Tuesday 29 December 2015

Cessna O-1G Bird Dog

Yesterday the Cessna O-1G Bird Dog ZK-DOG (c/n 23452) was captured outside the South Canterbury Aero Club facility at Timaru.
 It had departed Ardmore early in the morning and flew to Nelson and then to Balclutha, then up to Timaru where it was photographed by Target Products.
It then carried on back to Nelson and finally back home to Ardmore.
Yep - all in one day.
Also known as a Cessna 305 this aircraft was one of about 3400 built mainly for the US Army.
This airframe c/n 23452 was allocated the US Army serial number of 53-8031 and later spent time with the South Vietnamese Air Force as 538031.
After it importation to NZ I believe it was initially penciled in to become ZK-FYB. (following ZK-FYA which is the drab olive one you see about occasionally) . It instead became ZK-DOG on 14-07-1994 with Mackley Aviation Ltd of Auckland.
It was out of circulation from April 1996 through until returning to the register on 03-10-2000 listed to Kaipara Aviation Trust.

4 comments:

  1. Nothing better looking than a O-1.

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    Replies
    1. Hows about looking at two of them ?
      Would that not please your optics even more so ?

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    2. Two or more it's all good, they are awesome aircraft to fly and lots of history behind them all.

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  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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