A trip to the big city

Whilst on my way back to Quake City I dropped into see Russell Brodie at Rangitata (Rans) Island for a pee and tea and found the seldom seen Spezio DAL-1 Tuholer ZK-JRZ (c/n 227). This rare machine will very likely soon join the microlight class 2 category. This aircraft was built in the mid 1960's by Plez T Nall at a place called Ardmore in Oklahoma USA and was registered as N7515 sometime about 1967. Some four owners later it was one of several aircraft purchased by Andrew Fairfax and shipped to NZ.

I spied it at Taieri partially assembled in October of 2002. It joined the NZ register as ZK-JRZ to Andrew on 15-09-2003. It now carries "Rimu's Rocket" just below the front Hole.

 Above we have a view of the back Hole, whilst below is the front Hole. So we have a Tuholer.

 The local Rans S-6ES ZK-RHZ now has a fully painted cowling.

The only resident (below) on the Maddisons Road strip was the Cessna R172K Hawk XP 11 ZK-SMP (c/n R1723317) of Wyndon Aviation Ltd. Imported through Motor Holdings (Aviation) Ltd in 1984 for three farmers ; Alister McLeod, John Martin and Jim Skermon; in the Martinborough area.
Who remembers Supplementary Minimum Prices ?  I believe this is where the registration letters came from. It joined Wyndon in August of 2003.

Below. Back in Christchurch was the Air Safari's Cessna 208B Grand Caravan ZK-SRI (c/n  208B00636).
It is a lot of aeroplane when parked near to a Cessna 185 (ZK-CMS).

Grass roots flying is still available at NZCH. Here we see a seasonal visitor - Banded Dotterel (I think). Unregistered, pays no landing fees, free fuel and hangarage (although not normally required for this model), Nordo, has a very compact up market navigational system, STOL, low noise footprint (so to speak). We could go on. The biggest problem for these avians at this site is the chance of being placed into a GE (or similar) rotating oven or a load of buckshot.

Another wing flapper -  departing - was the Hughes 369FF ZK-HUJ2 (0149FF) of Mount Hutt Helicopters, still operating under its Coast Wide Helicopters label.