Beaver ZK-AVL

Back in the very early days of aerial topdressing in New Zealand when nearly every operator was flying Tiger Moths there was a recognition that a more powerful and nearer to mission aircraft would be much better.  That aircraft was the Beaver which had first flown on  16 August 1947 and was designed for rugged bush operations in Canada.  But they were very expensive.  However this did not stop a couple of the early pioneers from purchasing several examples.  Later, when more Beavers would have been bought, production was fully tied up with aircraft for the US military (who eventually bought 970 of the 1647 that were built).

The first Beaver to be registered here was ZK-AVL (c/n 148) which was manufactured at the DH Canada factory in Downsview, Ontario in 1951.  It was imported by DH New Zealand and was registered to James Aviation Ltd of Hamilton on 19/12/51.  It was assembled outside at Mangere as shown in this interesting photo above, where you can also see another Beaver in the background.  This is before September 1951 I think.

It is photo'd above at an unknown location after having been painted with a Stearman Vermilion red fuselage and silver wings and rudder and tailplane.

James Aviation operated it with No 1 on the tail, presumably Fleet No 1 although they would have had quite a few Tiger Moths also at the time.  Again photo'd at an unknown location by an unknown photographer.

In the black and white photos the red fuselage looks to be quite a dark red, but it probably looked more like this colour (depending on the colour settings of the screen you are viewing this on), and I suspect that Stearman ZK-RJS is the same colour.

And here it is in a very early colour photo (in the 1950s) at Rukuhia, I think from the Ossie James collection.  It hit a loader truck very early on in its topdressing life, at Paerangi on 1/4/52 - maybe that was the cause of the all red cowling in the above photo?  Then it hit a sheep on take off at Te Akau on 17/3/56 damaging the undercarriage.

On 20/7 59 ZK-AVLs ownership changed to Aerial Farming (Holdings) Ltd of Palmerston North and it is photo'd above in their colours at Wellington in 1959 while having some radio work done by Aviation Radio.  It was marked as Fleet #7.  Tragically it only lasted a few months in Aerial Farming ownership as it crashed and was destroyed near Utiku (which is near Taihape) on 21/12/59, killing its pilot.  It was cancelled from the register on 21/10/60.