Beaver ZK-AYT

Rural Aviation's second Beaver was ZK-AYT (c/n 138) which was manufactured by the DH Canada factory at Downsview, Ontario on 27 July 1951.  It was shipped to New Zealand for the agents DH New Zealand Ltd and registered to Rural Aviation Ltd of New Plymouth on 19 December 1951.  I assume it was assembled at Mangere as were our other earliest Beavers ZK-AVL, ZK-AXK and ZK-AZB.

A nice action shot of it taking off from a topdressing strip, early on in its life as the undercarriage to fuselage fairings are still in place..  I do not have a record of who took the photo.

In this early colour shot taken at New Plymouth we can see that the fuselage cheat line seems to be dark blue and the registration letters are in dayglo orange.  The photo is via Janic Geelen who recalls the photo was taken by a topdressing pilot at the time.

And an interesting shot of it being loaded on a topdressing strip, probably in 1953.  Quite a lot of manpower was required to load the early topdressers!  I understand that this photo was taken by Phil Lightband who flew for Rural and later became their Operations Manager.

It was damaged in a heavy landing at Raetihi on 20/1/54 but was repaired to crash again near the Aohanga River near Akitio (which is on the East Coast of the North Island East of Pahiatua), on 23/4/56, when it hit a down draught while flying near a steep hillside and the starboard wing was torn off and the aircraft was destroyed coming to rest upside down.  It was cancelled from the register on 7/7/56.