Saturday 18 September 2010

Overseas ZK Aircraft

I'm probably being a bit naughty and may incur the ire of Blue Bus.......but. Having been away from the shaky isles for 6 weeks, I don't have any new local aircraft to post, so I thought I would post these 2 somewhat different offerings.

The first is a Royal Air Force Beech B 200 with a strangely familiar serial: ZK 454. I took this photo at an airshow at RAF Lyneham on 7 August, where there were flying displays by both a Vulcan and a Lancaster!
But the next has a more direct New Zealand connection. It is an engineless Fletcher FU 24 registered what appears to be TC-APE near the ancient ruins of the city of Ephesus in Turkey. This small airport was home for parachuting and also probably cotton spraying, as there were 4 PZL Dromadir cropsprayers also picketed there. I apologise for the quality of the photo but it was taken with a long lens out of a bus window as we drove by. I am sure some FU 24 afficionados can fill us in with the history of this aircraft.
I caught up with the blog at various places around the world which was neat. However it is good to be home.


1 comment:

  1. Welcome back Sir!

    Your Fletcher looks to be TC-ARE which would make it Fletcher Fu-24-950 c/n 247.
    This was partially built up at Hamilton as a kitset in 1978, registered as ZK-EGY 15Feb78 & shipped to the US for Frontier Aerospace. Not sold, & returned to NZ with other components. Brought by Wanganui Aero Work & assembled by them as 'Wanganui II'. F/fNZ9Sep88.
    Ownership transferred to Pacific Aerospace Corporation Ltd. as from 16Oct90. S.Abd to Turkey in April 1990 and became TC-ARE with Belko, Ankara.

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