

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