He’s jumped out of them, owned them, flown them but mainly fixed them. He’s the man in charge of Fieldair’s Engine and Electrical Division in Palmerston North.
From around the country and from different parts of the world, Quentin Hughes and his team are constantly receiving piston engines and other pieces of electrical equipment to overhaul. It’s a business built up over time, based on the quality of the work and the skills of the staff.
The workshop, part of Fieldair’s engineering facility, is based at Palmerston North Airport at Milson. In its heyday in the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, the Palmerston North engineering base was servicing mainly its own topdressing aircraft which accounted for 90 percent of its work. Today that has completely reversed and a mere 10 percent of the work is for aircraft owned by Freightways, of which Fieldair is a subsidiary, and the remainder is from other aircraft operators seeking the specialist skills the company has to offer.
Quentin Hughes, who manages the workshop, has a great sense of the history of the operation. Born in Taranaki, he was on the flight path of the aircraft flying north to south and saw the DC-3s flying overhead, an association with aircraft that prompted him to embark on a career in aviation.
“I remember writing to Boeing and getting this beautiful colour brochure which I treasured. It had all the Boeing range of the 1960s,” he says.
Quentin always wanted to be an aircraft engineer, and as soon as he left school in 1966 he took up an apprenticeship in Wellington with Hawker Siddeley, the company that took over the local de Havilland operation. He was still doing his apprenticeship when Hawker Siddeley abruptly announced it was closing its Wellington operation in 1969.
“Hawker Siddeley overhauled the Pratt and Whitney R-985 engines for the Beavers that Fieldair operated,” says Quentin. “They also overhauled the Wright Cyclone engines that Airland had in the Lodestars. So for Fieldair to continue in operation, they needed to set up an overhaul shop for the R-985 engines. As a result Fieldair took over the operation and moved some staff, tools and spares to Palmerston North.”
The operation expanded as Fieldair started to operate DC-3s. Initially the P&W R-1830 engines were sent to Scotland to be overhauled by Scottish Aviation, but this arrangement proved unsatisfactory and Fieldair decided to do the job itself.
“So we went to Melbourne to buy all the tooling and brought it all back here and set up an overhaul shop. At one stage we were overhauling one engine a month. In the heyday of the 1970s we were overhauling the engines of the DC-3s, then the Beavers and finally the Fletchers. We also worked on the Lycoming 435s from the Hiller helicopters,” he says.
At one stage Fieldair owned a fleet of Fletcher topdressing aircraft, later selling the airframes but keeping the engines and leasing these out to owners and pilots.
“This proved popular for the owners/pilots and ourselves,” says Quentin. “Most of our pilots who were flying with us bought the airframes and leased the engines. The engine is the big unknown and is a big cost, so they just got charged at an hourly fixed rate, which meant if the engine broke we just gave them another one.
“We carried that on until such time as the pilots changed, and the conversions to turbines. The turbine Crescos came along and these outgunned the Fletcher, so people went the turbine way.”
Quentin says they still have a number of Fletcher engines left. He says the piston-engine Fletcher is cost effective and still has a role to play, but there will never be a resurgence. “We still have an engine for sale.”
In terms of work, Fieldair says it can do work for anybody, but in particular commercial operators. Quentin Hughes says they handle a lot of work from flying schools and have the contract to maintain the aircraft of the nearby Massey University School of Aviation.
“We get component work from the Pacific Islands and I have sold a couple of engines to Australia. A lot of our work is with helicopter operators who are probably more active than anyone else at the moment. For example, we overhaul the piston engines for Helipro which is based at Palmerston North.”
While the Fieldair engine shop is set up to overhaul engines, it also does a great deal of electrical work on starters, generators and magnetos, as well as fuel controls and carburettors. Quentin says two staff members work full-time on this part of the business. He also has staff making and repairing cargons for the Convairs operated by Airfreight NZ as well as specialist staff working on welding, manufacturing and non-destructive testing (NDT).
The operation at Palmerston North brings together a skilled and experienced team which offers a wide range of services to clients, both within New Zealand and overseas.
- Report and photographs by Peter Burke