Silver Aviators

Phantom Eagle and Captain America, both famous comic book superheroes, fertilised the imaginations of many young boys, and no doubt a few girls, growing up in the 1950’s. The Silver Aviator may not be comparable to the comic book superhero, but is nevertheless uniquely a product of those times…a baby-boomer still ‘waggling wings’. 

Silver Aviators, lived youth in an era of post-war optimism. Those exciting and innovating days of the 1950’s and 1960’s when aircraft manufacturers were churning out shiny new models at a prolific rate and birthing entire new categories of aeroplanes. Silver Aviators have each occupied a formative step on the ladder of aviation history when the idolised backdrop of wartime air aces merged with dreams of flying freedom. The dream of; “I am going to be a pilot”….has metaphorically fire-walled many throttles on the way to a life-long aviation love affair.

Age data on aircraft pilot’s is relatively easy to obtain. For example, U.S. statistics list the average age for all US pilots at approximately 45 years. Then, to cap that off there are over 1,600 pilots around the world who count themselves as members of one of the the world's most distinguished pilot organisations, the United Flying Octogenarians. Each of its members having flown as pilot in command after reaching their 80th birthday.

Silver Aviator’s are undoubtedly septuagenarians. Baby boomers outwardly exhibiting the ravages of their age but when it comes to flying an airplane they are inwardly many years younger. They are a unique genre of pilots drenched in the spirit of the noblest of superheroes, while harbouring an irresistible passion to fly an airplane and ‘waggle wings’.

A group of mates and Silver Aviators still ‘waggling wings’.

Silver Aviator, ‘Young Bob’ flys his Baron in the mountains of Papua New Guinea and is an United Flying Octogenarian.

Bazflyers qualify as Silver Aviators

Fifties comic book superhero “Captain America”

Cloud Piecer

Alpine mountains, at this time of the year all cloaked in pristine white snow, dominate the landscape surrounding Twizel. Visibly sentinel above all is New Zealand’s highest peak, Mount Cook at 12,218 feet (3,724 metres). History attributes the first sighting of this pointed peak to the British explorer, Captain James Cook in 1767. However, long before that time it had been indelibly imbedded in Māori myth as Aoraki, meaning the “Cloud Piecer”.

The first known ascent of Aoraki occurred on Christmas Day 1894. Sixteen years later in December 1910, Freda Du Faur an Australian, became the first woman to ascend the mountain. Aoraki Mount Cook and its surrounding peaks were also the training grounds of famous New Zealand mountaineer Sir Edmund Hillary. Hillary went on to be the first person in the world to summit Mount Everest successfully. and in recent years Aoraki Mount Cook has gone on to challenge hundreds more ambitious mountaineers.

Aoraki is considered a technically challenging mountain. Since the early 20th century, about 80 people have died attempting to climb the mountain, making it New Zealand's deadliest peak. Many more have died climbing in the locality and hardly a season goes by without at least one fatality. 

Beginning from the late 1960’s helicopters have beneficially been used to save many lives on Aoraki Mount Cook. A few such missions in the early seventies involved RNZAF Huey (UH-1) helicopters some of them flown at the time by Bazflyer1. In later years Bazflyer1 could also have been spotted flying AS350 and AS355 helicopters around the “Cloud Piecer” with tourists onboard.

The “Cloud Piecer” bathed in sunset pastel as viewed across Lake Pukaki

Aoraki Mount Cook up close

“Cloud Piecer” dominates the local landscape


Evening colours over lake Pukaki 


Approaching the “Cloud Piecer” in BAZ at 8,500 feet earlier this year

Twizel Time

Occasionally it becomes a choice to leave the Comanche at home. This recently occurred when the Bazflyers accepted an assignment to spend a month in Twizel looking after two ‘grand-dogs’ named Brydie and Lola. 

Nestled up against the might Southern Alps, Twizel is the small town that was never meant to be. Born in the late ’60’s as a temporary settlement to house workers constructing a nearby hydroelectric scheme, it was intended to be demolished when its purpose had been fulfilled. However, twenty years later the remaining residents successfully fought to ensure their beloved community was saved…Twizel is nowadays home to around 1,600 residents and accommodates many more itinerant visitors during holiday periods.

As an interesting aside, the town’s name comes from the nearby Twizel River, in turn named after the historic Twizel Bridge in Northumberland that the Bazflyers visited during their 2019 Round the World flight.

One of New Zealand’s iconic bike trails, Alps to Ocean, conveniently bisects Twizel. The lure of this more than 300 kilometre bike ride along rough high country trails and tracks was more than Bazflyer1 could resist. In keen anticipation the mountain bike also travelled by vehicle from the Bazbase. Why else would the Comanche be left at home in the hangar…?

Twizel is more than 1,000 kms by road and a ferry journey across Cook Strait from the Bazbase.

The township of Twizel is snuggled up against the Southern Alps


Reflections captured along the trail


Mount Cook at 12,218 feet (3,724 m) is New Zealand’s highest mountain viewed here on a cloudless day while out biking.


Bazflyer1 with his YT ‘Decoy’ mountain bike 

Looking along the trail ahead


The ‘grand-dogs’, Brydie (left) and Lola (right)

Channel Country

Aptly named the Channel Country, it covers a huge area, over 200,000 square kilometres, or by another measure it is a significant bite of Queensland’s Outback. Sparsely populated, less than 2,000 residents call the Channel Country home, but what this country lacks in population it makes up for with cattle; it is graziers territory.

This part of Australia is a series of ancient flood plains within an arid landscape. However, when the area gets enough rainfall, the Channel Country comes to life – from dry dessert channels to flowing waterways – from cracked golden earth to a lush green carpet of grass…and those once in a decade rains arrived earlier this year. As the water flows downstream on its long journey to a normally dry Lake Eyre, it forms a myriad of channels and spreads across wide open plains. 

What better way to get the full Channel Country experience than a birds-eye-view from the trusty Comanche. Then touch down at some of its small remote settlements to meet the people who live and work on this outback land. The Bazflyers did just that…

YBOU = Boulia, YWTN = Winton, YHUG = Hughenden 

Boulia - a tiny almost forgotten settlement on the crossroads to everywhere else. In a much earlier time the tiny town had pubs, lots of pubs where itinerant shearers congregated. Today there’s just one pub. It was busy in the evening serving grub and drinks, but then in the words of a local inhabitant our stop-over coincided with the tourist season, an annual phenomenon of outback travellers passing through that lasts perhaps a week before the heat and flies again return. 

History and stories abound. There was a chat with Mary. Now in her middle years, she was born in Boulia and lives on a station property just outside of town, about an hour’s drive away. A third generation grazier who’s experienced her share of droughts, hard times and bad times. Today with the Channel Country coloured green and waterholes overflowing, Mary and her family stand on the cusp of an infrequent very good time for farming in the outback.

Winton - is another Channel Country town with its own unique stories to tell. Around 95 million years ago the vast surrounding lands were lush forests on the shores of a huge inland sea. An environment that hosted Dinosaurs and an abundance of prehistoric sea life. Winton affords an unique opportunity to view rare fossils, dinosaur footprints and bones. It’s a place where the imagination can be transported back to a time, an almost incomprehensibly long time ago.

Not nearly so long ago, 1895 to be exact, the iconic Australian poet Banjo Patterson was staying in Winton when he was inspired to deliver the first performance of his great Australian anthem, ‘Waltzing Matilda’. 

Hughenden - another small Channel Country town was founded by pastoralists, riding on the sheep's back with a thriving wool industry. But droughts, mechanisation and poor commodity prices have greatly reduced its population over the years. Today there are only a few hundred people to fill the town’s ultra wide streets. 

Remarkably, Hughenden’s declining population and fortunes is being turned around with economic diversification. Better utilisation of the region's water for crop irrigation, and two large scale solar and wind power schemes. Haley’s an entrepreneurial young person who left the area after finishing school but recently returned and operates a thriving coffee cart located beside the main highway bisecting the town. Hughenden has every prospect of fulfilling her ambitions and anyone else who decides to seek their future in the Channel Country.

Comanche Corroboree

Corroboree is a word coined by the European settlers of Australia for a customary gathering of the country’s Indigenous people, usually accompanied by rituals and music. So when a group of pilots, all owners of Piper Comanche aeroplanes, gathered together at Alice Springs, a town situated in the very heart of Australia, it could aptly be described as a Comanche Corroboree. Fortunately in a traditional sense, Corroboree’s welcome outside participation and it was in this spirit the Bazflyers flew the trusty Comanche 2,400 NM (4,400 km) from New Zealand to also be in Alice Springs, once again.

Australia is one big country and this means it’s a long way to Alice Springs from almost anywhere. Like the other Comanches making their way into Alice for the Corroboree, the Bazflyers also opted to include an on route overnight stop and the remote, small settlement of Birdsville was chosen for this privilege. The latter part of this westward flight was into a spectacular setting sun and ended with an evening arrival. 

Deep in the heart of wild and isolated country, Birdsville is remote. Normally home to a population of just 140 folk, the pub was buzzing when the Bazflyers arrived. During the cooler winter months thousands of Australians hitch a caravan to their 4x4 vehicles and head off out into their own big backyard. Then there was also early arrivals for the Big Red Bash, an iconic multi-day music festival held annually in the nearby dessert. 

Next morning four other Comanches flying from locations further south, stopped in at Birdsville to take on fuel. The Bazflyers joined them for the remaining two hour run into Alice. The downwind leg for landing on Runway 12 at Alice provided a bird’s eye view of many airliners still in Covid storage. 

As for the ensuing three day corroboree….the ritual was talking about and comparing Comanche aeroplanes, while the music was at night huddled around a campfire. 

Seventeenth Time

There happens to be nothing significant about the title of this blog other than it records my seventeenth flight over the Tasman Sea in the trusty Comanche, ZK-BAZ. The flight was from Kerikeri in the north of New Zealand direct to Coolangatta Airport south of Brisbane. Furthermore, this achievement was undertaken on my own as Bazflyer2 had flown commercial to Australia about a month earlier.

Like all of the sixteen previous crossings, this one followed prior analysis of weather forecasts in an attempt to choose a suitable day in time. June is winter down under, a time of the year that is not exactly renowned for settled weather conditions. Not too much of a headwind is critical, and of course a tailwind component would be optimal. Then there is the matter of cloud along the way. Because of low ambient air temperatures at this time of the year, cloud can always hide icing and this is definitely to be avoided. 

As luck goes, I got lucky. The clockwise recirculating air flow of a Southern Hemisphere low pressure system off the north of New Zealand was offering a ‘sling-shot’ tailwind effect along with favourable flight conditions out in the Tasman Sea. 

Apart from the prospect of a wet beginning, the cloud forecast at my proposed 8,000 feet cruising altitude promised a sunny journey. 

The day was chosen and Custom’s notified. Then right on form it was a wet instrument departure out of Kerikeri but even while climbing to cruise altitude the ground speed teasingly indicated 160 knots. An hour later rain and cloud gave way to sunshine and best of all, a continuous ground speed that was never less than 170 knots. 

This all added up to be my fasted westerly Tasman Sea crossing ever…1,145 nautical miles in 6 hours 45 minutes. With Customs and Quarantine formalities complete the Bazflyers were reunited again and ready for another Australian adventure. Perhaps ‘seventeen’ is significant after all….

Southern Soundings

Sounding is the action of evaluation. It was with this spirit foremost, along with it being the first Bazflyer sortie for 2022, that the trusty Comanche alighted on Invercargill airport. A southern sounding, so to speak. After all, it had been quite a few years since we had last plumbed the depths of this southerly latitude.

Invercargill is New Zealand’s most southern city and one of the southernmost cities in the world. In fact, it is only a mere 1,200 NM (2,200 km) from Invercargill down to the frozen continent of Antarctica. Its location deep in the ‘roaring-forties’, that band of strong westerly winds found in the Southern Hemisphere and greatly favoured in the era of sailing ships, resulted in the nearby harbour of Bluff being the earliest European settlement in New Zealand. The first settlers arrived in 1824.

The southern region of New Zealand is fortuitously sounded by rich farmland that has traditionally been the country’s largest meat producer, notably sheep meat. For over fifty years beginning 1915, New Zealand’s entire meat output was religiously purchased by the British government to help ensure a regular flow of food to the British public. Much of the meat was processed in abattoirs around Invercargill and an Australian man who lived there and worked a lifetime in the industry unwittingly became the impetus for our sortie to this southern city.

The man’s name is Ken, the cousin of a long-time Bazflyer friend in Australia. Ken died in 2016, aged 87 years and was buried together with his wife in the Invercargill soldier’s cemetery. Unfortunately, due to Covid-19 travel restrictions and other constraints, the cousin had not been able to visit New Zealand since Ken’s death. Our southern sortie was to pay respects to Ken on behalf of the cousin. 

Raised in working class Melbourne during the hard Great Depression years, Ken was considered something of a ‘larrikin’ when just a teenager in 1945 he enlisted in the Australian Army and served with the British Commonwealth Occupation Force in Japan. Returning home to Australia Ken settled into the slaughterhouse industry, becoming a committed unionist. It was his role as a union official that ultimately saw him working in Invercargill, where he married Mavis and lived his life out. 

The southern region turned it on in style for our visit and delivered near perfect weather. And as for our southern sounding….we can’t wait to go back again, and of course to say ‘hello’ to Ken and Mavis

Paying respects to Ken and Mavis.

Overlooking the town of Bluff, New Zealand’s southernmost and oldest European settlement.

The end of the road. One cannot drive any further south in New Zealand.

Victoria, a ‘Covid refugee’ from Germany departing Bluff on her 3000 km walk to Cape Reinga at the far north of New Zealand. On her own with just a backpack containing her belongings.

The trusty Comanche at rest on Invercargill Airport.

Brilliant Rata blossoms characteristic of a hot New Zealand summer.

The Homecoming

One of the special highlights of flying round the world in our trusty Comanche (ZK-BAZ) was taking it back to where it was born at Lock Haven in the state of Pennsylvania, a well kept small rural American town that symbolically hugs the adjacent Susquehanna River. 

In the late 1930’s, William (Bill) Piper adopted Lock Haven as the manufacturing home for his Piper Aircraft Company. In those days the J-3 Cub, a straight forward two seat trainer aeroplane, was the company’s principal product. During the war years many thousands of them were built for the military. 

Going into the 1950’s, Bill Piper foresaw a market for economical, comfortable and fast private owner aeroplanes and thus the Piper PA-24 Comanche was born. The prototype, Serial Number PA24-1, took to the air in May 1956 with a second example following in October that same year. 

The first production Comanche, Serial Number PA24-3, came off the Lock Haven assembly line in September 1957. It was followed by a rapid linage of improvements and new models. Altogether, Piper produced 4,857 single-engine Comanche’s between 1958 and 1972 in six variants. By the end of 1961, Piper had successfully adapted the hugely popular legacy Comanche design into a twin-engine variant designated the PA30, perhaps better known as a Twin Comanche.

The Bazflyer’s own trusty Comanche was born at Lock Haven in 1962 emerging from the factory as Serial Number PA24-3206. Although designated a PA24-250 it was delivered with the fuel injected six cylinder engine, toe-brakes and electric flaps, all features that were production standard on the subsequent PA24-260 model.

As the overall aircraft market shrank and production numbers dwindled, Piper figured the Comanche was no longer cost-effective to produce. So when the Susquehanna River flooded in 1972 damaging much of the tooling on the Comanche line, a decision to cease production was inevitable.

As testimony to Piper’s timeless design and craftsmanship thousands of Comanches fly-on in the hands of aficionados all over the world. What better example than our own Comanche flying some 13,000 nm (24,000 kms) all the way from New Zealand to land at Lock Haven, the place where, as a brand new aeroplane, it flew out of fifty-seven years previous. 

Nostalgic as this historic occasion was, it got better. In a hangar on the airport, not far from the now derelict old Piper factory, the Bazflyers found Norm Johnson, a former Piper employee from the late ’50's, working away in his hanger proudly restoring N2024P, the original prototype Comanche PA24-1. (Since our visit Norm’s precious piece of history is once again flying in Lock Haven skies.

The quaint town of Lock Haven still embraces the Susquehanna River, nowadays insulated from its flowing waters by solid stop banks. The old brick Piper factory building, having been empty for 50 years, longingly appeals for a purposeful occupier. Notwithstanding, Bill Piper’s legacy lives on. His Comanche prototype is back in the air at its place of birth and the first mighty PA24-400, perhaps Bill’s ultimate dream, resides in the nearby Piper Museum. Even although our ‘homecoming’ visit to Lock Haven was for just a few days, landing our Comanche back at its place of birth was a very special and nostalgic privilege…indeed!  

Stop banks contain the Susquehanna River as it flows through the town of Lock Haven, PA.

Part of the now derelict Piper Aircraft factory where thousands of Cub and Comanche aeroplanes were born

A venerable Piper Cub in its element (photographed at Lock Haven)


The prototype Comanche, Serial Number PA24-1, undergoing a loving restoration in Norm’s hangar on Lock Haven airport.

Data plate PA24-1 attached to Norm’s first ever built Comanche.

Norm Johnson in a technical discussion with Bazflyer1


Bazflyers with Comanche ZK-BAZ at Lock Haven


‘Bill’ Piper was a visionary entrepreneur in his fifties when he discovered aviation.