One of my winter projects has been to copy my father’s Pilots Logbook into Excel. Along with the first entry of an aircraft’s callsign/registration I hoped to hyper-link to a photograph of the aircraft referred to, and so I turned to the internet to find them. (This was before I’d scanned my mother’s albums).

In this case, I had started entering the first page of Dad’s log that referred to ZK-APO, and noted that this was the first flight he had made since 20 November 1944 when he flew a slightly larger aircraft, Lancaster KI3834  from Dorval (Canada) to Gander to Prestwick (Scotland).

I remember the Austers with fondness. We used to get the odd flight with Dad around the hinterlands of South Island and occasionally visited Dad’s brothers and their families.

Here I am protecting my cousin Elizabeth from some baddies that have taken one over. In this case ZK-AWY, c. early 1952.

When I googled for more info on ZK-APO, I found the Civil Aviation Authority’s site, which provided an accident report in PDF form.

The first page of the report showed I was on the right track.

Now, colour me surprised when I came across this on page six of this Official accident report:

“1.6 Aircraft information

1.6.1 Auster J1B serial number 2212 was manufactured in January 1947, and was first registered in New Zealand on 18 August 1959. A total restoration was completed in January 1998, and the aeroplane had accrued a total of 255.8 hours since. It had remained in the possession of the same owner since first being registered in New Zealand.”

Dad had accrued 1,568 hours and 40 minutes in an aircraft registered as ZK-APO in the 12 years before it was ‘first’ registered. I had done a few hours in it, too!

No.	ZK-APO
Year	Sum of Single engine day Pilot
1947	97:25
1948	310:20
1949	472:10
1950	300:25
1951	153:05
1952	16:30
1953	54:45
1954	45:05
1955	12:35
1956	81:45
1957	02:05
1958	14:05
1959	08:25
Grand Total	1568:40

Just shows, don’t believe everything you read. Or hear. Or see.