Warbirds

“The government has made every effort to sell the Skyhawk fleet but no acceptable offers have been received. We will therefore offer eight of them to qualifying public museums in New Zealand and one to Aus-tralia, for heritage and display purposes,” Mapp announced.

“Homes for four of the aircraft are already determined. Two aircraft (one single-seat and one two-seat) will go to the Air Force Museum of New Zealand at Wigram. An-other will go to the Museum of Transport and Technology in Auckland. A fourth will go to the Royal Australian Navy Fleet Arm Museum at Nowra, Australia. This fulfils a longstanding agreement that we would give one of the ex- Australian Skyhawks back to them. ” It is not yet clear which of the seven surviving ex RAN Skyhawks in the NZ inventory will be returning to Australia.

“Until the specific airframe is identified, and consideration is given to an appropriate and significant date and place for the transfer, the Naval Herit-age Collection and the Fleet Air Arm Museum at HMAS Albatross are waiting with quiet anticipation and excitement,” said Fleet Air Arm Museum manager Terry Hetherington.

And as a consequence the Fleet Air Arm Musuem’s cur-rent Skyhawk, an on loan ex US Navy A-4B modified to represent an RAN A-4G, may be returned to the USA, or loaned to another Australian museum with USN approval.

Of the other five RNZAF Skyhawks to be preserved in musuems, Mapp said they would be “allocated on long term loan to other qualifying aviation museums in New Zea-land”, with negotiations already underway.

Meanwhile, the New Zea-land government is continuing negotiations with Blenheim based Safe Air to sell it Sky-hawk tooling and equipment, allowing the company to continue refurbishing Skyhawk J52 engines for international customers.

“The remaining airframes, engines, spares, ground sup-port equipment, role specific equipment, and documentation and publications will be sold separately through a request for proposals process. It is quite likely that the remaining air-craft will be reduced to spares,” the Minister said. “There has already been interest in this prospect, which is more in line with the realities of today’s marketplace. ” Retired in December 2001, the RNZAF’s Skyhawks have been in storage at RNZAF Woodbourne. A 2005 NZ$150 million deal to sell them to-gether with 17 MB-339 Macchi jet trainers to US based Tactical Air Services failed to materialise.

In other New Zealand news, the two last RNZAF DH. 104 Doves are up for disposal. Thir-ty DH. 104s, known as Devons, were delivered to the RNZAF between 1948 and 1954 for use as navigational trainers. Seven were lost in accidents and the rest were taken out of service in 1980.

Now, all these years later, the last two complete and unal-located Devons – which have been stored at Woodbourne in Marlborough – are to be sold. Tenders for their disposal were to close on May 4.

Previous sales of surplus Devons saw several come to Australia and take up civil registrations.

New T-6 In The Air A new North American T-6 is in the air, with the first post restoration flight of Steve Death’s VH-YVI on March 15 from Albury.

Steve, who was the check pi-lot, reported no problems with the machine.

An AT-6G with se-rial 51-15202, VH-YVI was registered on February 2 2001. It sports a yellow colour scheme with the markings TA-202 along the fuselage. Steve obtained the aircraft as an unflown project from Hamish Brunton of Narromine in 2008, and has been slowly getting it up to airworthy condition since.

While most work was done at Albury, the aircraft was at one stage moved to Melbourne where warbird wiring special-ist Dick Hourigan rewired the aircraft in his workshop.

Steve’s T-6 was with the Italian air force from 1951 until 1974. It then went to the UK before coming to Australia in the 1990s. It got its first public outing at the AAAA fly-in at Echuca in April, as part of the four ship aerobatic Southern Knights team.

Restored Cadet Flies From Latrobe Valley in Vic-toria comes news that Howard Jones has flown his restored Avro 643 Cadet, VH-AFX. The aircraft, painted in a yellow civil colour scheme, took to the air late on Tuesday March 29, with Howard reporting that it was a trouble free flight.

Previously A6-12 with the RAAF, Howard’s Cadet has had a long and interest-ing history. Built by A V Roe in 1935, it served with the RAAF until 1945 when it became VH-AFX. Initially it was owned by a Mr J M Bindt of Yarram, Victoria, just over the hill, literally, from where it is now based. By 1948 it was under the ownership of Hardy Bros Spraying Co. of Pittsworth, Queensland. Along with sister Cadet VH-AFY, it had an engine change from the Armstrong Siddeley Genet radial to a Jacobs R-755 radial, with both machines used as spray aircraft.

Ownership changed sev-eral times over the years, with Howard obtaining it in 2007. It was ferried from Luskintyre, NSW, to Latrobe Valley by noted antique flyer, Dick Nell. There it was restored to im-maculate condition.

Unlike the other Cadets fly-ing in Australia, Howard opted for the yellow colour scheme so that it was close to the scheme it carried when it was a spray aircraft. Howard also went to the extent of having the logo ‘Hardy Bros’ on a flying ribbon painted on the fuselage.

Aaaa Echuca Fly-in Echuca, Victoria, was the venue of the 35th annual fly-in held by the Antique Aeroplane Association of Australia, and was probably the biggest such event for the AAAA to date.

Over the two days of the weekend of April 2-3 members and visitors were treated to a large number of antiques and classics, with a flying show on the Sunday which featured a range of the aircraft.

For warbirds enthusiasts there were two Curtiss P-40 Kittyhawks in the form of Judy Pay’s VH-HWK and Alan Arthur’s VH-ZOC. Jim Wickem had his Yak-9U there, as was the Temora Aviation Museum (TAM) Spitfire VH-HET/A58-602. To top off the warbirds Mustang VH-JUC/‘KH677’ was present along with TAM Lockheed Hudson VH-KOY/A16-211.

Vintage Cessna lovers had a treat with no fewer than six C190/195 series aircraft present, while C37 VH-UZU and C165 VH-ZTG were also on display.

For de Havilland enthusiasts there were over a dozen a Tiger Moth to see, while DH. 84 VH-UXG Dragon shared airspace with Roy Fox’s DH. 89 Rapide VH-UTV, recently painted up in RAAF markings as A33-1.

Other interesting types were Beech 17 VH-FNS, Globe Swift VH-BYB, L-39 VH-IOT, four T-6 Harvards of the Southern Knights aerobatic team, five Winjeels and Wir-raways, five CT-4 Airtrainers, and over a dozen Yak-52s.

British aircraft were present in the form of around a dozen Austers of various marks.

Jim Williams’ Cessna O-1 Bird Dog on floats, VH-XVN, literally stood out from the crowd. Interesting other aircraft included Lockheed L-12 VH-HID, some half dozen Piper PA-20 Pacers, several Stinson 108s, as well as Stinson Reliant VH-UXL.

Awards presented at the Saturday night dinner saw Kenny and Lisa Love’s J3 Cub, NC92163, awarded Best Antique, Best Warbird went to Matt Denning with his CT-4, VH-CTQ, and Best Classic was taken out by Dion Pastars’ C195, VH-KES.

Raaf Pilgrimage Flight

April 5, 6 and 7 saw a large and varied group of former RAAF aircraft undertake an interesting pilgrimage. Organ-ised in conjunction with the Antique Aeroplane Association, the event celebrated the 90th anniversary of the founding of the RAAF. Sixty-five selected aircraft flew from Temora to Tocumwal and Ballarat (all former RAAF bases), before finishing at Point Cook.

Aircraft that were in the flight included the RAAF Mu-seum Mustang, a TAM Spitfire plus Hudson VH-KOY, six Tiger Moths, five CT-4s, the Navy Historic Flight UH-1 Huey helicopter, ex TAA DC-3 VH-AES, and DH. 89 Rapide VH-UTV, which had been painted specially to be part of the pilgrimage flight as A33-1.

While the pilgrimage flight was making its way south the HARS Catalina,VH-PBZ was flown direct to Point Cook to be part of the anniversary cel-ebrations. A dinner at the close of the flight at Point Cook was attended by all living past Chiefs of Air Force as well as the current Chief, AIRMSHL Mark Binskin.

Register News

Chance Vought Corsair F4U-1D VH-NQW was added to the register on March 30. The machine, c/n 82640, is listed to Cairns Airport Hangars Pty Ltd, and is a long term rebuild project with the Mareeba based North Queens-land Warbirds.

Curtiss P-40E VH-AVY, serial 41-35974, changed own-ership to Reevers Pastoral P/L of Mylor, South Australia.

In Brief

• The Albury Airport based DC-2 may go to a Sydney owner and be rebuilt at the Bankstown based Australian Aviation Museum.

• Watts Bridge is the normal home base of the Queensland Vintage Aeroplane Group (QVAG), but the 2011 Festival of Flight is to be held by the QAAG at Caboolture over Au-gust 27-28. n Contact Dave by email at flyer02@optusnet. com. au