Nice pics – Here in Australia Austers used to be common at vintage aeroplane fly-ins (say 20 years ago) and Tiger Moths rare. Not so any more, Tigers are common, not unusual to have 10-15 attend a fly-in in S.E Queensland and Austers about 3-4.

My favourate Auster is the Mk3.

Unfortunately the $$ for Austers just isn’t there when selling them and the costs of restoration are relatively high. I have this theory that there are a lot of Austers out there waiting to be restored. I know of quite a few.

Not the best aeroplane in terms of landing performance, here in Queensland on a hot summers day, they tend to float on landing. Still Auster pilots are aware of that and as a result there are very few landing incidents.

regards
Ross

seeing a Avro Vulcan at a RAAF on display in the 1950’s at Amberley RAAF base, Queensland, Australia.

Hi James–

Thanks much for that reminder that things are always more complex than they might seem.

The references to tourism and to the Boston airframe stored in Oz on behalf of the PNG museum give me ideas: What’s the chance funds could be raised to put up an uncomplicated steel hangar at one of the old airfields, perhaps a cooperative venture between PNG and the west? Doesn’t need to be an AAM type structure to be sound and serviceable…and the treasures that could then be housed right in the environs where this major campaign was fought, would surely be a tourist draw far beyond a crumbling alloy hulk in the bush (however eerie and poignant the latter is). Is this worth thinking about, or is it just nuts?

Cheers

S.

PS–one irrelevant quibble: the AAM Liberator came from Lackland (Texas), not Castle (California)…but yeah, she was rough.

New Guinea is a very hostile place unfortunately – not for the remains of aeroplanes necessarily, but for people. The capital of PNG is Port Morsby and unfortunately the level of lawlessness is very high. The “Rascals” are a group of people who make live very unpleasant for people in the area.

The unfortunate thing is that it is getting worse, not better and there is a long time to go before the “general” toursits will be safe in that region of the world.

My opinion is get them out and preserve them – better still rebuild them. Aeroplanes were built to fly and that is what they should do. That’s a pilots point of view, but I am holding to it. If I didn’t hold that view then the 150+ people I have taken for a ride in my Tiger Moth wouldn’t have had the experience. A couple of people would have seen the remains of a Tiger stored in a shed somewhere. The remains of my Percival Proctor would have long disappeared, instead it will fly again some day.

Someone who doesn’t fly may hold a different perspective – their interest being in the smaller details and the history side of things, I do to a point but saving a bunch of bits rather than saving the whole seems a bit of a waste of time to me. The bits are interesting, the whole is better!

Try upgrading to Nikon

I use a Nikon D200 and use VR lenses. I have a WT3 fitted (wireless LAN) fitted to the camera and thus are able to see exactly what I have taken on my laptop.

I use the software supplied with the camera for most of my touching up of the images (PictureProject), although I also use Adobe Photoshop CS2 when I want to get serious.

I have found that previewing on the screen on the back of the camera was not good enough, hence using the WiFi to get the image to the laptop PC gives a nice big screen to see what you ACTUALLY have got in the image (is it really as sharp as you want.) I very occasionally use an unsharp mask, but try and avoid any sharpening. I used to sharpen images a lot, but then found that I could take photos that didn’t need it.

I am afraid I have been using Nikon for a long time and I prefer their equipment compared than a lot of other brands.

BEWARE a lot of their software has problems working with Windows Vista (Nikon don’t seem to have their act in order with Vista and this is a real big problem if you purchace aq new PC.)

for Proctor Mk 1,2,3 the parts are numbered KW for wing /centre section parts, KF for fuselage parts, KE for engine bay components, KC for control components etc.

we have no flying Proctors in Australia, but a number of complete examples in museums. We do have a Gull 6 and a Gull 4 that fly regularly. They are based at Murwillumbah, in New South Wales.