Mt Cook Reunion

[Graham Ritchie]

Well I have been asked a few times about catching up with people I used to work with, after 25 years I decided OK time to show up. Glad I did, it was great to catch up and share "stories" from the past, and there were certainly a few of them The person featured in this video I took, that must be around the 1995 mark, was the one who contacted me last week about a get together. Its interesting that the interest in this video, which was taken on the spur of the moment I never thought that anyone would have really been that interested in, but after 10.396 views and 97 likes to date, I guess I was wrong. Talking about those times today over lunch I did say, that I should have taken a lot more video back then, there was so much interesting stuff that should have been recorded, it was a missed opportunity on my part

As I say, catching up with folk after 25 years was great, you never really forget people that come and go in your life

[Graham Ritchie]

One of the stories we talked about was the time I was in search of an oil leak from one of the superchargers in the photo below The Rolls Royce dart engines were very reliable and also fitted to other aircraft types as well.

I do remember one wet winter night getting a call at home, could I go to Auckland to do an engine change?, when I got to our hanger we removed some seats etc from another aircraft and moved the replacement engine into the centre of the cabin and tied it down, plus a spare cradle and all the tools we needed as well. We flew up to Auckland just the two of us and the pilots on the flight got there at midnight met up with two others already there, worked through the night for the aircraft had to be in service early in the morning. We left the removed engine up in Auckland and later that morning got a 737 flight home. I was suppose to go to a kids birthday party, with our wee ones on the Sunday but they left me behind, asleep on the couch. I was right out to it zzzzz land then it was back to work the next morning, you were allowed a 10 hour stand down. Over those 10 years I was on average doing close to about 600 hours overtime each year, most of which you did not have a choice, you had to do it'. In saying that, they were interesting times and the people I worked with were a good bunch, just glad I don't have to do it anymore those days are long gone, its really a young persons game.



The flying brick the HS748 on the right with one of our new ATR72 nick named the plastic fantastic on the left