I recently had a chance to catch up with Chris Toms at Kaipara Flats airfield. Chris of course was the builder and owner of our only Lancair IV ZK-CTL2 which was the fastest homebuilt aircraft in New Zealand at the time with a 300 knot maximum speed! (Chris told me he used to flight plan for 235 knots). This is what I wrote about it back in January 2014:
ZK-CTL (c/n LIV192) was a Lancair IV built by Chris Toms of Auckland, and was first registered on 30/1/95. It was powered by a Lycoming TIO-540 engine of 350 HP. It had an early fright when it force landed on the beach at Ruakaka with engine problems, but the landing was successful. The above photo was taken at Tauranga in 1997. It was cancelled on 18/8/00 and sold to an owner in the USA as N831F. It was delivered by air across the Pacific in September 2000, and is still current in the US.
Chris told me that when he sold his Lancair IV to the US as
N83JF (for its new owner John Forker) it was required to have a higher visibility colour scheme so he repainted it as in the above photo which taken at North Shore before its delivery flight.
Yeah I wandered up to Kaipara Flats and had a chat with them. It will be 30yrs next year since I started building and there has still not been another aircraft that comes even close to it. I wish I still had it.
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