The parasol is a Westland Widgeon (vh UHU) built in 1924. at the time it was owned by the Whittaker bros from somewhere up in country Victoria. (i think) at the time it was the oldest registered aircraft in Australia and it remained so until they sold it to Drage Airworld in the late 80's and it went off the register.
It was exactly the same type of aircraft as the kookaburra which went missing looking for kings-ford smith back in the 20's. Dick smith (the same dick smith) went on an expedition to find the kookaburra back in the 80's. i also believe he purchased vh uhu when the drage collection was sold off in the early 90's. i don't know if it is airworthy or not but it still exists. i remember climbing inside the thing when it was on display at drages as a kid, it was a very primitive aircraft but as my grandfather said "thats all they had to make do with in those days"...
i think the photo above was taken around 1974 - 75 when they had the 50th anniversaray of the tiger moth airshow at Casey. (long before my time). The photos belong to my grandfather who used to run Casey for many years. there are heaps of great photos and i am slowly scanning them all. i'll post some more soon
and here is a photo i found on wikipedia of vh UHU taken in 1928 apart from the vickers vimy in adelaide its probably still the oldest aircraft in australia. ( i hope dick smith didn't restore it too much )
great pic of keith & Pam, and of course "Sweeney"..I had parked on the ramp at Kieta, and we saw KK wandering over to our jet, and thoughts of "oh no, it could be a long night ". yep, boy wire on the windows, but his next door neighbour " Mczero" converted the wall you see behind Pam, into french open out windows...the sundowner parties were memorable to say the least. great times, and KK is probably looking down ( or should I sat up ) at us laughing. I will see what pics I have ..
Stalls and Spins, thank you so much for the pictures of Casey Field. A friend was very excited to see them and if you have any more feel free to post them or send me a PM, he'd love to see them in the flesh. Is that a Proctor? He said he went for a ride in one at Casey.
Yes, a Percival Proctor. Had the pleasure of doing an endorsement on one in the early 60's.
As I remember the hand brake lever was attached to the centre section spar by woodscrews and I know of one occasion when vigourous application of brake pulled the said lever out of the spar with disastrous results on an ag strip.
Thought they were all grounded in the early 60's due to the box spar/glue problem.
Seems we haven't come far in over 40 years then with fibreglass. The first Jabriu 200 series at Lethbridge almost ran off the end of the runway when the master cylinder in the centre console pulled its screws through the fibreglass!
I'll tell you what I find impressive about that video and I mentioned this recently (before seeing this just now), that I've never seen a coordinated stall-turn with multiple aircraft before. It's at the 1:15 mark. Very well done and would be interesting to watch. A very simple manouevre for a great spectacle.
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