Aero Club Plane Ends Long Delivery Flight

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29205, 16 May 1960, Page 10

Aero Club Plane Ends Long Delivery Flight

A sleek-looking bullet-nosed aircraft touched down at the Christchurch International Airport in brilliant sunshine at 2.15 p.m. yesterday at the completion of a 14,000 mile delivery flight from England. It was the Canterbury Aero Club’s twin engined, low wing Piper Apache.

At the controls was bearded Captain Peter Nock, a professional ferry pilot, of Virginia Water, Surrey, who took off from the famous R.A.F. war-time station of Biggin Hill, Kent, on April 15. He was completing another comparatively routine delivery flight which, took him half-way round the world.

A veteran of 60 bombing missions, mostly over Germany when he was a pilot with the R.A.F. Bomber Command, Captain Nock reported that he had no really anxious moments during the 100 hours he was in the air during the trip from England. The aircraft developed one or two minor faults during the journey, but nothing serious.

The red and white American executive-type plane, with its squat engine mountings, attracted a good deal of interest from the large crowd of Sunday visitors to the airport during the ,hour it was parked on the tarmac in front of the main building. The aircraft carries five persons and has retractable nose-wheel type landing gear. It is powered by two 150 horse power Lycoming engines and cruises at a speed of 160 miles an hour. The plane is equipped with radio. It was formerly used by Spartan Airways in East Africa and was purchased by the Aero Club from an aircraft broker in England. The arrival of the Apache brings the Aero Club’s fleet of aircraft to nine, which includes four Piper Cubs, two Piper TriPacers, one Piper Apache and two Austers. The club has a further Auster which it intends selling. All the Piper aircraft are fitted with Lycoming engines which are being used as standard motors so as to facilitate maintenance and repairs.

The cost of the .-pnche landed at the Christchurch Airport is £BOOO. It has British registration and certificate of airworthiness. When New Zealand papers are issued for the aircraft the registration markings will be ZK-BWJ

An extra 44 gallon fuel tank was installed in the cabin in place of the rear seats.x which were folded up. This added another three hours to the plane’s cruising range which was increased to 1520 miles.

. The longest single journey made by the aircraft was one of 1085 miles between Calcutta and Bangkok

Early Delay The plane took off from Biggin Hill at 3 p.m. on April 15 and flew to Paris where a small fault was located in the fuel system. The airport officials told Captain Nock that the fault could not be remedied until after Easter and that was four days later. When the fault was inspected the mechanics said that they could not fix it and that the plane would have to be taken to Neuchatel in Switzerland, where the European headquarters of the Piper Aircraft Corporation are located

The Apache spent two days at Neuchatel and a week after leaving England had covered only about 500 miles. The plane took off again on April 23 and then flew to Naples, Corfu in Greece. Athens, Nicosia in Cyprus, Damascus and then to Bahrein, where it arrived on April 26. The next landing was made at Sharjah in the Trucial States at the bottom of the Persian Gulf and then on to Karachi in Parkistan, where it touched down on April 28

On May 3 the Apache arrived at Singapore, where there was a delay of three days because permission could not be obtained to fly through Indonesia. “The Indonesian Government officials were given 24 hours’ notice of my plans to fly through Indonesia in a radio message sent from Bangkok, but no reply was received.” said Captain Nock. “During the three days I was in Singapore radio signals were sent twice a day for permission to fly through Indonesia, but they just refused to answer. Apparently the officials were too busy dealing with some internal dispute, during which the Dutch Embassy was attacked.” Bribes Too Demanded

When the Apache landed at Zamboanga on the southern tip of the Philippines, Captain Nock was confronted by a number of minor officials, all of whom wanted five dollar bribes before they would do anything. “I was hardly there for 10 minutes when it had cost me 20 dollars,” Captain Nock said. “There was no fuel available The telephone at the airfield would not work and there was a delay of about four hours before the fuel arrived. I had to spend the night there instead of flying on to Sorong in Dutch New Guinea.

“After being in the air for 6 hours five minutes the radio failed when I was flying through a violent tropical storm. It was terrible weather and I was flying on instruments and I was unable to obtain a radio fix of my position.” The Apache flew down the coast of northern Queensland to Brisbane and from there headed for Norfolk Island. Two hours and a half off the Queensland coast the plane flew into another patch of bad weather. It arrived at Auckland on Saturday. Captain Nock was accompanied by Sarah Flower, a free-lance journalist, as far as Singapore. It was a good flight but took a week longer than normal because of the delays, said Captain Nock. He found that the radio aids in New Zealand were good A married man with three boys, including twins. Captain Nock has been ferrying aircraft for about 10 years. He is away from his home at Virginia Water. 24 miles from London, about 180 days a year Although he has visited many countries, this is Captain Nock’s first trip to New Zealand. He was very impressed by the Christchurch airport. He hae made some 40 flights across the Atlantic Ocean, including a number of solo trips. Captain Nock’s next job is to ferry a Dakota from Bangkok to Ottawa by way of Europe and Iceland.

Among the Canterbury Aero Club officials who greeted Captain Nock on his arrival in Christchurch were: Messrs R. M. Buchanan (president). I. H. Gundersen (chief instructor), D. Donovan (vice-president). G. J. Williamson (treasurer), and R A Pegler (secretary).