Warbirds over Wanaka?

jimhorner

jimhorner

Line Up and Wait
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Jim Horner
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My wife and I are going to be retiring at the end of this year (Yay!), and we're planning to do a lot of travelling while we're still relatively young and have energy. Our first trip will be next year to Australia and New Zealand. Has anyone been to the Warbirds over Wanaka, NZ airshow? Any Pireps about it? Any suggestions in general for must-see, must-do activities in Australia and New Zealand?
 
Also hit up Dave @ Classic Wings magazine.....I email with him on a couple of things ever so often and he's a great resource on what is going on in that part of the world.
 
I met a guy that came to talk to me after my warbird forum presentation today that is from New Zealand. He spoke highly of that show - invited me down there!
 
I've heard it's really terrific, but it's an airshow in New Zealand, so how could it not be?
The late Steve Zimmerman - excellent and enthusiastic pilot, photographer, and Renaissance Man - attended and had some amazing images of aircraft we simply do not see in the United States.
I'd sure go if I could!
 
jimhorner said:
Any suggestions in general for must-see, must-do activities in Australia and New Zealand?
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Never been to Australia, but the thing I enjoyed most about New Zealand was a trip to Milford Sound, with a boat tour of the sound. If I had it to do over again, I'd do the "Swimming with the Dolphins" option. When we were there, there were a ton of Hector's dolphins swimming around. They are 3-5' long and weigh about a hundred pounds. Really cute animials.

The other thing I really enjoyed (in a different area - don't remember the location) was a whale watching excursion.
 
Rent a C172 with a CFI in Queenstown, NZ, and fly around the mountains. Amazing stuff.
 
kyleb said:
Never been to Australia, but the thing I enjoyed most about New Zealand was a trip to Milford Sound, with a boat tour of the sound. If I had it to do over again, I'd do the "Swimming with the Dolphins" option. When we were there, there were a ton of Hector's dolphins swimming around. They are 3-5' long and weigh about a hundred pounds. Really cute animials.

The other thing I really enjoyed (in a different area - don't remember the location) was a whale watching excursion.
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Thanks! A Milford Sound overnight cruise is already on our list. Saw a Youtube video that looked amazing.
 
There is also an outfit on the south island that runs a B&B on a working sheep ranch and has an airstrip with a couple of 172s. You can fly with their CFI acting as tour guide and navigator so you can fly and enjoy the scenery (the CFI is PIC so you don't need an NZ pilot certificate). A friend stayed there and had a fantastic time. I don't have a link but google will doubtless find it.
 
I never made it to Wings over Wanaka when I was there but several co-workers went and raved about it. If you're in Wanaka already and it's summer the Blue Pools are a nice hike and cold swim, both worth the trip.
I didn't spend much time on the North Island, but I can recommend the mud baths in Rotorua and a tour of Hobbiton was much more intereting than I, not a fan of the books or movies, expected. Beaches to the north are nice and isolated, and at Hot Water Beach (east coast, west of Auckland) you can rent a shovel and dig your own geothermal hot tub on the beach.
On the South Island, where I spent a fair bit of time, Queenstown has all kinds of adventure tourism if you're looking for bungee jumping or skydiving or jetboats and the like. The approach and departure into Queenstown airport is "interesting." If you want to stick to aviation, I highly recommend the Grand Traverse tour of the Southern Alps and Mount Cook with Air Safaris in Tekapo, a small town kind of halfway between Christchurch and Queenstown. I believe they also operate out of Glentanner if you want to be closer to Mt. Cook. +1 for @kyleb's suggestion of a Milford Sound boat tour, or anyplace around Fjordland for that matter. My favorite thing to do when I had a long weekend was bolt to Akaroa, a little "French" village built in a caldera on the east coast east of Christchurch, and just wander around the town, eat seafood, and sleep. Christchurch can be fun and has some history to it if you're into that kind of thing. It's got a great walking downtown. The best thing I did there was stumble onto the annual Big Band festival and just spent the weekend walking from place to place listening to excellent music.

I've got lots of suggestions and opinions, but that's enough for now.

Nauga,
stranger in a strange land
 
Thanks for all the ideas and suggestions. Keep them coming, please. Honestly, planning for this trip is getting to be daunting. It's looking like it may be 6 or 7 weeks for both Aus and NZ. But planning is a huge part of the fun.
 
Forgot to mention that Tekapo also has the University of Canterbury's observatory at the summit of Mt. John. The town is a dark sky reserve so even without a trip up the mountain the stargazing is phenominal. There's a shop in town that does nightly tours of the observatory which is even better. During the day a trip up Mount John is also worthwhile just for a coffee and a Fairlie pie with a 360 deg view of the area.

Nauga,
who learned what "dark as the inside of a cow" really looks like
 
I've only been to New Zealand once - in 2002. I need to return and go to the warbirds show at Wanaka.
 
jimhorner said:
It's looking like it might be a great show next year.
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Some may be more "exciting" than others. :cool: I was working the day this happened and they passed over our field unannounced, despite being in a mandatory broadcast zone. Very low, very fast, very loud, and very f'in stupid. We were lucky we were not operating at the time.

Nauga,
who asks, "How do you like us so far?"
 
Well, bummer. There's a 90% chance of rain tomorrow for the airshow. And here we've come all the way to New Zealand. The military acts have already pulled out due to the "excursion", but I was okay with that; The old warbirds is what this show is famous for. I can see F-22's in the US. May be a little flying between gaps in the rain, and I'm hoping for some good static displays. But, unless the forecast is completely off, this every two years airshow might not be great this year.

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Cold and rainy on April 4 in Wanaka, but they put on an airshow anyway. Low ceilings, but the show was good anyway. The show had a low key vibe compared to a lot of airshows in the US that I've seen. Mainly old airplanes flying and a appreciation of that. The announcers even had a rule that when the airplanes were in front of the crowd, they would be quiet so people could appreciate the show.

Two Spitfires, a P-51, an Avenger, lots of Tiger Moths, an Air Truk, Chipmunks, T-6s -- They kept calling them Harvards :), A Vampire and two Strikemasters, sailplane, lots of helicopters, a Beaver and some sort of French Utility plane. We left before the L-39 team flew (they brought the Patriots jet team pilots from the US to fly local jets) because it was beginning to get just bitterly cold. I'll post some pics.
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What a great country! I spent about 6 months there after a winter-over in Antarctica. Flew from Christchurch to McMurdo that season, previous Antarctic trips were always around the Antarctic Peninsulas on research vessels mostly. New Zealand was a great place to thaw back out on the North Island , Bay of Islands, driving the empty beach of Dargaville north, fishing pair trawlers out of Auckland, hot thermal springs in Rotorua, I almost never slowed down after finally getting back to civilization!!!
Another really fun, unique thing was going to the Beehive in Wellington to watch their government in action at “The Beehive”, their National center of government. The various representatives from all over New Zealand met there to speak, vote, and run the government. They wore powdered wigs and coats with long tails, spoke the Queen’s English, and when they disagreed with a speaker they would harumph, harumph, harumph whoever was speaking at the time until he left the podium! Like something out of the 1800’s! Flew from Wellington to I think Invercargill and continued my tour of thawing out. Did some heli-skiing near Queenstown, skied Wanaka, and cruised to and on Lake Te Anau, glowworms in the caves, Milford Sound and the train all the way down the east Coast of the South Island. 6 months of the biggest variety of nature, mountains , sheep, and some of the absolute best people that I’ve ever met in the world. Great Kiwi beer, fantastic rugby players, and very down to earth, salt of the earth people.
If I were ever to live anywhere else in the world again it would be New Zealand. I recommend it highly and especially the flying and scenery.
 
diabolical said:
What a great country! ...
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We're having a great time here despite the rain. April 1 to May 10, both islands. South Island for about a month, including 17 days in a camper van. The rest will be on the North Island, Funny thing, though. More than half the people we've met and had good conversations with have been Australians.
 
Great shots! Would've been a cold day in those open cockpits!

The French plane is a Broussard
 
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