This Site is dedicated to all those families of the people that have tragically disappeared on flights in and around New Zealand. I only hope that from all the effort in building this site and from all the effort of those taking part in this venture, that it will bear fruit in bringing ‘closure’ to their memories!
Gavin Grimmer
loose seat doesn’t return into it’s original position and jams, it will then not
allow the valve to shut resulting in similar problems just mentioned. I once had
to work all Christmas Eve night on a Japanese import diesel engine that I was responsible
for as I had recently sold and fitted it to a customer’s van and they were going
away on holiday in it the next day. The valve seats in that motor had had exactly
that problem… valve seats had come loose, so this problem was indelibly etched in
my mind! Turned out that this was not an uncommon problem with imported Japanese
motors and the problem causing it was found to be our diesel fuel burnt a lot hotter
than the Japanese fuel. As a consequence of this, engine reconditioners had to fit
over sized valve seats that fitted a lot tighter. Another reasonably common fault
was the heads of the valves actually breaking off from the stem resulting in demolishing
the piston!
Here’s a link to a video showing damaged caused by a valve seat that
has come out (watch from 4.26):
The motors in the DH89 Dominies were just a six cylinder version of the 4 cylinder
motors in the DH90 Dragonfly so undoubtedly would have suffered the same problem.
So maybe this was the cause of the missing Dragonfly?
As a result of all this I now believe this image above shows the course taken from
Jacobs River to the Kaipo
There was no reason for Chadwick to fly all the way to the coast past Jamestown/Martins
Bay, so the natural thing to do here would have been to cut the corner as shown on
this image to the left. This would have taken them down this valley: You have to
ask yourself, if you were flying down that valley in a twin engined plane and had
an engine failure on one of your engines in a plane that was not able to maintain
altitude on one engine, where would you go?
Look closely at this image…
There is only one place that you may have a chance of survival… the open area shown
here to the right of where the wreckage was seen!!!
