Bill black

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I Did It My Way

BILL BLACK

I Did It My Way

BILL BLACK

MBE

Compiled

by MERV HALLIDAY 1

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COVER PHOTOGRAPHY Front cover Barry Harcourt Back cover Sonya Crook Photography

Published by Bill & Shirley Black, Te Anau Contact: Merv Halliday, 1 Tom Plato Drive, Te Anau Email: merv@teanau.co.nz Copyright 2013 Š Merv Halliday ISBN: 978-0-473-24649-5 Second impression 2013 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Text & images: Merv Halliday Layout & production: Craigs Design & Print Ltd PO Box 99, Invercargill 9840, New Zealand www.craigprint.co.nz 171750

CONTENTS

Foreword

by Sir Tim Wallis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Acknowledgements by Merv Halliday. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Introduction

by Marlene Black . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Chapters:

In the Beginning. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 2 Learning to Fly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 3 Commercial Pilot’s Licence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 4 Helicopters & Venison Recovery. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 5 Pilots, Pubs, Pests & Pistols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 6 Changing Times . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 7 Fire, Floods & Farming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 8 Races & Rescues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 9 This is Your Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 10 Gyrocopters: I Fly when I want. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 1

Appendices: 1

Brief Statistics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209

2

Search and Rescues I was involved in – Fixed Wing

3

Search and Rescues I was involved in – Helicopters. . . . . . . . . . . . . 210

4

Aircraft Recovered . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219

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5 Fires . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221 6

Aircraft Flown as Pilot in Command. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224

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2 Learning to Fly On 6 March 1960 Bill commenced flight training at the McNab Airfield with Ian Ritchie of the Gore Aero Club. He had the blessing of his mother here, because she had grown up with Ian and they had both gone to primary school together at Lumsden in the 1930s. They both knew one another well. She can remember Ian had a fascination with a sycamore tree in the school grounds. He used to get a sycamore samara which contained the seed of which he would cut out and join the two wings back together again with a pin and then insert the pin into a stalk of cocksfoot and, hey presto, he had an ‘aeroplane’. “What a smart kid,” she said. She could then see the similarity between sycamores and clothes pegs as she told her story.

The airstrip at McNab was just a farmer’s paddock owned by Bill Cunningham. Bill also owned a Tiger Moth ZK-BRC which was leased to the Gore Flight of the Southland Aero Club.

(This aircraft is still flying today from the Croydon Aircraft Museum at Mandeville.) Each Sunday morning, rain hail or shine, Bill would make the 90 mile return journey on his BSA 350cc motorbike. Often he would arrive before Ian Ritchie. Even the others on the field said he had the farthest to come and he was always there first. Many times the weather wasn’t suitable for flying and Bill would return to Waiwera South. Bill had dreamed of all this routine many times. After completing all the pre-flight checks he would climb in the rear seat and strap himself in with a Sutton harness which consisted of four independent straps that met at the chest and were held in place with a metal pin which was itself held in place by a spring fastener.

Because of the open cockpit, communication with the instructor who sat in front was by way of a flexible rubber speaking-tube system connected between the separate cockpits and plumbed into your helmet. The instructor had to shout into the funnel-type mouthpiece and then look up into the rear view mirror in an attempt to ascertain whether Bill had heard him or not. This system was referred to as ‘gosports’. Sometimes you could hear and sometimes you could not hear that well.

Bill well remembers 29 May 1960...

It was a frosty morning and I had a very cold trip on the bike to the field, from Waiwera South. It was so cold when I arrived somebody caught my bike because I couldn’t get my feet off the pegs onto the ground. However, we duly went flying and I was still cold. We never had leather jackets, you just had your monkey suit. After a circuit, Ian Ritchie got out. I wondered what the hell he was doing. He removed 20

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Tiger Moth BRC which I did my training in

his joystick and said, “She’s all yours, lad – God bless.” This took me completely by surprise. I remember I got airborne very quickly without Ian being there and with trying to maintain 60mph and turning at 500ft, it wasn’t till I got to 1,000ft I thought, ‘Shit, there is nobody to talk to me.’ He was usually barking at me through the gosports the whole time, “Watch your speed, altitude, and trim,” all this that normally seemed insignificant, however when I relaxed enough and looked down, I saw him walking across the airfield. As soon as I saw him, I heard him say, “Watch your speed, altitude.” I’ll never forget that feeling. But anyway, by now I was on short finals and I was a bit high and a bit fast; we just floated and floated. I suppose it was because Ian wasn’t there, I thought, ‘Shit, we’re not going to be able to stop,’ because this thing has no brakes, so I gave it full power and away I went and came round with a longer approach and made a beautiful soft landing. Ian was there to congratulate me and others were quick to remind me it was now my turn to shout for everybody.

That was a day I will never, ever, ever forget. After having done 7½ hours dual, I had now flown an aircraft all on my own. What an experience...

Over the next few months Bill continued to ride his motorbike to McNab and attained the 40 hours flying required before sitting his Private Pilot’s Licence. Flying was costing him £3 an hour dual and £2/12/6 solo. He had been given an old Air Force manual. It was called ‘Flight Without Formulae’ by A. C. Kermode and told to read it. In those days you sat the written

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road and carried on home.

The next day I remember seeing the cop, Don Wisely, and he said to me, “Blackie, the next time I flag you down with a torch, you stop.” I said, “Yes, Don,” and Don let it lie. At that time you used to get a lot of warnings and that was good.

I hadn’t been in Te Anau long when Ritchie realised he needed a hangar to house the 180, Dominie and his Tiger in. It was a big high hangar and Ritchie was giving me a hand to put one or two purlins on the roof; and of course this is about My first day in Cessna 180 BQJ 30-odd feet, in the air and they were heavy red pine, 8x2s, I had to mark and cut them with a handsaw, drill holes in them and put them up onto the roof; but anyway he gave me a hand one day to put a bit on as I used to do about a quarter of them in the day between flying jobs. Get the idea? Anyway, it was late in the afternoon on this particular day one didn’t quite fit and he got up to give me a hand. The purlins are about 2ft apart, roughly, and I was perched in this precarious situation and really give them a heave, to try and get the bolt in the bloody hole. Ritchie was right alongside me and as I strained, I farted. Well, Ritchie was disgusted and he sacked me. “That’s the finish, Black,” he said, “You are fired.” I could tell he meant it so I got down and went into the hut and thought about what had happened and what he said. I worried all night about the situation I was now in, do you understand? I would have to catch the NZR bus the next morning and it was all over. However he arrived at work early next morning and with a chuckle, he re-instated me. He was only having me on.

On 22 August 1964 the district of Waiwera South had decided they would put on a 21st birthday party for me. It was customary for the district to use any excuse for a party and now it was my turn. The hall was all decorated out and the whole bloody district turned out, that was a great night.

Ritchie had given me the Cessna 180 to fly back to Waiwera South; I took a mate with me, Geoff Taylor. The following day, when I got airborne, I called up the Invercargill tower for a flight plan and the tower told me there was an emergency at Milford Sound and I was to go straight there. This was to be my first Medivac. A fellow, Marty Birmingham, had appendicitis, and an avalanche had closed the road.

They had tried to get an aircraft in from Queenstown but it had to turn back and one 42

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Ritchie Air Services 1964

tried from Invercargill – can’t understand how the one from Invercargill didn’t get there; once you’re at sea you don’t have to go high; just go right up the bloody coast.

A long way for me to go that way though. But anyway we went up the Eglinton and crossed The Divide, round Lake McKerrow and Martins Bay and along the coast till we got to Milford. They loaded Marty aboard, I’m not sure now whether there was a nurse with him or not – I can’t remember now, but he was pretty sick. We couldn’t make it back out again so I had to go back to Milford which was tragic really. I was pissed off; it was pissing rain and everything. We had to off-load him again. I couldn’t do the job, but it was no use us all being up the hillside so I made the decision to turn round and go back. The nurse based at Milford came and said, “Have you got any morphine?” We did have morphine in the first-aid kit; that kept him going the night.

At first light in the morning we took off in the Cessna and shot through. I think we were in Invercargill at just on daylight.

The next of many medivacs was 15 October 1964 when Alan Wright crashed his Auster ZK-AXP in at the Kaipo. I brought Alan out but it wasn’t until some years later that I actually lifted his aircraft out.

There were always a few rogues about but one I remember was the fellow who booked his whole South Island itinerary through the Auckland Government Tourist Bureau (GTB). He did that on a Friday evening and the banks, of course, close at 5pm and don’t open till Monday morning. So anyway this guy went to the GTB and they booked his flight Dominie ALB in new hangar

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with supplies and he had the job of chucking the bundles out the small luggage door which I had taken off. I thought if he threw them out he may get an idea as to where they went. As we could only do one at a time on the plateau of the glacier there, it meant a few drops. He became very ill so when we got back I invited him round to our home in Mokonui Street so as he could clean himself up. He was a real nice guy.

I often wondered how they got on going to the toilet when he climbed Mt Everest, so I asked him. He said, “We might go for a week without having a crap because when you have a crap that’s only the waste that the body doesn’t need so if you only eat only high protein stuff, nuts, raisins and so on; it’s all burnt up.” That was quite interesting. Since then he’s been down quite a bit – the Kaipo Wall and the Milford Track and I’ve taken him and his wife, Louise, and their kids, Peter, Sarah and Belinda, on various flights.

Another chappie was Charles Richter, the man who invented the Richter scale.

He was an American and he had his own 180, he was interesting to talk to. He said how he bought up a whole lot of instruments from the ex-war surpluses from the American army and turned these instruments into different things and made a fortune.

He had his wife and two kids and Daisy the maid, she was a Negress. I remember the old airstrip was down in the middle of town in Te Anau and I remember the young kiddies saying, “Man, that aeroplane sure looks weird.” He, of course, was looking at the Dominie.

Lawson Burrows, Ian Ritchie, Wilson Campbell and Harold ‘Snow’ Burrows.

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4 Helicopters & Venison Recovery Introduction to Helicopters One day in early 1966 Ray Wilson (used to top-dress out of Balclutha) who was the first trained helicopter pilot in New Zealand and now living in Dunedin and employed by Helicopters NZ Ltd, arrived in Te Anau in a Bell 47G. This was the first helicopter I had seen. He was taking material up the Milford track for the huts and he came back one day and picked up Ian Ritchie and me and took us for a ride and put us in the bluegum trees in front of the hotel. Ian Ritchie was hugging me so tightly I thought he’d bust my shoulder. We didn’t think it should fly. I had been used to having to move forward to stay in the air but this thing was just like a bird, it just hung there and it was stationary. Unbelievable. Almost scary.

Later he gave me a wee lesson and he let me feel the controls and I remember thinking, ‘What a view!’ I had the cyclic (joystick) between my legs and the collective lever with the throttle in my left hand and my feet on the rudder pedals or the antitorque pedals which control the tail rudder which controls the heading. So you had five things. The minimum engine revs in the air were 2900 and the maximum was 32 so you only had 300 revs to play with. As I lifted the lever it created lift. He explained how the rudder pedals worked ... if you turn to the right it was a free turn, if you turned the other way you’d have more tail rotor to hold you. Someone at the time said to fly a helicopter, you are really controlling a heap of uncontrollable forces. This was quite true really. It’s like patting your head with one hand and rolling your tummy round with the other hand at the same time.

Ray said to me that I handled it very well; I don’t think he believed I could handle it quite so easily. But to be fair at that time I think I had nearly 3,000 hours which of course was all fixed wing, floatplane, twin-engined planes and that sort of thing.

At about this time I saw somewhere that Tim Wallis was advertising for a pilot so I wrote a letter – somebody wrote the letter for me. He replied to me and he told me he didn’t want me; I wouldn’t fit in. I still have his reply. Funny now, eh?

Decision Time At that time Tim had started his helicopter operation. He wanted to fly meat out from the Dart to Glenorchy, the nearest point of the road, and from Lake Alabaster, and 64

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Lifting Mini Minor to top of Mt Wellington

venison shot from and flown in by the fleet of helicopters, all of which had to be kept busy. Sabotage was rife and it climaxed during November 1972 with arson on a hangar containing helicopters at the Waiau airfield. This all led to some earnest discussions with people from Wellington.

On 24 November 1972 I was appointed Chief Pilot for Alpine Helicopters and for the first time I was now on a salary which was $10,000 per annum. It was understood I was now on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The only days I took off were when my machine was on check. If I were to take days off when my machine was serviceable it was always a worry that some other pilot saw a need to use it. I was in the habit of being the only pilot to touch any machine that I was using, that way I got to know any idiosyncrasies that it may have had.

My first job in the new JetRanger was to salvage a Hughes 300 HED out of the top of a beech tree. Howard Smith had been operating in the Burke River, Haast area and ended up having force landed in the tree when the motor stopped because of fuel starvation caused by a rag being inadvertently dropped into the fuel tank during 112

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HED rested in the trees for some weeks

HED after being lifted out of the tree

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for the trawlers because the trawlers couldn’t actually see the competitor in the water because of the spray and the spume. The trawler would come in and when close enough – we were talking to them on the marine frequency and would be able to say, “Well, you’ve got the guy on your left hand side now,” and they’d say, “Okay, we can see him.” Well, we pulled everybody out of the water. It was so bad on one occasion that we actually ran down one of our own officials; he was kayaking and a trawler came up behind him and couldn’t see him because of the waves; it actually ran him down; he rolled underneath the boat and the propeller of the trawler gouged the bottom out of his boat and he was tipped out. So it was incredibly hairy. Any other pilot would have said, “This is too bad, I’m out of here,” but the thing that impressed the hell out of me was that Bill said, “We’ll stay until Robin Judkins everybody’s rescued,” so we actually flew or hovered for about an hour in this while everybody was rescued by these craft.

The second occasion when we had extremely bad weather was on the l992 Coast to Coast, when we got 15 inches of rain in 12 hours and the running section over the Mingha-Deception route became so bad that it went into total flood and we had about 400-odd runners on the course at the time, with two helicopters and we decided to use the helicopters as ferries, as ferry machines to lift them across swollen streams. So Bill and I went into effect the first rescues; we had one helicopter down on the Bealey River to take the last ferry and Bill and I went in and we rescued 54 people that afternoon.

The flying conditions were such that Bill said that no one else should fly in there except him and we agreed to that – that we weren’t going to bring in any other helicopter from anywhere else to effect these rescues because no one else would have flown except him.

He actually understood that he could fly and he told me that if he pulled the plug well that was fine and was that okay with me. I said, “Yes, it is fine by me; we do what we can.” As it was we were able to effect every rescue anyway but to give you an idea, we were at that time facing 80 knot winds, 80 knot gusts as well and when you’re in a helicopter in 80 knot gusts it pretty much means that you’re brought to a standstill. Jesus, he was amazing; his flying skills are just unbelievable and the composure that he has immediately makes everybody very comfortable. I noticed it more as a calming influence that he had. One of the rescues that we did that day – we came across a group of five or six all huddled on a rock shelf as a section of the river had come up to such an extent they were trapped on this 170

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SONYA CROOK PHOTOGRAPHY

rock shelf; the river went round them on both sides and there was nowhere to go; right in front of it was a small tree; we came down and we landed in the top of the tree; we pushed the tree down, pushed the top of the tree down with the skid so as we were level with the shelf. You can imagine – these people are crouched on the shelf, they are crouching down with the helicopter blades right over them. It was very funny, I had to climb out of the helicopter on to the tree and then jump from the tree on to the rock shelf and the situation there was that we had these people and we had to get them out and there was obviously two loads. I went straight for the first person who was a woman – I felt we’ll deal with the first person straight away. I went straight up to her and I said, “Right, you’re first on; you’re out of here.” She immediately said, “No,” and she stood back and she wouldn’t get into the helicopter. I said, “Why aren’t you going to get in the helicopter?” thinking that she was afraid of helicopters and she said, “Well, if I get in will I be disqualified?” Quite bizarre! And I said, “No, no, no; no one is going to be disqualified; you’ll all carry on.” She was adamant she was not getting into the helicopter but I showed her how she had to stand on the ledge, put one foot on to the tree, reach up with her hand, grab a hold of the skid, climb on to the skid and then go from the skid and on to the door handle and into the

Whilst on the Xerox Challenge

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and explained the situation to him. About 20 minutes later I got a message back to say, “Yes, the helicopter was going to come in.” But about half an hour went by and I said, “Hey, there’s no chopper coming into here.” Then it got a wee bit more complicated and they said, “Bill will come but we want a weather report.” I said, “Okay,” so I went back outside; you couldn’t see a thing. At that stage the wind had dropped away and it was a light rain and misty. And I then said, “No, he can’t get in, this is just bloody stupid.” So I called up again and said, “No, the helicopter can’t come in, it’s bloody crap,” and they said, “He’s not quite ready yet; give us a call in half an hour and see what it’s like.” So again half an hour later they called up and I went outside and you could just see a big hole. I thought, ‘Shit, it’s breaking up, this is going to be ... he might be all right.’ So I called them and said, “Yeah, there’s a hole here now, how long it’s going to be for I don’t know but if he comes in from the McKerrow end rather than go over The Divide,” which Bill was probably going to do anyway. The next minute we hear this helicopter, couldn’t see it, we knew it was in the area, but it must have been above the fog base. And, “Shit, he’s going to bloody come in,” and it disappeared down the valley, then I can’t remember; it was down below us anyway then all of a sudden we saw the light – could just see the thin light through the fog, through this foggy misty crap and he started to land – it appeared that he was starting to land in this other paddock so I ran like Christ down this other bloody track with the torch and just as I was going to shine it on the ground to indicate where we wanted him to land I realised he’s not looking for somewhere to land; he’s going that bloody slow right on the treetop height, he knew exactly where he was heading to but he was just going that slow and all along on the tops of the trees, and by this stage I started running back up the track to the landing site where we wanted him to land; he just came right in, just perfectly. He asked me what the situation was and I told him. By this stage the doctors and other people had run out and John Von T. was there, they did their bits, put her in the machine and the same thing again, just total bloody pitch-black shit, and he just picked her up, tree height, and disappeared into the distance.

Bill came back in next morning and we picked up the deceased and took her out and then, three or four days later after the parents of the deceased arrived and we met them and Bill asked for me to go in there with them and we flew in and they did a wee ceremony at the tree. It was all very sad, Bill was just as upset as everybody else. Then Bill said to me as we were about to leave, “Mind if we do a wee detour?” and I said, “No, good as gold.” So we detoured, we passed Mt Christina and landed up there at a little lake, Lake Marianette which is above and beyond Lake Marian. As we landed Bill said, “This is my favourite little lake,” and here was a beautiful little green lake in the trees, surrounded by the tops of the mountains. We had a walk around and took some photographs. Mrs Buife had said to Bill that she didn’t really like flying, didn’t like helicopters. She was sitting in the front right next to Bill so he told a couple of wee yarns, I can’t remember what they were, but there were some laughs and little giggles and then Bill just said over the microphone, “Has anyone ever fallen off a mountain?” and as we all sort of just looked, he just up and just fell, just literally fell of the mountain side; I think he said, “Yeeaa!” or something like that. It just fell, literally just fell off this mountain down towards the road then we levelled out and carried on back. When we got back I said to Mrs Buife, “How did you like that?” She said, “Actually I didn’t mind it,” because there was nothing cowboyish about it.

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Bill continues...

When we left here the weather wasn’t too bad, there was a window in the pattern. I climbed up and went high because there were a lot of stars in the sky; I knew where I was going and I could see the ground below me. In flying like this you must turn all your lights off including all your instrument lights because they dazzle you and you can’t see through the windscreen; it’s not easy but you try and keep the horizon where it should be. As we were approaching Lake McKenzie – and it was totally unexpected – I was doing all right; I was coming down into McKenzie Basin near the lake and I struck fog, thick fog, I got the speed back and I was going down through the fog near the edge of the lake. I flicked on my landing light and I couldn’t see a thing; I yelled to John von Tunzelman, who was at the back, “Open the door and get out,” so he got outside Claire recovering in hospital and stood on the skid and tried to wipe the window but it was all iced up. John got back in and then I could see lights.

When I landed there at this place there were torches, the machine was running and I had to just shut my eyes. I said, “Everybody out and John Boy, you organise everything because I cannot supervise everything; I must stay in here,” so I just stayed in the machine with my eyes covered all the time; just a torch flash would blind me and I’d never see where I was going again. Anyway, they brought the patient out and they put her in. We had probably been on the ground ten or fifteen minutes I guess with the machine running; I’ve got no lights on in the machine, no instrument lights, no nothing. I said, “Shut all the doors, keep all the lights off, and we are ready to go, okay.” At that point I reminded myself of how the only way a motorcyclist could go round a corner faster than before and that was lean further into the corner. Nobody has got to 90˚ yet. I knew I was now going beyond my limits. I didn’t really want to take off but I knew I had to.

I didn’t break cloud going through the way I had come in. There was fog everywhere. The doctor kept saying, “Why can’t you do this, why can’t you do that?”

The police saying, “Where are you now?”

I just had to say, “I’m turning all the radios off – please don’t say any more; I’m doing the best I can.” So I landed back down on the ground and I got out and poured water on the windscreen to try to clear all the ice off. It’s still dark and in fog. Anyway 187

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didn’t apply to the bloody barge with a couple of outboards that I had been driving.

This was bureaucracy gone mad. However I complied, sat the exam and passed, so life just carried on.

Gyrocopters I was watching Heartland TV and they were doing a documentary on the annual Glenorchy Race Day. During this programme a local farmer, Robert Koch, was shown flying his single seater gyrocopter. I was fascinated watching it and it just captured my imagination. I decided then and there that I would like to learn to fly one of these machines. I contacted Robert and he invited me to Glenorchy to talk about how I could go about obtaining one. Next morning I jumped on my motorbike and headed for Glenorchy. We had a good talk about it all and I was so enthralled I ended up buying his single seater for $12,000. It was a three-year-old ‘John Buffier design’ ZKRAW. Robert was giving a demonstration at the 1996 Easter Warbirds Over Wanaka and he delivered it to me in Te Anau after the event.

At this stage I still couldn’t fly a gyrocopter but made some enquiries and found out there was a very good instructor in Ballarat Australia named Wayne (‘Maddog’) Morgan. After contacting Wayne it was decided that I go over to Ballarat, take some lessons and learn to fly.

So in June 1996 Shirley and I went to Ballarat. I wasn’t looking forward to meeting this fellow for fear of him asking me questions that I didn’t know the answer

My first gyrocopter

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