Here are some photos I took last year on Queen’s Birthday Monday at the Museum of Transport and Technology, Western Springs, Auckland, NZ. I hope you find them interesting.
Lockheed Lodestar in Fieldair topdressing colours (awaiting eventual restoration)
The Sunderland MR5 undergoing a slow restoration, before the new hangarage is built around it.
Miles Gemini (I think) formerly owned by Arthur Baker of Cambridge
The P40E – this is the airframe that replaced NZ3009 which Ray Hanna had rebuilt by Pioneer Aero, who also restored this one. Wierdly it has never been finished – the serial is missing, as is the red dots in the fuselage roundels. It should probably have white or red and white diagonal recognition stripes too if it were representing a combat zone aircraft. I don’t know why it has not been completed. The colours do not quite look right either.
photobucket.com/albums/a66/DavidHomewood/Motat/P40E.jpg[/IMG]
By: mikey676 - 25th September 2005 at 10:02
He is long gone from motat…Maybe still in NZ, if still alive but I don’t know….
although wasn’t he the prime minster of australia at some point
By: Dave Homewood - 22nd September 2005 at 10:50
Thanks Roger.
No, I’m not involved with the museum. I would be if it were closer to where I live. I try to visit every few years, and there are always notable changes, improvements and additions.
I don’t know if Malcolm Fraser is still with the museum. I read about him earlier this year while going back through old copies of NZ Wings magazine, and I posted a question from the article here
http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?t=39122&highlight=Motat
So he was still curator in 1978. From memory I think I read after that in another issue about his departure from the museum, but I’m unsure if it was him I’m thinking of.
By: RPSmith - 22nd September 2005 at 09:59
Thanks Dave, nice collection of pics – nice collection of aeroplanes as well!
Are you involved at MoTaT? Do you know whether Malcolm Frazier (or Frazer) is still around? I knew him when he was Chief Engineer at Shuttleworth in the 1960’s and he left there and emigrated to work for MoTaT.
I guess he would be in his seventies/eighties now.
Roger Smith.
By: Dave Homewood - 22nd September 2005 at 07:37
My apologies that these have turned out so large, but at least you get to see some detail. And you’re all welcome to right-click and save them, so you can open them on your PC in a smaller version.
Here’s the Lockheed Electra, gorgeous!
The lovely Lancaster BIII
Lastly, the Hurricane gate guard. I am a little disapponted that after a very nice restoration of this replica, they have made what looks like a hash of the lettering OK-1 (which represents Sir Keith Park’s personal Hurricane by the way, this aviation branch of the museum is named after him)
By: Dave Homewood - 22nd September 2005 at 07:26
The Rapide
The Short Solent 4 (the only such model in the world). Note the Fox Moth in rather bright, yet accurate, airline colours!
The Fleet Air Arm Association’s Swordfish replica
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September 22, 2005 at 7:22 am