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The Richard Pearse Centenary of Flight airshow was held in Timaru, New Zealand. I went mainly to see celebrations relating to Richard Pearse's life and work and also to see the two "replicas" of Pearse's 1903 Aeroplane. Because so little is known about Richard Pearse's original machine, its probably more appropriate to call these machines "reconstructions" rather than "replicas" and that's the term I'll be using in this travelogue.

As you go through these pages, two acronyms will keep popping up:

SCAHC - the South Canterbury Aviation Heritage Centre, a museum group based in Timaru, which had built one of the new machines, however, they were having problems in finishing it in time for the centenary.

MOTAT - the Museum of Transport and Technology, based in Auckland. They built the other aircraft, one which was being was touted as an accurate and sympathetic copy of the original. It was to be flight tested at Waitohi, South Canterbury, on 31st March 2003 - exactly 100 years to the day after Pearse's own first flight. MOTAT's website.

 

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