PERHAPS IT WAS JUST AS WELL ......

I've always liked flying. When I was really young my parents used to pack my brother and me off during school holidays to stay with various relatives who had farms in Waikato, Marlborough and Canterbury. Invariably we would fly - in the early days on Douglas-DC3's and later on Fokker F27 'Friendships' and Vickers Viscounts.

NAC fleet 1965

It was great fun and I got a taste of flying from this.

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When I was at secondary school I joined the Air Training Corps (not as part of school as St Patrick's had an army corps not airforce). The Air Training Corps (ATC) paraded every Tuesday night at the Shelly Bay Airforce base in Wellington.

At the 3 hour 'parade' we would learn parade drill, aviation theory, First Aid, navigation and some other general stuff. We all wore airforce uniforms which were great. Blue serge jackets and trousers, pale blue shirts with an airforce tie and a blue airforce fatigue cap. We had various airforce badges as well. Very smart.

We had away trips in the school holidays to Ohakea airforce base where we lived in barracks, ate in the mess hall and were able to clamber in and over De Havilland Vampire bombers and got flights in airforce planes.

De Havelland Vampire

Our firearms training was conducted at Trentham army barracks where they had an outdoor shooting range. We fired old-style Lee Enfield .303 rifles. These were clunky and had brass shoulder 'pads' on the stocks so that after 20 rounds your shoulder was bruised and hurt like hell.

I did this for a couple of years until college sports and other activities made it difficult to continue but I really enjoyed the experience.

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In the late 1970s I saved up some money and took flying lessons.

I've still got the logbook.

I did this at Wellington airport flying Piper Arrows.

This was great fun, for me (the instructor thought otherwise once when I was flying upside down in cloud) but I was unable to progress to a pilot's licence as in those days the MOT demanded a high standard of eyesight and only later allowed pilots to wear spectacles as long as a spare pair was carried. I gave it up and did some parachuting instead before I left Wellington to live in Auckland.

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I've maintained an interest in flying though and The Old Girl and I have been to several airshows around the country - Warbirds Over Wanaka being the best of them. The first airshow I saw was in 1959 at the opening of Rongotai airport. A family friend lived in a suburb overlooking the airport and we spent the afternoon on their deck getting a spectacular view of the show including the Vulcan bomber crash.

The unveiling of Wellington's new multimillion-dollar airport in 1959 was almost marred by a fatal air tragedy when a Vulcan bomber clipped the southern end of the airfield.
Vulcan navigator 88-year-old retired Wing Commander Bryn Lewis recalled the incident in 2013 when he told The Dominion Post he thought he and scores of onlookers would die when the bomber nearly bombed.
"I thought we were going to die ... and people on the ground were going to die," Lewis said.

As the huge British Royal Air Force plane spewed fuel, Captain Tony Smailes avoided ploughing into crowds by going full throttle and pulling the plane and its five crew back into the air. They managed a crash-landing at Ohakea.

"Like a mighty bird alighting, the Vulcan bomber appears to perch on the edge of the Wellington Airport embankment," The Evening Post reported at the time.
It lost its left rear wheel as its undercarriage and left wingtip hit the ground.

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Vulcan bomber at Wellington

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A job I had with a Waiheke wine company meant that I was taking weekly and sometimes more often, flights to Waiheke in the owners helicopter. I like flying in helicopters and the flights over to Waiheke across the Hauraki Gulf were spectacular. I acknowledge that helicopters can be dangerous though and feel today that I've 'been there, done that'.
Here's an old post I wrote about a helicopter flight I had in the 1970s:

LUCKY *10

We have a friend who has a plane - a vintage Piper two seater that he keeps at Ardmore. He flies the scenic-trip DC3 around Auckland as well. He's flying mad. I remember in 2009 in Auckland when he and I flew from Ardmore to Whenuapai and back for the Whenuapai airshow 'Wings Over New Zealand'. This was a great day with The Red Checkers aerobatics team, NZ, US and other airforce planes plus the Harvards and some WW2 Warbirds planes. Magic. On the flight back to Ardmore in South Auckland we were at one stage surrounded by a squadron of Harvards and, thrill of thrills, close up to the P51D Mustang whose pilot gave me a wave as he zoomed past.

P51D Mustang

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So why this post? On the weekend a Harvard was circling the bay above our house doing lazy turns for a while until it took off to the south. I'm not sure what that was about whether he was taking photographs or practising. I checked on-line and saw that there is an airshow at Easter at Omaka in Marlborough. I'd like to be there.

Harvard

And why the title of this post -  'PERHAPS IT WAS JUST AS WELL ....'?

Our friend who owns the Piper and the winery owner who owned the helicopter are both excellent pilots and are also sticklers for safety. As a consequence the pre-flight and post-flight checks of their aircraft are incredibly thorough. I unfortunately as can be confirmed by The Old Girl am a bit slap-dash - 'Rip Shit and Bust' according to her. If I had qualified as a pilot and was flying any sort of aircraft the chances are that I would be a bit cavalier in my approach to safety and pre-flight checking ....