Stoddard-Hamilton Glasairs of New Zealand (1) - Original Models

The Stoddard-Hamilton Glasair was the first pre-molded composite kitplane to be available to homebuilders, and it was the next type of 2 seater homebuilt aircraft to appear in New Zealand.  The fuselage came in 2 halves and was glued together with bulkheads by the builder.

Tom Hamilton designed the original Glasair TD and the prototype first flew in 1979 with an O-235 motor, but most later aircraft featured an O-360 motor of 200 HP.  Tom Hamilton formed Stoddard- Hamilton Aircraft at Arlington, Virginia using his middle name and surname to make the company name seem more impressive!  In 1983 a retractable gear Glasair RG was added and in 1984 a fixed trigear Glasair FT was introduced, with little loss in performance over the RG model.

The original model Glasairs had a length of 5.94 metres (19 feet 6 inches), a wingspan of 7.42 metres (24 feet 4 inches) and a wing area of 81.3 square feet.  Empty weight was 621 Kg (1,368 pounds) and MAUW was 998 Kg (2,200 pounds).  With an O-320 motor cruise was 201 mph.

Our first Glasair was a TD model, ZK-ADY (c/n AACA/692) which was built by Mark Elworthy of Timaru.  It was first registered in June 1986 and its first flight was at Timaru on 19/8/87.  It is photo'd above at the 1989 AACA flyin at Tairei.  It was sold to MW Ross of Wellington on 7/7/94 and then to RG Warren, also of Wellington on 1/7/00.  It was then exported to the USA and its registration was cancelled on 2/6/04.  It is still current as N361V, owned by RE Warren of Hawaii.

Our second Glasair TD was John Luff's ZK-JDL (c/n AACA/1067) which he built in Wanganui.  It was first registered on 31/1/90 and it is still owned by John Luff.  The above photo was taken quitte recently, at Ardmore on 21/4/12

And our other original Glasair was Glasair RG ZK-NRG (c/n 764) that was built by Greg Laird of Auckland and was first registered on 18/1/90 (making it our second Glasair to be registered).  It is photo'd above at Wanaka.

It is photo'd above at the 2002 AACA flyin at Matamata.  It suffered a nosewheel collapse at Ardmore on 3/8/05 but it was repaired.

As it was sold to BM Williams of North Shore on 3/7/09.  It suffered power loss and force landed gear up at McLean Reserve at Bucklands Beach, Auckland on 8/11/09.  It was again repaired and is flying again as shown in this photo taken at North Shore on 9/12/12.