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First Picture of N118T 
OOCL FAIR !
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Well, Finally, The box is open........I bought N118T from Joe Gibson in Oshkosh, Wisconsin during Sept 2006. With De-registration, packing and payment, N118T left Wisconsin early October 2006 on a truck bound for LA, California. Once through customs, N118T's container was loaded onto an age-old container ship, OOCL Fair. Initially customs in LA would not let N118T be loaded onto the ship until they had the Sellers Social Security Number - what a huge effort that was. Customs threatened to charge a $650 a week demurrage fee until they got the number - We sorted it all by 09 November and once through customs, she was loaded onto OCCL Fair, bound for Ningbo in China. She left China mid December and arrived at Brisbane over New Years' week-end. What a mess. It took me until 10th January 2007 to clear customs - so finally she arrived at Caboolture airfield on a rainy and overcast afternoon, around mid January 2007. The ship, OOCL FAIR was incidently on her last voyage ever - once she off-loaded her cargo in Brisbane, she would be wrecked or sold off for other uses. I found this out whilst searching the internet on the ship - I wanted to know all I could about my plane, where the ship would be on a given day etc. From Ningbo in China, OOCL Fair had to first go to Melbourne, then Sydney over Christmas and Brisbane over new year. If you go to the port of Brisbane website you can see exactly which ship is where - imagine the agony when I knew she was lying anchored off Point Cartright and it will at least be 2 weeks before I can get to my aeroplane. |
| I will never forget the day my clearing agent called me to open the crate for Customs' Inspection. Stephanie and I raced down to a warehouse - I could not remember the adress when I got to the wharf area. Eventually, though, we found it. I remember walking through a huge warehouse and I could see a million containers out in the yard. With a surprise, as we came around one corner, I saw the Wittman Tailwind, ready to be off-loaded. The container door was open and all I could see was a yellow nose, metal prop and wheels. Can you imagine scanning the fuselage and wings and inside of the cockpit , trying to decide if all is ok and intact. We quickly off-loaded the aircraft and pushed her to the quarantine area. I was allowed to do a thorough inspection of all the goods - I peered into the cowls, inspected the tyres looked over the fuselage again and again and then stood back and decided I love it. We found the keys tied to a wing attachement as the owner had told me and it was with great pride that I opened the door for the 1st time Absolutely delighted with the realisation that all is intact I looked through the bags inside the compartment - there was a spare wooden prop, A bag full of logbooks, builders plans, two seats in the baggage area and so on. It was amazing - I was overjoyed and could not wait to get this plane to Caboolture After the inspection and to save myself time and a lot of aggrevation, I decided to rent a U-Haul type trailer at the local servo and trailer her from customs, as you can see in the picture above. Once we arrived at the airfield, I was immediately approached by Ken Morris who helped me unload from the trailer. She ran down the ramps with no fuss and within 1/2 an hour she was safely parked in the hanger. |
THE BOX - Finally !!!!!
Open the door !!!
Customs - 1st day 
Customs - 1st day |
Before I go any further, I have to thank Trevor Mills, Ken Morris, Bert Persson, Alister, Andy and Speedy and most importantly Stephen Dines for all the assistance, help and guidance throughout. I also have a special word of thanks to Rick Lea who can most probably fly anything. Prior to leaving the USA, I had to get an export CofA and a FAA de-registration. I also registered N118T with CASA and VH-AKZ was therfore registered long before she arrived in the country. Anyway, the following morning I was back at the airfield and enjoying attention from all about my nice looking Wittman. There were some immediate issues which my LAME wanted adressed, like door handles, Airspeed, Altimeter and Compass calibration for Australia and Southern Hemisphere. We had the engine cowlings off in no time and all looked good at 1st glance. The propellor was a non-standard McCauley with no logbook entry, so a new prop had to be ordered from Barry Bishton. I immediately started on the wiring, firewall forward. After having washed the engine bay, I re-routed all the wiring in as far possible to avoid chafing and rubbing. I re-routed the plumbing at the same time, trying to make orderly sense from the miriad of wires and tubes. This gave me good opportunhity to inspect accesories, undercarriage joints and other items. This was also a good time to remove, inspect and re-install the oil-screen, which came up clean. I managed to work a method to raise both wheels off the ground, remove the wheels and inspect the bearings. Afterwards I re-fitted the gear-leg fairings and moved to the cabin. The most drama was caused by the existance of a Loran 612-B, integrated with the altitude encoder and King 208 VOR. I decided that whilst we are waiting for a new propellor to be completed, I could tackle the Loran removal. What a job. I found the wiring behind the panel very complex and with all the written tags being rubbed off, I had my work cut-out for me. It took days and days to get the wiring back into a working order and it was great pride that I tipped the Loran into the rubbish bin, where it belonged. |
| In the meantime Speedy painted the new reggo and touched-up some spots here and there. He did an awful good job and I'd recommend him to anyone - if you need a repair job, he can most probably do it. Trevor helped me install the McCauley prop for the engine test runs and he did some high speed taxi-runs. The new prop arrived a couple of weeks later and it was time for the weighing and final inspection. They weight and balance was done without much fuss, except that we found a calculation error in the original calculations - this had been with the aircraft for 30 years - how amazing. Alister found that the rudder cables were worn where they come out the side of the fuselage, so they had to be replaced. |
Wings on, Cowls & Prop off |
Wings on, Cowls & Prop off |
Port Side Engine |
Another Port shot - Engine |
Cabin - orgiginal |
Another Cabin Shot |
Imitation Leather seats |
Notice Hand Rudder |
1st Engine Runs |
AKZ is ready !! |
| Eventually the final day came soon enough. Bert Persson, who incidently owns the other Tailwind at Caboolture Airfield, offered to do my test flight. The plane flew fantastic from the word go. I am so proud to say that, I went on later that afternoon with my friend Rick Lea and we took off, flew to Bribie Island and back to Caboolture - I was absolutely stunned at the crisp performce of this little shortwing - very hard too land, very twitchy on the ground, but what a perfect flyer. |
| I have since flown some 30 hours with VH-AKZ and it keeps getting better. If you wanted (see the past tense) free entertainment of outstanding preportions, you should have come and watch me career up and down the runway whilst I was trying to master this taildragger. It is on record that I used most of the width of the runway, most of the time, now and again finding myself twisted sideway facing 45 degrees upwards etc. - real good value and it was free. Jokes aside, AKZ flies fantastic - I had initial fuel contamination problems, but now that I have cleaned the fuel tank, AKZ is every bit as fantastic as i'd hoped she'd be. I generally cruise comfortably at 125knots and initial fuel tests showing a unbelievable comsumption of only 14 liters an hour. I subscribe the low consumption to the streamlined design, very coarse propellor and C85 pistons retrofitted to the otherwise standard Continental O-200. |
My 1st Taxi !! |
Bert Test Flying AKZ |
What a climb !! |
Me as 1st pax !! |
My Second flight |
A bit blury - 140 knots |
Early morning, Kilcoy |
Rick & Me, having a ball !! |
Back in Hanger 53 |
Just too beautiful !! |
| Now, as fate would have it, I am the proud owner of 1/2 of Hanger 53. Please do feel free to pop in at any time to say hi or just have a look at AKZ. If you have not flown a Wittman Tailwind yet, come and chat with me - WHAT A FANTASTIC, UGLY LOOKING PLANE THIS IS !!. |
| Please go back a page on my web and see lots and lots of Wittman Tailwind Pictures. There is a forum on yahoo - please click here to have a go - there is a map on my website which shows most of the tailwinds in the world and where they are located and there is allways one or two for sale. If you need more info , ask me. |
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Copyright © 2006 Peter Pretorius |