Fantastic. The Southland Times has published a photo and article today about SkyFreedom Aviaition and our new carbon GP One demonstrator aircraft.

Since this morning, lots of people have emailed, texted or commented on how good the plane looks (but not the guy beside it) and how affordable it is. One particularly observant person asked if Bruce should be using a hammer to fix a new aircraft!.

If you're quick you can read the article online or else you can download a copy here.as a PDF..

Big day today. Two friends helped me load the GP One onto a specially-modified trailer. Lots of details to attend to as we secured it for road transport. We weren't keen on it 'flying' off the trailer en-route!
Collette Devlin and John Hawkins from the Southland Times popped in to interview me and take pics. Hopefully they come up with a good newspaper article.

In the evening, I towed it 150km to Manapouri. It followed behind very nicely, which was a relief.

We could have done the 2 hours of test flying at Invercargill Airport, but Manapouri is outside of controlled airspace and much more conveniently located for Murray Hagen who will do the the initial flights.

Today the local RAANZ inspector, Bradley Yorke, checked over the GP One and found everything to be satisfactory. He issued it with a 'Permit to Fly' sticker, so that it is ready for the CAA inspector on Thursday.

Just for luck, I gave it the engine a short run and set the anti-collision strobes going for effect. 

The aircraft is registered with CAA as ZK-WLB, giving a call sign within New Zealand of "Whisky Lima Bravo". If you google the acronym WLB, you find that it sometimes means "Work - Life Balance".

I'm over the moon today. The Airworthiness Inspector from CAA has phoned. He can come to Invercargill on Thursday next week to do the official CAA inspection. That's only 5 days after the local RAANZ Inspector is due to issue the 'Permit to Fly'. 

David Gill, the CAA Inspector, will fly down from Wellington and spend a couple of hours checking various aspects of the Skyleader GP One and looking through the aircraft's paperwork.

I'm very lucky indeed - with most of CAA's work much further north, it's not often they can schedule a visit to the deep south.