I have always been fascinated by flying.
When I was a kid growing up in a small rural town, every evening after work the local topdressing pilot would ‘buzz’ his house just along the street. His wife was quite used to this – she merely jumped in the car and went to pick him up from the airfield. But I was excited by his Pawnee doing a tight circle around his house, then skimming low over our house as he headed to the airfield.
My brother and I liked to assemble plastic scale aircraft kitsets. I’ll always remember the smell of the ‘Octopus’ glue that we used to make them. We hung the models from the bedroom ceiling, often in mock aerial battle scenes. According to Mum, they gathered dust and needed cleaning – their delicate propellers never survived her vigorous vacuuming!
Once, as kids, we fitted wings, tail and body to our play cart. Then we pushed it around the local streets (actually the wings were just a couple of wooden planks, and the body was made from thick cardboard). Not sure if we remembered to fit a propeller!
My brother and I got into aeromodelling and built lots of flying model aircraft from balsa and tissue (more smells emanating from the bedroom – this time it was the tissue ‘dope’). Our control-line planes tended to crash spectacularly, burying their engines and propellers into the earth. And we got frustrated with our powered free-flight planes, which either had ‘hard-to-start’ diesel engines or they crashed into fences and trees.
Model gliders were our favourites – graceful and quiet. Slow-flying too, so they survived crashes. Sometimes they soared so well, that we couldn’t keep up with them on our bicycles. Then Mum used to have to drive us around the country roads, so we could scour the paddocks and Ashley riverbed searching for the missing plane. Fortunately, we had our name and phone number on the gliders, so a friendly farmer would usually find it for us.
We loved to cycle out to the Rangiora airfield, and hang around the Pawnee crop-dusters and Cherokee trainers.
I remember going to an airshow there, where Tiger Moths enthralled us with their ‘falling leaf’ displays, and topdressing planes dropped fertiliser in low-level passes down the runway. There was even a demonstration by a home-built hovercraft.
At the 1969 Scout Jamboree in Kaiapoi, I jumped at the chance to do a 2-day aviation module. The tour of the Air New Zealand workshops at Christchurch International Airport was interesting, but my highlight was a ½ hour introductory flight in a Cherokee 140.
Fast forward 50 years, and I decided to get back into aviation. By now, microlight flying was popular, so I began having lessons in these economical aircraft.
I love making and fixing things, so it wasn’t surprising that I bought my first full-size plane not long afterwards. This 1989 Shadow B-D microlight aircraft had been crashed, so it was basically a ‘box of bits’. It was a delight and a challenge to re-build it into a functioning plane, capable of transporting me 500km north to a national fly-in.
In 2013, we made a huge move to import a brand-new Skyleader ‘GP One’ light sport aircraft from Czechia. Our plan was to sell these carbon-fibre aircraft to individuals and aero clubs around NZ. The GP One was lovely to fly, and I enjoyed flying it to many places in the South Island.
Despite getting rave reviews from pilots, we got no sales over 2 years. We couldn’t afford to keep it, so we sold it to a Kiwi guy living in Australia.
And last year I purchased another project – this time, a 1997 Barber ‘Snark HA-3B’ that I’d long admired.
It will take a lot of checking, maintenance and upgrades before it is flying again.
You’re welcome to follow my aviation story, as I add blog posts about restoring, repairing and modifying microlight aircraft, plus my various flying experiences in NZ and overseas.
Cheers, Bruce Conway