Annual Wigram display has wings clipped

Press, 26 January 1988, Page 1

Annual Wigram display has wings clipped

By DAVE WILSON The annual Wings and Wheels pageant at Wigram airbase will be a private wheelsonly event this year, because the Air Force has had its wings clipped. Restrictions on R.N.Z.A.F. display flying hours means the Air Force has withdrawn from this year’s event, to be held at Wigram on the week-end of February 13 and 14. As a result, the Country Gentlemen’s Historic Racing and Sports Car Club will hold a private rally at the base, and this will not be open to the public. The cut in the R.N.Z.A.F.’s public flying hours also means the Wigram-based Red Checkers aerobatic team is likely to perform at only one public event this year — a rally at Auckland next month.

Squadron Leader Graham Cochran, the adjutant at

Wigram, said display flying hours had been heavily reduced as the Air Force tried to keep within its budgeted flying hours for the year. The aircrew training programme at Wigram is not affected.

“Training and what we call production flying is sacrosanct. Cuts, when they have to be made, are made first in nonessential flying areas.” If the R.N.Z.A.F. was to be part of the Wings and Wheels programme, there would have to be practice flying on the display aircraft, but these hours were also regarded as part of the total Air Force flying hours budgeted each year, Squadron Leader Cochran said.

The R.N.Z.A.F. protected the necessary flying hours each month for each pilot to remain proficient and to meet squadron tasks. Other flying tasks,

including co-operation with the Army and Navy, also had a higher priority than display flying. Unlike other air forces which could cut actual flying hours by using flight simulators, the R.N.Z.A.F. did not own simulators. However, it did use R.A.A.F. and Air New Zealand cockpit simulators to train some aircrew. Squadron Leader Cochran said that the Red Checkers aerobatic team, drawn from instructors of the Central Flying School at Wigram, was scheduled to give only one display this year, at Auckland next month. Neither the Red Checkers nor the Air Force would be represented at the Warbirds on Parade air pageant at Wanaka in April. The Country Gentlemen’s sports car club would continue with its meeting next month, but the club president, Mr Bill

Clark, said it would be an invitation-only gathering.

He declined to discuss what form the meeting would take, saying because it was closed to the public, he did not want to generate any public interest in it. “We will be there as guests of the Air Force. We don’t want a lot of people climbing over their fence trying to get in.” Mr Clark said this was not the first time the R.N.Z.A.F. had not been represented at a Wings and Wheels. “It has happened before, some years back, but it certainly does not mean the end of the motoring part of the event. It just reverts to a private meeting and under the circumstances, the public are not welcome this year.” In past years proceeds from the Wings and Wheels events have been given to the R.N.Z.A.F. Museum.