Saturday 4 September 2021

I Remember When

When I was able to freely attend Classic Fighters 2003.  It was the first time I had seen so many WW 1 replica aircraft up close and it was pretty amazing!

There were five Fokker Triplane replicas there, with ZK-FOK in the foreground of this photo.

Stuart Tantrum flew the Avro 504K replica ZK-EHB. This was built by AJD Engineering in the UK in 1993 and imported into New Zealand by James Slade in 2002.  It later joined Peter Jackson's collection in 2006 and ended its flying days in the trees at Masterton on 2/11/08. 

Bristol F2B Fighter replica ZK-JNU was built in the US with a Ranger engine.  It was later painted in a different scheme and sold to Australia.

US built Nieuport 24 bis replica ZK-JOZ in its original scheme with the Polikarpov Po 2 that aspired to be ZK-POZ in the background.  It later was repainted and returned to the US where it was sadly involved in a fatal accident. 

US built Halberstadt D IV replica ZK-JOW.

Pfalz D III replica ZK-JPI was built for the film The Blue Max

The Gerald Thornhill built Sopwith Camel ZK-JMU was flown by Gene de Marco.

And there was an externally complete Fokker D VIII replica there that was a mock up.  It eventually met its end at Classic Fighters 2011 as collateral damage in an air attack display.

Oh well - I guess this will have to do instead of being at Omaka today, as planned.


1 comment:

  1. The Fokker D.VIII was a mockup for ground theatre, having sat in it (discovered in an Omaka shed in 2007) I am fairly certain it wouldn't have passed any CAA checks!

    Also, that Avro is the replica ZK-EHB.

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