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

As promised, the B737 pictures...

As promised, here are the pictures of the Air New Zealand [www.airnewzealand.co.nz] B737 that came to Wellington Aero Club's Open Day recently... If the last picture looks a bit odd, it's actually where the right-main undercarriage retracts into...

In case you're wondering, yes many of us did get to sit in the comfy seats up the front! Awesome! Needless to say, it was one of the highlights of the event, and there where long lines of people the entire time it was there.

In order, the pictures are:

Being pushed into position,
Outside front,
Cockpit,
From rear looking up the isle,
Outside, on the rear exit stairs looking forward,
The Tail,
Undercarriage retraction hub

[remember to click on the image for a larger view]

A few more teaser pics...

OK, I can't resist it!

Here's a few more pictures from the open day... you'll have to wait for the rest though! As you can see from this sampler, there was wide support for this event from many of the operators either based at, or using Wellington International Airport.

Top to bottom are:

Air New Zealand B737
Lifeflight Metroliner SA227
Capital Air Piper Saratoga
Wellington Aero Club Mooney M20C
Wellington Airport Fire Engine
Vincent Aviation Beech B1900D
Helipro Jetranger II

Many more B737 pictures from the open day coming soon!

Enjoy!

AWESOME!!!

Wellington Aero Club's biennial Open Day was held today [Sunday 2 April] and it was absolutely awesome! Despite around 10 aircraft [from Tiger Moth to Nanchang, Harvards and others] missing the day due to the weather outside of Wellington, it was still a fantastic day.

All of the Club's fleet [except the Piper Arrow III] were there, along with a Beech Kingair and CT4/E from the RNZAF, several aircraft from Vincent Aviation, a Squirrel from Helipro, Childflight's Metroliner. Wellington Airport's Airport Rescue teams were there. The star of the show had to be the Air New Zealand B737 that was towed in for an hour or so between sectors! Stunning!

Needless to say, I have a lot of pictures. These will be put up in batches over the next few days as I reduce them for the web, starting in this post with the Air Force's Kingair [top 5 pictures] and CT4/E [final 3 pictures].

If anyone wants the hires, just leave me a comment or send an email [if you have it]. Always happy to share.

Calling all Brainiacs!

Here's a brain test for you.

Take a look at the picture below [the picture is not to scale].

What you are looking at is a picture of 2 black poles sitting in the green ground. The black poles stick out of the ground 4 meters.

There is a brown rope strung between the poles, and it is 2 meters long.

The brown rope hangs down 1 meter.

Question: What is the distance between the poles?

Answers can be left in the comments. First one to get it right gets the grand reward of the admiration of their peers. Sort of! Anyway, here is the picture:

Did you know?

"There are only 10 types of people who understand binary...
Those who do, and those who don't."

Here's another picture. This time of a CT4B at Motueka in early 2005. Nice!

More useless news...

OK, got everything sorted out... now you can access this site via the following three domains:

www.flying.geek.nz / flying.geek.nz
www.nzl.geek.nz / nzl.geek.nz
www.dnc.geek.nz / dnc.geek.nz

If you're planning on bookmarking any of these, I'd suggest you use the flying.geek.nz domain. I'm not sure how long I will keep the others pointing here.

BTW - the meaning of "dnc"? "Does Not Compute" :-)

Can we do it? Yes ICANN!

OK, it's a corny title...

I managed to spend a couple of morning at the recent ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) conference in Wellington this past week. Nothing too exciting as I was manning a display rather than attending presentations and so forth...

One very good point however was that Domainz [www.domainz.net.nz] were giving away free ".geek.nz" urls - free for a year anyway.

Needless to say, I picked up a couple. Now when you enter www.dnc.geek.nz or www.nzl.geek.nz [nz.geek.nz was taken...] you will automatically come to this site. Nice! I'll see over the next year whether I want to keep the domains or give them up.

I've got a plans for some cool things to do with them, but we will see what eventuates. Any suggestions are most welcome!

Actually, I'm also looking for a cheap host for the web sites - leave a comment if you have any ideas.

Anyway, a post would not be decent without a picture. This one is of New Zealand's AWESOME Thunder Mustang. Check out the official web site at www.kiwithunder.com. Well worth a look!

More aviation videos :-)

Here's another link to an aviation site with loads of videos.

http://www.alexisparkinn.com/aviation_videos.htm

Cheers!

Crazy Aviation

Check out this Crazy Aviation link [also on the right of this page] - loads of awesome pictures and many Mb's of movies! The best content are the movies, such as the boy-racer B747's and the guy who DELIBERATELY set his parachute alight [yep, flames]!