Ok......................... an update! Sunday afternoon saw Ken(Obiwan27) and myself board the trust Mondeo and after hitching up a trailer from the local service station headed off to Bob's place to start the mammoth task of moving one Auster and a truckload of parts of several others. (Due to manners I had to change the first choice of word of how many parts there were to truckload.... rhymes with hit............. and it still had load in the word. ;D)
Anyway 2pm saw us pull up and I found Bob in his driveway and after introducing Ken I noticed Bob was leaning on a rather flash light blue XR6 Falcon ute. Yep. He turned his Auster into a Ford!
After admiring what my money had bought him we drove round to the machinary shed and decided to start with all the stuff in the back of the truck first.
Rather than just start piling it all in I decided to lie everything down beside the car and trailer . This would A: help decide how to load her up and B: actually see what we actually had got.
After a few minutes of unloading Shane Glassey and his friend Kevin (whose last name I have of course forgotten!) turned up to help.
Both Shane and Kevin are ex RNZAF and Shane is the one who told me about BBZ (and if it all goes pear shaped I can blame him.......................or more likely cry into a beer with him ha ha.)
Bob was an enthusiastic unloader of the truck. As I walked back to get another piece another part would fly out the back to land on the grass! It sounds worse than it was but we soon had a Auster parts train in motion with the four of us walking back and forth from the car to the truck.
As we passed each other I noticed Shane had an elevator. When we crossed paths going the other way I had an elevator. Then Kevin passed by carrying.......another elevator. Hang on. What?
Then Ken walked past......with yet another elevator!
Bob pointed out one set was the early style which are a bit smaller.
After nearly an hour or so we had the truck pretty much empty and Bob had dived into the open-ended crate and was hauling out wing struts.
We couldn't help ourselves as Shane (back to camera) and I peer into one of the many boxes!
In the background leaning up against the trailer is several elevators and horizontal stabilisers oh and a few vertical stabs as well.
Next we started another parts train and Shane walked past with an oil tank and then I had an oil tank and pretty soon 4 of them were piled up.
The first pile started growing and we soon had a couple of doors, fuel tanks, Undercarriage legs, engine cowlings, rudder pedals, wooden floor panels, oil coolers, a bucket (yes a bucket!) with parts in it. Phew.
At one point when the trailer was all loaded up and the Mondeo was full, Shane and I were silently gazing over all the bits and pieces. Shane turned to me and said "You know Baz, I reckon you did alright out of this!"
Please note: the white part to the right of this photo is certainly NOT an Auster bit! ;D
Anthony Galbraith was away on holiday but ever ready to eye up my parts (oooo errrrrrr!) he rang me when he got back to see if he could help. As I was just leaving the farm I got Anthony to meet us at our place then follow us to my storage facility and unload.
Here are a couple of photos of the booty parked outside my house.
The facility has a swipe card which opens the electric sliding gate and turns off the alarm for your unit. I think Anthony was afraid it would close on his car as he made sure he was right up behind the trailer as I went through!
I knew Anthony was keen to check out the military oil tank I had got. This and a few other bits were from NZ1704 which Bob reckoned had been run over by the airfield lawn mower (I presume a tractor towing the gang mowers you see.)
You could say it was mown down. (Groan.)
Anthony held the oil tank like Gollum. I swear I heard him saying something like "My precious...." or something. Anyway he offered me a nose cowl he had as a trade and the first parts exchange was carried out1
(Anthony as it turned out also gave me a lower engine cowling (as if the ones I had weren't enough!) but as he said it wasn't much use for his T7 as they have a two piece lower cowling so I might as well have it.
What a guy!
One thing we found which is going to help with her paint scheme is this piece of the forward fuselage between the door hinge and the firewall.
If you look at the black and white picture of BBZ in her red and white colours you can see the word "Auster" forward of the door.
Bob said this was off BCQ but the photo I've seen in similar markings doesn't show this word. Mind you it could have been painted over.
The patch above the word is actually reinforcing for the Venturi tube mounted there. In the photo the left edge of the piece is the firewall making this the left (port) side.
After unloading I dropped Ken off home and Anthony and I raced back (in fading light!) to Bob's to get the last items including the wing struts.
After 7 hours of parts recovery I was certainly ready for tea (being 9pm now!!)
Anthony gratefully accepted our invite to stay for tea and Teresa dished up home made pizzas (smoked chicken and sweet chilli sauce with Camembert cheese. Washed down with a nice bottle of Pinot Gris. (Yeah I know you have beer with pizza but us Auster owners are refined don't ya know?)
Oh and i also got the paperwork for the work carried out to date including BBZ's logbook showing by the time she had crahs landed she had clocked up 6675 hours and 25 minutes! And the last entry was January 9th 1965.
At the time of the logbook she had Gipsy Major I serial number 88677 installed. I wonder where that engine is now as I don't think its the engine I have now.
Well I hoped you enjoyed the update, next Saturday we plan to tackle the moving of the fuselage and the wings. Forecast is for snow on Friday but fine Saturday. Hope they get it right. As insurance I have a couple of tarps to take with me so will be able to cocoon her snug as a bug!