Tecnam P 96 Golfs of New Zealand (3) - Early 2002 Aircraft

2002 bought a flood of Tecnam Golfs into New Zealand, with a total of ten registered during the year.  The first four were:

ZK-SOM (c/n 197) was registered to W J F (Walter) Somerville of Wyndham on 28/3/02.  I think it spent most of its life in the deep South as I had never seen a photo of it until Larry Timpany came up with the above photo.  It was not in New Zealand for very long as it was cancelled on 7/12/05 and exported to Australia where it was registered 24-4470 on the Australian microlight register.

Larry Timpany also sent this photo of a gathering of Tecnam Golfs at Taieri in 2003.  The aircraft were ZK-SOM, ZK-TLG, ZK-JTG, ZK-JGH and ZK-ZRG.  Thanks very much for the photos Larry. 

ZK-ZRG (c/n 196) was registered to E R A (Ruth) Presland of Wanaka on 28/3/02 and I think she used it as a demonstrator aircraft for a while, as she was the South Island Tecnam representative around this time.  On 2/9/04 ownership changed to J C (John) Smith of Gore and it is still current with him.

ZK-SMK (c/n 201) was registered to S J (Sandy) McKay of Kerikeri on 26/4/02.  It was cancelled on 3/9/10 and exported to Australia where it became 24-7433.  This is the only New Zealand registered Tecnam Golf that I have not been able to get a photo of as such but you can get a pretty good idea of what it looked like from this photo of 24-7433.  There were not a lot of different schemes for all of our Golfs!  Does anyone have a photo of ZK-SMK?

ZK-JGH2 (c/n 213) was registered to J G Hodge of Christchurch on 29/7/02.  It spent some time based at North Shore where the above photo was taken on 12/3/16.  He owned it for 18 years before it was sold to the West Auckland Airport Company of Helensville on 31/1/20, and they re-registered it as ZK-ECL2 on 17/3/20.

ZK-ECL2 is now used for flight training at Parakai.  The above photo was taken at Kaipara Flats airfield on 13/9/20.