It was a beautiful day in Taupo yesterday, 8 August 2016, and perfect for plane spotting... and there were lots to spot... Airport Authority CEO Mike Groome was telling me Taupo is the 8th busiest airport in NZ... As far as I am concerned it is one of the best in NZ for plane spotting... It's easy to get full sun side on shots
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| The photo of the day for me was Sounds Air's Pilatus PC12 ZK-PLS. I had been wanting to get a nice full sun shot of PLS before it is repainted... Mike from Sounds Air tells me it isn't far off from having its turn! |
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| Mountain Air's Cessna 172 ZK-EKP looked as if it had been in for a maintenance check |
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| A beautiful day for a cross country... Fielding based Diamond DA20 ZK-FIY |
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| With all the snow in the back country the helicopters were busy... Helicopter Services (BOP)'s Aerospatiale Squirrel ZK-HKC called in briefly |
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| Inflite Charter's Aerospatiale Twin Squirrel had a quick fuel stop |
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| East Kaweka Helicopters' Hughes 500E ZK-HZH was a new one for me |
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| The Greenlea Rescue helicopter, Aerospatiale Squirrel ZK-HZJ off on another mission |
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| Locally based Bell Jetranger ZK-IRJ |
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| Love the background... Taupo Tandem Skydiving's Cessna Grand Caravan ZK-JMP |
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| Cessna 172 ZK-LGE was also up from Fielding |
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| Cessna 182 Skylane ZK-RGZ |
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| Also on jump ship duties was Skydive Taupo's Pacific Aerospace 750XL ZK-SDT |
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| It was great to hear a Cessna 402 coming in and out again. ZK-SVQ is operated on Kiwi Air's licence for aerial photography work |
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| NZ Aviation's Cessna 172 ZK-VAT... It doesn't sound like a 172 |
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| Cessna 172 ZK-ZZC was in the circuit |
I think PLS was unserviceable the day you snapped these as another PC12 turned up at some point and then it appeared engineers were working on PLS. Just happened to check the Taupo Airport webcam and spied all this! Certainly was a busy day for light aircraft, could see that on the webcam as well!
ReplyDeleteExactly right... It was a small micro switch. Sounds Air flew Pilatus PC12 PLX up to pick up the passengers. Great effort Sounds Air. Engineers flew up in LGE. Was sorry to have missed PLX.
ReplyDelete8th busiest! And with regular 50 seater RPT thrown in there .. Sounds like it's time for proper ATC
ReplyDelete8th busiest is nice to promote however given the place getters of 4-7 probably aren't exactly frantic I wouldn't get too worked up about it. Actually, does anyone know where such stats can be found and who, without Airways representation, actually collates said data??
ReplyDeleteThink it's time NZAP got a proper ATC control tower now
ReplyDelete