Kiwi Thunder News

We are at Warbirds Over Wanaka

See Kiwi Thunder and the Crew at Warbirds Over Wanaka at Easter April 6th - 8th 2012

Tiger's Blood Junior - the model!

Tiger Junior is an exciting scale model replica of Tiger's Blood, the Thunder Mustang, built by aviation model expert John Clarke of Napier, for the Kiwi Thunder Team to use at airshows and promotions etc.

This is a fantastic model and with it's unique storage and display case that John built for it, is housed along with 'Dad' at Ardmore. Go here to see more.

Auckland to Norfolk Island.....

589 nautical miles (or 1091km) in a straight line and most of it over water, such was the kind invitation from Rob when we first started talking about setting a new (C1-c) speed record from Auckland to Norfolk Island, how could I refuse?

After delaying the trip once due to a poor weather forecast and not liking the idea of arriving at Norfolk Island with strong winds and a lowering cloud base, after all it is a long way from the next best landing place! Rob and I settled on Friday the 19th of March as an opportune date.

Unfortunately although the weather forecast for Norfolk was good it was not looking nice out of the window as dawn broke around Ardmore. But with the promise of better weather to the North we set off, first clearing customs and the paperwork needed if you are traveling international in a light aircraft, at Auckland International and quickly getting on track as soon as we were allowed after takeoff.

As promised the weather was indeed clearer to the North and we were soon cruising at 10,000ft with blue skies overhead, the engine sounding smooth and T's & P's all in the green we agreed it was a go and left land behind us. Ahead lots and lots of ocean, sky and fluffy clouds below.

On the day there were also several other light aircraft heading out of Kaitaia for Norfolk and it is comforting to know that somewhere out there is someone else, although we overtook them and were several thousand feet higher we never saw the other traffic until they landed later at Norfolk.

Seeing Norfolk Island coming up out of the haze was a great sight (praise the gps ;-) as it isn't exactly huge and it is a long way from anywhere else!

In short we arrived and for the record we achieved a time of 2 hours 21 to overhead the strip although the recorded time will show 2 hours 26 as it was logged as we taxied past the tower on the ground after landing.

Official speed for the trip was 448kph.