Copyright Notice

All photos on MRC Aviation are copyrighted to me, or the photographer of that photo. All photos that are downloaded from MRC Aviation are strictly intended for personal use only. Anyone, including the media, who would like to use any of the photos on the Blog, for any purpose other than personal use, must contact me to obtain permission to use the photo(s). Any photo not taken by me, that was obtained from another photographer or another source, that appears on this Blog, will be duly acknowledged as such.

Saturday, July 17, 2010

More Australian Army Visitors - from a few moons ago!

The arrival of the Army Blackhawks at Christchurch this week reminded me of an interesting day at Nelson almost 20 years ago when I arrived at work to discover two Army Pilatus PC6 Porters sitting on the apron under gloomy skies. I vaguely recall that the aircraft were on exercises in the Tasman Bay area, probably operating out of Takaka.

A14-662 entered service with ADF in February 1968 and was operated from Amberley with the 1st Aviation Regiment. It was one of 6 aircraft to take part in the last flight in service with the ADF on 17 October 1992 and was withdrawn from use 21 December the same year. It was subsequently sold back to the manufacturer before being onsold to Canada where it became C-GROO. http://www.pc-6.com/history/662.htm


A14-705 entered service during May 1971 and also served with the 1st Aviation Regiment out of Amberley. It was sold to a civilian owner within Australia in 1993 and became VH-ZCZ, then it headed to Canada where it was marked as C-GZCZ (check out the following link which has it on floats!!!) and then to Germany and Italy where it still operates as D-FREE.
http://www.pc-6.com/history/731.htm#

Mike Condon photos

Can anyone recall the reason for their visit to NZ and where else they may have visited during 1991? Posting a comment would be great!
at