Evening Folks,
Been doing some 'accidental' research re: the activities of the Victa Aviation Division. Firstly, my apologies if this is all old news to y'all but it's news to me!
VH-MVR is, according to the CASA website, still held by the one and only airworthy Victa Aircruiser! ........wait, I'll back up a bit.
When Victa Aviation was sold to the kiwis the very successful airtourer was in full production and the organisation was working on a 4 seat variant - the Aircruiser.
My understanding until recently was that when Victa Aviation was sold to the kiwis was that the flying prototype aircruiser (VH-MVR) was sold with the rest of the organisation and that it became the basis of the prototype for the military trainer and thus ceased to exist. Apparently this is only partly true. It was sold to NZ but returned 10 years later to these shores in private hands and was re-registered as VH-MVR! It is still in private hands and is airworthy, I believe. Owned by an older gentleman. The need for this to be in the hands of a museum is obvious!
Second observation is that the mark VH-MVR was previously held but another Victa prototype of which I was not aware - the Victa R2 which was penned by Luigi Pellarini of Tranavia Airtruk fame! The R2 was never produced.
The significance of the R2 for me is that I was not aware that Victa was courting any other designers. I thought Henry Millicer was their one and only designer.
I'm also aware they were playing around with a gyrocopter.
We all know the story that Victa gave up the Aviation division because the Federal Government would not provide tariff protection against the imports from the big US manufacturers. If we consider that the Aviation division had spent the massive amount of capital that must have been required to bring the airtourer to production and to have brought the aircruiser to certification and the R2 to test flight stage and been messing with the gyrocopter, the aviation division must have been bleeding money something senseless and tariff protection or no tariff protection these costs were an unreasonable thing for the poor airtourer to try and absorb.
And what else where they playing around with, I wonder??
I'll post relevant photos soon. I need the daughters computer to do that. This iPad still won't play ball photowise..
Cheers,
