Man! Fieldair had a lot of Beavers and their seventeenth example was ZK-CRE: (which is still extant in the US as illustrated below during its long career)
ZK-CRE (c/n 1613) arrived at Hawker Siddeley's at Wellington airport in 1966 and was registered to Fieldair Ltd on 13/6/66. It is photo'd above and below looking very shiny during and engine run prior to delivery.
It was much easier to take photos at airports back in those days!
Here it is in colour showing the effects of a working life, at Gisborne in 1972.
It changed to a yellow Fieldair scheme as in this photo at Gisborne on 27/10/74.
On 18/11/80 it underwent the ownership change to Fieldair Holdings (Central) Ltd of Palmerston North as in this photo taken at Masterton (not sure) on 12/3/83. Then it went on through another reorganisation to Fieldair Holdings Ltd of Palmerston North on 30/3/84.
On 25 and 26/3/88 it was flown across the Tasman Sea via Norfolk Island and Lord Howe Island, to Sydney where this photo was taken on 27/3/88. It was cancelled from the New Zealand register on 7/4/88.
In Australia it became VH-CEV2 on 11/4/88 for Hadlock Holdings Pty Ltd of Tumut, NSW who traded as Tumut Airspray. The above photo was taken in 1988. It stayed with them until 15/7/98 when it was cancelled from the Australian register and freighted to New Zealand for a rebuild by serial Beaver rebuilder Frank Wright at Tauranga. After the rebuild it was freighted to the US.
Where it became N13VF on 22/9/99 for Andrews Airways of Kodiak in Alaska. You can see it had the Frank Wright colour scheme but in dark red and grey. On 29/11/03 it crashed on landing at Viekoda Bay near Kodiak and its US registration was cancelled on 6/7/05.
It was registered as C-FPBJ4 on 3/3/07 to Atlantic Aircraft Salvage Ltd of Enfield, Nova Scotia. They had it rebuilt by Sealand Aviation of Campbell River Nova Scotia who incorporated the Sealand Cabin Extension kit and fitted double Alaskan doors on the port side. It flew again on 23/3/10 as in this photo.
However Sealand did further work on the airframe including moving the engine forward for CG reasons, adding a belly fuel tank and installing wing tip tanks that extended the wingspan, and a repaint, as you can see in the above photo.taken on 29/6/10. It was sold to Island Lake Trading Co of Island Lake, Manitoba as C-GJWU on 27/4/10.
You can see the double Alaskan doors quite well in this photo. On 17/11/20 it was cancelled from the Canadian register for export back to the US.
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