Peter, 65, one of the last 25 pound pommies to come out by ship in 1968, hails originally from Somerset where he was managing a farmhouse cheese-making farm.
He studied at Shuttleworth Agricultural College which happened to accommodate the Shuttleworth Collection (vintage planes) on the same site, and there caught the bug that has put him in the air today.
His tiny two-seater weighs about as much as one of his larger cows and uses 15 litres of fuel per hour.
“That’s at 200km an hour,” says Peter. “She carries fuel for just over three hours of flying, enough to get Annette and I 600kms without any trouble. The greatest distance we’ve covered was from the farm to Ashburton, refuelling twice on the way.
Raglan is only an hour away straight down the coast, and Whangarei, 15 minutes. We catch up with our daughters for lunch on the north shore in 35 minutes, and fly back in the afternoon.”
“Flying is easier than driving, and safer than riding a motorcycle. It’s my recreation. We join fly-in’s around the country. Quite a well-known one is Black Sands at the Raglan club. They organise beach landings, and competitions. At their last fly-in, over 30 planes landed on the beach and there were at least 50 more on the strip.”
“Microlights are rated for visual flying only and are qualified as a class by their weight, a stall speed of 38 knots, and maximum two-person capacity.
For anything larger, you need a Private Pilot’s Licence, but microlights have advanced so much, you don’t need anything bigger for recreational flying. My Pioneer has features, such as a constant speed prop, which even the Dargaville Aero Club Cessna doesn’t have.”
“I learnt to fly at Dargaville. It’s the cheapest place in the country and Murray Foster, the area training officer, gives theory tuition for free. All you pay for is the use of the plane which is just over $100 an hour. Pilots come from all over the country to train at Dargaville and you can sit all your exams there.
I started in 2001 and got my solo licence after eight hours and my full licence in 35 hours. The medical for a microlight licence is the same as for an HT licence.”
Plane owners can house their craft at Dargaville Aero Club if there is sufficient hangar space, but Peter keeps his in a reconstituted cow shed, and was fortunate to have 400 metres of straight, level land angled in the right direction for a runway.
On the current farm since 1976, they managed very well through the drought, although production was down and the cows dried off two months earlier than usual. “We had to buy over 50 tonnes of palm kernel to feed calves and heifers alone when normally we wouldn’t be buying any feed at all.
Still, we recently received a very good piece of news. One of our bulls has been placed sixth for LIC DNA proven sires, and will be available for this years’ mating.
