Rebuilt Hercules to test its wings

Press, 27 June 1989, Page 1

Rebuilt Hercules to test its wings

By

NIGEL MALTHUS

A doubtful weather forecast is the only cloud hanging over plans for the first test flight of Juliet Delta 321, the ski-equipped Hercules transport plane brought back after a crash in Antarctica 17>/ 2 years ago. The aircraft has been painstakingly rebuilt at Air New Zealand’s engineering base at Christchurch Airport and will be rolled out today for a test flight at 9 a.m., said Air New Zealand’s maintenance engineer, Mr Barry Geddes. A United States Navy crew would test all systems and check the aircraft’s performance and handling in a two-hour flight. “All the ground testing is complete, but there are some things that can’t be tested on the ground,” said Mr Geddes.

“There have been a few component failures but that’s inevitable on an aircraft that’s had such extensive work done,” he said.

The Hercules crashed 1380 km north-east of McMurdo in late 1971. It was stripped of useable parts and written off, until rising costs and improved salvage technology prompted its owner, the National Science Foundation, to reconsider restoring it. The 15,000-hour rebuild has cost about $1.5 million, compared with at least $5O million for a new plane. The Hercules was dug out of the ice in the summer of 1986-87 and flown back to New Zealand after being patched up in field repairs. It has since been completely stripped and overhauled and had new wings fitted. The salvage was marred in December, 1987, when another Hercules, ferrying an engine to the site, crashed, killing two United States recovery personnel.