Vintage Aviator display, Masteron, New Zealand

Last Saturday afternoon The Vintage Aviator held a small-scale display day at Hood airfield, Masterton.
Unfortunately, although the day was fine the wind built up throughout the day, A flying display was scheduled for mid-afternoon, but by that time a 20 – 30kt wind restricted the actual flying to a brief sorte by a Stampe and display flights by Harvard and P-40.

The crowd was reasonable for such a small town, with plenty of close-up viewing available.

For me it was a nice mix of aircraft I had seen before and some new ones.

The star of the show was the FE2B-1 ZK-FEE/2

Starting the beast seemed to be a mission:

but once it was ticking over, it made quite a sight as it taxiied down the flightline

Later, I suspect that we witnessed the first ever cellphone call from a Fe!

Also a first for me was the original Royal Aircraft Be-2F ZK-BFR

and probably very few had seen the Albatros DVa-1 ZK-DVA/2 which was registered only last month. A nice piece of work.

It too was started and taxiied to the other end of the flightline

The Sopwith Camel ZK-JMU is always a sight to behold – and to hear

I had not seen its predecessor, the Chad Wille Sopwith Triplane ZK-SOP before. It’s in RNAS colours.

The Bristol F.2B ZK-BRI/2 is ex-G-ACAA from the 1930s

All three SE5A were on display. ZK-SEV/2 has been around for a while

but ZK-SES / B507 and ZK-SEO / D3540 were new to me

The German side as represented by the Albatros and also by the Hampshire Aeroplane Pfalz DIII Replica ZK-FLZ/2

and the Replica Fokker D.VII ZK-FOD/2

continued . . .