2024 Tiger Moth Club of New Zealand Fly-In

By Nigel Hitchman

The Tiger Moth Club of New Zealand held their autumn fly-in and AGM at the home of the Taupo gliding club, a big wide grass strip just north of town. With low cloud and rain on Friday, very few came, but Saturday and Sunday were perfect with most of the arrivals coming Saturday morning. There were nine Tiger Moths, one Thruxton Jackaroo John Pheasant’s ZK-PHZ which he recently completed, the registration signifying his name rather than being associated with C-FPHZ the former G-APHZ, Jackaroo now flying in Canada.

ZK-PHZ started life as Tiger Moth N6907 in RAF service, civilianised as G-AOIO in 1956, coverted to a Jackaroo in 1958 and had several owners until 1972 when it was bought by Paul Gliddon ( who now owns a Tiger Moth, Hornet Moth and Aeronca C3 in England and Proctor VH-UXS in Australia!) he took it to Australia and it was cancelled from the UK register in 1978 but was never registered in Australia and John Pheasant acquired it a few years ago and restored it at Tauranga flying again in Jan 2020. It is now one of five Jackaroos flying in the world, one in Canada CF-PHZ and G-ANZT, G-AOEX and G-AOIR in England.

The only DH60 Moth now flying in New Zealand is ZK-ADT owned by Jan and Jerry Chisum. Built in 1929 as G-AAJO it was flown extensively including a trip to Burma and back. In 1934 it was purchased by Stan White who then flew it to Australia and then shipped it to New Zealand and flew onward to his base at Bridge Pa, Hastings. Impressed into the RNZAF in ww2 and then saw several civilian owners until bought by Lee Middleton in the 70s who restored the aircraft over the next 30 years with it flying again in 2005. Soon after it was bought by Jan White (now Chisum), Stan’s daughter who brought ZK-ADT back to Bridge Pa and has enjoyed flying her ever since. The fuselage side lists all the stops made on her dad’s flight from England to Australia.

Of the Tiger Moths there were no recent restorations, although ZK-AUD owned and restored by Robert McNair about 20 years ago still looks in perfect condition like a new restoration, certainly one of the nicest Tiger Moths Ive ever seen.

Another highlight of the fly-in was seeing Stearman ZK-RJS, this was an accident wreck bough by Russell Jenkins and superbly restored over a 12 year period, flying again in Oct 2021. Around 10 other visiting aircraft included a Cessna O-1 Bird Dog, PA-18 Super Cub and Cessna 180.

During Saturday there were various fun competitions with bomb dropping (half a tennis ball), spot landing and even a small air race. With an evening dinner and then Sunday morning annual general meeting and then departure. The Club have an annual fly-in at Taumarunui in the spring time (Oct in New Zealand) and the AGM meeting moves around the country each Autumn in March. https://tigermothclub.co.nz/