A great sky, although it could do with some more clouds, but not much of interest in the foreground. (That’s the outlet of the lake, the start of the mighty Clutha River, by the way.)

Then it got a little better:

But still not much of a foreground.  It will be better in the winter, when those hills are covered with snow.  Then the sun started to light up the willows near the Outlet:

That was more of a taste of what was to come.  Finally, they were ablaze:

(That was a real test of a tripod: 1/40 sec with a 300mm lens.  My tripod passed -  well almost.)

At one point it disappeared down in the river valley beyond the airfield,  suddenly appearing at the other end heading straight towards us.  I was too surprised to catch the shot.  This one from a later pass:

We saw a de Havilland Vampire and a Strikemaster.  I can remember being impressed by the Vampire when I went to the Ohakea airshow when I was a school kid.

The Vampire could still do tricks:

 Two Iroquois helicopters from No. 3 Squadron, RNZAF, flew in to unload some troops:

then to lay down smoke so the troops could not be seen by the enemy (us):

For a moment they appeared to overdo it slightly, so they couldn’t see the enemy either (or very much else):

but they recovered to extract a wounded soldier from the troop carrier.

Not to be outdone, the Navy showed us how to find someone at sea,  with their newly upgraded Orions:

and then a Seasprite plucked the poor guy from a moving boat.  All quite fun.

Now for something more peaceful, even if it was noisier.  Frazer Briggs flies model aeroplanes.  Big ones.  His Raven has a wingspan of more than 3 metres.  It was amazing to see what he could do with it.  Fly sideways?  No problem.

Upside down, just a couple of metres off the ground?  No problem.

His method of landing it was fairly spectular.  He pointed it vertically upwards, blipping the throttle so it more or less hovered on the spot, allowed it to stall, recovered as it fell back and then flew it down the last few metres to land in about 10-20 m of runway.  Here’s the start of that process:

This was placed slong with its mates on top of an old tractor, on display in the front yard of a house next to ‘The Old Nurses Home’ where I was staying.

The shed on this property was wonderful, from the door we could see that it was full of interesting stuff:

That sign at the end wall said a lot:

There were several tractors on the site, providing shelter and homes to lots of small creatures and plants.

An old cart, surrounded by a neatly mown lawn:

And finally in a lean-to next to the shed, a van which had seen better days but was becoming something else entirely:

While other countries use powerful, state-of-the-art  jets for their premium aerobatic teams, NZ saves a lot of money and fuel by using old CT-4E Airtrainers.  They still look good.

I couldm’t really do justice to the MX2, a high performance aerobatic machine.  It seemed to drop gently out of control in its ‘Falling Leaf’ routine:

It certainly did provide some nice pictures.

The trusty old Harvards were there:

Due to the unavailability of their usual Hercules, the RNZAF skydivers dropped down from an ancient DC3 (a plane which the commentator said they prefer – the slower speed makes for an easier exit).

 They then set about forming a stack (being careful not to allow their smoke generators to burn through the control cords of their neighbour):

Whereupon they just hooned around, it seemed.  Some were obviously heavier smokers than others.

A display from the modern miltary trainer, the Beechcraft T-6C Texan II was accompanied by a very professional commentary explaining its virtues.  Trouble was, the pitch was aimed at the air force top brass, not us.  As we no longer have any fighters, its hard to imagine we would need fighter trainers.  But it was nice of them to show up.  Here it is (it could do aerobatics too):

A closer view showing the glaciers and ice cliffs coming off that mountain:

Some even closer views:

As I mentioned, the track is indeed very easy.

Kea Point gives a great view of the bottom end of the Mueller Glacier, with Aoraki in the distance (far right).

(some more stuff on this walk)

I’ve always admired the shape of the wings, almost as much as the incredible sound of these high-powered piston-engined aircraft.

What next?  What about something completely different, the Grumman Avenger? This was the largest single engine aircraft of its time, designed as a carrier-born torpedo bomber with folding wings.

Or the Curtis P-40 Kittyhawk?  The RNZAF apparently had almost 300 of these in the Pacific.

A sight that could have been rather unwelcome during an action, depending on whose side you were on:

That was the Goodyear Corsair FG-1D which, after landing, taxied up to the Gold stand and folded its wings in a rather quaint salute.  The RNZAF operated 400 of these and this is the last one remaining in operation. It has a 2000 HP Pratt & Whitney radial engine, can cruise at 13,500 m, travel at 700 kph and has a range of 1500 km without refuelling. (It sounds great too.)

The North American P-51D Mustang was one of the most capable fighters of that era. Its tremendous range and power made it an ideal escort for high-altitude bombers. In this shot, it is not at high altitude.

We also were treated to the sight and sopund of three Yakovlev Yak 3-M.  From the program again:  “ Nicknamed “Dogfighter Supreme”, the Yak 3 was the ultimate refinement in Soviet wartime fighter development. The smallest and lightest combat fighter of WW11, upon entering combat with the Luftwaffe. It was found to be so much superior to the Focke-Wulf 190 and the ME-109 that a signal was sent to all squadrons saying, ‘avoid all combat below 10,000 feet with any Yak fighter lacking an oil cooler under the nose’.”

Finally, here’s a shot of the flypast of the aircraft operated by the RNZAF; the Kittyhawks, Corsair and Grumman:

There was actually a group of students there at the time, from the University of Exeter.

I took a photograph of one of the lecturers in full flight, with Aoraki in the background.  He could probably use it.

The walk is not too difficult really, these young children from Taiwan managed it.

The terminal lake was a rather muddy colour:

with plenty of icebergs:

Finally, a view back down the valley from where we had come:

(Tasman GLacier is New Zealand’s largest, 27 km long and up to 4 km wide.  You can read all about it here, even book a tour with Glacier  Explorers. )

David Phillips, an Airbus captain, gave us a display of aerobatics in his De Havilland DH82A Tiger Moth.  Hard to do it justice with a still camera.

There were three World War I fighters (a lot fewer than at the Blenheim airshow at Omaka).  This next one is a replica of the Fokker D-8, the “flying razor”.

The famous Sopworth Camel was there (or rather, a replica):

and the Bristol Fighter:

For the photographers: I had a real problem.  In order to get sharp images when using a long lens (the Nikon 300mm f4 AF-S) I find I have to use a very short shutter speed.  But that also freezes the propellor.  To get a nice round blur and the proper sensation of speed requires a much slower shutter speed.  That takes a steadier hand than I have  (or a more expensive, ‘VR’ type lens).

Around 2003, give or take a year, we got news of an algae bloom off the West Coast of the South Island. We asked for a seawater sample. Using our new LC-MS, we looked for some toxins. “Yep, there’s heaps there” said analyst Paul McNabb. “There must be 5 or 10 picagrams of pectenotoxin (PTX) in that little sample”. (It takes 1 million picagrams to make 1 microgram and 1 million micrograms to make 1 gram)

Lincoln Mackenzie, who had well developed antennae for such things, immediately charged off to Greymouth in a hired van, armed with a portable microscope, samplers, pumps, masses of flexible hose and as many 20 litre plastic carboys as he could get hold of. He rented a commercial fishing boat in Greymouth and set off to find the bloom. This meant collecting seawater samples from various depths and studying them under the microscope – his quarry was so small that it was invisible to the naked eye. Eventually he found it, a massive bloom in a fairly narrow band, 4-5 metres down below the sea surface. He started pumping, using fine plankton nets to concentrate the algae bloom into something resembling Coca-Cola. After 12 or 15 hours, he had filled all the carboys and headed home.

Weeks later, when the contents had been analysed, we realised that we had the world’s supply of PTX for the next 4-5 years in Lincoln’s bottles. We just had to purify it, analyse it very accurately and present it in a form that could be used as a standard.

You can see that was a long, difficult job which is now paying off.  Commercialisation of research sometimes takes a long time.

Here’s the label from a box of ampoules with the very first of these standards produced around 2004, a label that I was very proud of:

Links:

NZ Herald coverage

Scoop

Cawthron Institute

We stayed at the Unwin Lodge, a superb new hut owned and run by the NZ Alpine Club.  The views from the main living area were great:

The next norning I took some shots of the nearby peaks, including this one of Mt Cook as the sun was rising:

A little later, the view from the valley was different:

The visitors’ centre at Mt Cook village is well designed and full of interesting views (and historic stuff).

One of the exhibits displayed Freda du Faur, the first woman to climb Mt Cook:

(Not a very flattering model, but I doubt whether she would mind too much, even though she tried hard to preserve her femininity in that very male world.)  She climbed in a skirt, of course, but with trousers underneath.  You can find her book (in ebook format) here.

We met several groups of climbers.  “Do you know my son?” I asked one of the guides.  “I was at his place yesterday” was the reply. “You know he’s in the mountains right now, don’t you? Not out till Friday.”  We did.   The alpine world in NZ is pretty small.

More posts to come on the topic of this trip, it was a beauty.