{"id":73,"date":"2008-02-17T21:56:39","date_gmt":"2008-02-17T09:56:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.erikbloodaxe.net\/2008\/02\/17\/catalina-flying-boat\/"},"modified":"2008-02-17T21:56:39","modified_gmt":"2008-02-17T09:56:39","slug":"catalina-flying-boat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.erikbloodaxe.nz\/?p=73","title":{"rendered":"Catalina flying boat."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Art Deco Weekend comes around every year around the anniversary of the 1931 earthquake that flattened Napier. For all of the time I&#8217;ve been here I&#8217;ve seen the the Harvards, the Mustang and the Catalina doing circuits over the weekend. The sound of the Mustang&#8217;s Merlin engine is spine-tingling. Close behind that is the beating sound of the twin radial engines of the Catalina. Anyway, here&#8217;s a picture of the Catalina flying over the Queen Vic.<\/p>\n<p><img src='http:\/\/blog.erikbloodaxe.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/02\/catalinaoverqueenvictoria.jpg' alt='catalinaoverqueenvictoria.jpg' \/><\/p>\n<p>Shortly after this I decided to go and check out the ground part of the air display at Napier Airport. As is the way of NZ the entry was a gold coin, so 1 or 2 dollar coin. I didn&#8217;t have either, but a 20c piece showed intent. Whilst looking around and taking a few pics I overheard that it was only $100 for a trip in the Catalina. Not a huge amount to help conserve a historic aircraft and at the same time go for a half-hour flight at around 1000ft over my current stomping ground.<\/p>\n<p><img src='http:\/\/blog.erikbloodaxe.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/02\/catalinaboardingpass.JPG' alt='catalinaboardingpass.JPG' \/><br \/>\nMy boarding pass for the Catalina flight.<\/p>\n<p><img src='http:\/\/blog.erikbloodaxe.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/02\/catalina.jpg' alt='catalina.jpg' \/><br \/>\nThis aircraft is only a few years younger than my dad, so it&#8217;s very cool that it&#8217;s still flying. They don&#8217;t land it on the sea anymore, but they do land on some of NZs freshwater lakes like Lake Taupo.<\/p>\n<p><img src='http:\/\/blog.erikbloodaxe.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/02\/catalinalanding.JPG' alt='catalinalanding.JPG' \/><br \/>\nOn its final approach.<\/p>\n<p><img src='http:\/\/blog.erikbloodaxe.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/02\/harvard.JPG' alt='harvard.JPG' \/><br \/>\nOne of five Harvard trainers bought from the RNZAF by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.warbirdsoverwanaka.co.nz\"> Warbirds over Wanaka.<a\/> Note the cool roundel. <\/p>\n<p><img src='http:\/\/blog.erikbloodaxe.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/02\/mustang.JPG' alt='mustang.JPG' \/><br \/>\nThe star of the show, the North American P51D Mustang. A half hour flight in this is available if you have a spare NZ$1500 dollars!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Art Deco Weekend comes around every year around the anniversary of the 1931 earthquake that flattened Napier. For all of the time I&#8217;ve been here I&#8217;ve seen the the Harvards, the Mustang and the Catalina doing circuits over the weekend. The sound of the Mustang&#8217;s Merlin engine is spine-tingling. Close behind that is the beating &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.erikbloodaxe.nz\/?p=73\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Catalina flying boat.&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-me","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.erikbloodaxe.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.erikbloodaxe.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.erikbloodaxe.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.erikbloodaxe.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.erikbloodaxe.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=73"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.erikbloodaxe.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.erikbloodaxe.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=73"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.erikbloodaxe.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=73"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.erikbloodaxe.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=73"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}