August 24th, 1997 - Hamilton
The Sunday Fly-In was staged to celebrate the return of the Club's Auster J-1 Autocrat ZK-AUX from a lengthy engine overhaul at a North Shore facility. The day turned out to be really beautiful - an absolutely clear winter's day. Unfortunately the days leading up to the fly in had been just the opposite - absolutely miserable. So the turn out was not what it might have been. As it was, 15 aircraft made an appearance - although the arrival times were somewhat staggered.
The formal part of the day started with a tour around the aircraft, with various folks giving the technical details and histories of some of the aircraft. It was interesting to see aircraft arrive, and then see the pilot promptly giving a presentation. The biggest tour turned out to be the AN-12 used by CargoAir NZ who allowed people to walk through the huge aircraft.
The day definitely wasn't static - planes aren't designed to just sit there. Best of all, the light aircraft were operating off the grass parallel to the main runway - which meant they were nice and close to my camera!
Louise and I went off into town to do a few things - but about 2.00pm we decided to head back and see if anything else interesting had turned up. We arrived at the same time as Stan & Gillie Smith's immaculate DH-84 Dragon flew in from North Shore. I wasn't able to attend the roll-out in April of this aircraft from its 15 year restoration - so I was really pleased to get a close look at it (more to come on this one!).
So all in all, it was a pretty cool day - I'm looking forward to the next one. I would also like to add my thanks to Bryan Bell-Syer for some of the information on the Fly-in
© 1997 Phillip Treweek, all rights reserved