"They showed me the box of spare parts — there weren’t any wings in it, so I thought it was OK," Otago Aero Club flying instructor Colin Chalmers joked yesterday, before taking a Vans RV12 plane built by Otago Polytechnic students out on its maiden flight.
Mr Chalmers was cool as a cucumber before the flight at the Taieri aerodrome knowing the students had put many supervised hours into building the plane with a licensed aircraft engineer between 2018 and 2020, and it had already been through rigorous ground-based testing with the Civil Aviation Authority.
Mr Allan’s wife, Janice, was on cloud nine when the plane finally lifted off yesterday.
"It’s very emotional today to see his baby flying. It’s incredible," she said.
Unfortunately, Mr Allan did not get to see the plane completed.
Otago Polytechnic engineering technician William Early picked up the project and was instrumental in helping the students build the plane.
"If anything, it’s turned into a great promotion for the polytechnic. It’s something that we can wave and be proud of," he said.
"It was a really cool opportunity — something that not many people would get to do," he said.
"It’s awesome to see a project this big and ambitious come to fruition."
The plane has since been sold to the Otago Aero Club and will eventually be used to train pilots.
Mr Chalmers said the flight was just the first of many it it would take before it was fully certified.
It would take 10 hours to go through the test programme.
Following its inaugural flight, Mr Chalmers said that the plane was "awesome".
"It is a typical RV aircraft. It flies beautifully. It’s very agile.
"The way the aircraft was built and with all the pre-flight checks that were done, it just flies the way it should do."
