Odds and sods...

Just a couple of pictures that didn't fit easily in other posts.

First one is a Wellington Aero Club Piper Tomahawk [ZK-JFE] short final for Wellington rwy 16. The second is a Eurocopter EC120B on Wellington's western apron.

Of course, you know what they say about helicopters [aka "angry palmtrees" - think about it]: "If it aint broke, it soon will be" :-) Of course, your average 'copter pilot might disagree with that...

Another good place for pictures!

I found yet another good place to take pictures of the airport and aircraft today. This should have been obvious to me, but such is life. It's on the "beach" on approach to runway 16. Here's a couple of pictures [including one of the beach at Evans Bay. Look carefully and you can see an old tractor tire!]

Night shot

Thought that I would try my hand at some night shots of the airport. What follows is the only reasonable photo. The other 10 or so were complete rubbish. Such is life :-)

This was taken with fully automatic settings, including focus and a 1/2 second exposure. All things considered, I think that it is reasonable, although I might invest in a tripod some time [the other photos made me look drunk!]...

Centre-left are the airport domestic/international terminals [eastern apron], the road is state highway 1, centre is the western apron and [obviously] one on final approach for runway 34.

Freedom Air

This is a picture of a Freedom Air [essentially Air New Zealand] A320 taking off from Wellington. Nice paint job!

New camera, not a better photographer!

I purchased a new digital camera yesterday and have been testing it out. This one of an Olympus SP-500UZ. It's main claims to fame are 6 megapixels and 10 x optical zoom. Here's a few sample photos I've taken. Most of these were taken from my home (big optical zoom really helps).

Just keep in mind that if you click on the images you get a bigger sample. These bigger samples are still only 29% of the original size!!! Anyway, here they are, in order:

Qantas B737 after landing
Air New Zealand B737 lifting off, then after take off
Air Nelson ATR72 during gear retraction
Wellington Control Tower (note top left you can just make out the SSR head)

A couple more WOW pictures!

Gavin has very kindly sent me more of his pictures from Warbirds Over Wanaka. The first is the Corsair and the second is the Thunder Mustang. Thanks for the pictures!

Warbirds Over Wanaka!

WHAT?????!!!! You don't know what Warbirds Over Wanaka [WOW] is? You've got to be KIDDING!

WOW is the southern hemisphere's preeminent airshows [and one of the BEST in the world!]! It happens every 2 years at Easter time over 3 days. It's FANTASTIC! Unfortunately, I could not make it this year. Fortunately a few people I know did, and I've been given some of the photos! Here's a selection of some of the photos. Obviously some of them are a little distant, but we'll cope with that!

Note: All photos (c) 2006 Gavin Weir [and thanks Gavin for sending them to me!]

Top to bottom, the pictures are:

P51 Mustang [Gavin calls this "contradiction" - I wonder why?!]
Corsair
Royal New Zealand Air Force [RNZAF] Huey
Hurricane
Royal Australian Air Force [RAAF] F-111 fighter bomber
RNZAF C130H Hercules
RNZAF B757

New Zealand Aircraft Manufacturers

I had a quick peek around earlier tonight, and found the websites for 3 different but very interesting New Zealand aircraft manufacturers. Each of these manufacturers build complete aircraft - they are not just making parts for others [although there's a bit of that happening as well].

Interesting thing is that all three of these are located very close to each other. PAC and Alpha are based at Hamilton International Airport, and Microaviation is at Te Kowhai, a privately owned airfield just a few minutes flight from Hamilton.

Enjoy!

Pacific Aerospace
Alpha Aviation
Microaviation

There's bound to be more that I don't [yet] know about, so let me know and I'll add them in.

Lifeflight and Qantas

Here's another 3 pictures. The first is another shot of the Lifeflight Metroliner on Wellington's Western Apron. The second is a cool mural on the wall of the Lifeflight hanger. Both of these photos were taken from the "viewing area" nearby.

The last is a reasonable picture of a Qantas B737 landing on runway 34 at Wellington.

Enjoy!

Ugly Aeroplanes!

Here's a link I was sent by a good mate, Gavin. It has a range of aviation pictures (a couple of samples are below). In particular, look through the "Things with Wings" section of the site...

http://www.airbornegrafix.com/HistoricAircraft/historicaircraft.htm

Here's a couple of sample pictures. Regrettably, these are some of the better looking aircraft!

Wellington Airport

Here's something mildly interesting [if you don't live in Wellington, that is]. The control tower for Wellington International Airport is located OFF the airfield...

The airport company is also building a RESA [Runway End Safety Area] at the southern end of the runway [approaching threshold of runway 34]. RESA's are designed to allow for undershoots and overruns, but they do not extend the operational length of the runway itself. In other words, they only get used during a stuff up or other incident. In this photo, you can see that they are building a tunnel for all the road traffic.

Lastly, here's a picture from the Western Apron looking along taxiway W2. The building mid-left of the photo is the airport Fire/Rescue base.

More pictures and videos!

Check out www.micom.net/oops/. This contains lots of photos and videos, many of them aviation related.

This is now [almost] an AVIATION ONLY Blog!

Kia Ora!

As this Blog is getting fairly popular with Aviation nuts [like myself], this Blog is now being dedicated to Aviation related stuff only. Yippeeeeee! For all non-aviation related content, please refer to www.irrelevantstuff.blogspot.com which contains everything else!

Thanks for continuing to support this Blog!

If you'd like to see some particular content here, please drop a comment against any post! If you have any links to good sites to aviation related pictures, movies, news etc, please let me know!

Cheers,

Rodney

Wellington Aero Club Aircraft

Here are the pictures of some of the lighter aircraft at the open day. Most of these are available for hire by Wellington Aero Club [http://www.flywellington.co.nz/] members, although the Saratoga is only used for Capital Air [http://www.capitalair.co.nz/] flights and I think perhaps the Beech 58 will be.

I forgot [!] to get any pictures of the Club's PA28 Warrior and Archer aircraft, and the Piper Arrow PA28-201 was away for the day.

Top to bottom they are:

2 x PA38-112 Tomahawks - the Club's primary trainers
Cessna C172
Mooney M20C
Piper Saratoga
Beech 58

Various other pictures

Here's a few odds and sods that I took during the day. Nothing to spectacular but still interesting.

Top to bottom the pictures are:

Air New Zealand B737, taken from the Club's bar [best views of the airport on the airport!]

Combo shot of RNZAF B200, Lifeflight Metroliner SA227 and Vincent Aviation Beech 1900D [also from the Club's bar]

WAC's Mooney M20C and a Beech 58 [also from the bar... no I wasn't drinking!]

Air West Coast PA31-350

Beechcraft Duchess BE76 on it's way out

Airport Rescue

The Wellington International Airport Rescue people had a few vehicles at the Open Day also. Pictured are a fire truck and a rescue boat.

The fire truck put on a good display of its ability to throw a lot of water a long way in a short amount of time [sorry, no pictures of that].

Here they are:

Fire truck
Truck with boat
Vehicle line up

The Lifeflight display

The lovely people at Lifeflight [www.lifeflight.co.nz] provided a medical equipped Metroliner SA227 for the day. Lifeflight are the operator of the Life Flight NZ Air Ambulance Service and the Wellington-based Westpac Rescue Helicopter.

Metroliner's [in general] has been have been variously described as "flying pencils" or a "rat with wings". Either way, I doubt you'd mind if you were in pain :-)

Anyway, here's the pictures. Unfortunately we could not get in [fair enough with all the gear in it] but I get the best inside shot I could.

Helipro's display

Here's a couple of shots of the Helipro [www.helipro.co.nz] Jetranger II. This chopper was doing scenic flights throughout the day, and looked very popular.

The first two are arriving to set down dome passengers, and the last picture is departing with another load of keen and eager passengers.

Vincent Aviation's display

Vincent aviation [www.vincentaviation.co.nz] had a number of aircraft along as well. Here's a small sample of their fleet.

In order they are:

Beech 1900D
Reim/Cessna F406 - outside
-inside
- rear