Originally Posted by
By George
Bill Surh of Peninsular Air Services owned VH-REL in the late sixties and early seventies at Moorabbin. 'REL' was indeed an ex cloud-seeder and he also, later,(1970?) had a contract with the CSIRO for seeding, using a Twin Bonanza, VH-CLO an ex Conellan machine. Very little use was made of it in the cloud-seeding mode. I cannot remember why. The 310B was a totally different animal to later 310s' especially the 'Q' onwards, but great fun to fly, very light in roll. I saw 'REL' in Hamilton in the early eighties while visiting the Ansett Museum. The pilots for the CSIRO contract were Bill himself and John Fleming. Sadly both were subsequently killed in aircraft accidents. 'CLO' was painted two-tone blue with the CSIRO badge on the rear fuselage and fin. After the contract ended the aircraft was painted in a yellow scheme and ended its days on the Cairns fire dump.
Off the topic a bit, I recall meeting Bill Surh indirectly when I was a work experience kid with Aero Support International at Essendon (Hangar 104). It would have been back in 86 or 87.
Sadly, not long after (not the same day) I saw a Cessna 402 (VH-RED) take off from runway 35 at Essendon on a hot afternoon and observed smoke coming from an engine and it wasn’t performing, it went down shortly afterwards and I saw the black smoke🤬. There is a freeway somewhere near the accident site now I believe.
I heard that was Bill flying the aeroplane.
I was learning to fly at the time, the memory of seeing the 402 trailing smoke and not performing will always be in my memory, together with knowing that a very experienced pilot was flying it.
I’m now quite experienced, however I still consider every flight to be my first.