VH-RTV  Britten-Norman BN-2A Islander                     (c/n  152)

                                   
                                   
                                           Another of Murchison Air Services' Islanders.  The Geoff Goodall photo above shows it in original
                                           Murchison's titling at Perth in October 1971.  In the shot below, five years later, also from Geoff, it
                                           had. been taken over by Trans-West Air Charter.  Chris O'Neill's image below that shows the color
                                           scheme.  Sold off by TWAC in 1983, it went to the Wilton Parachute Centre and was photographed
                                           by Greg Banfield (foot of page) at Bankstown, during a maintenance visit from the skydiving field at
                                           Wilton, NSW.    VH-RTV led a hard life as a parachuting jump ship suffering a number of accidents.                                                                                            Nevertheless it was sold to Sunflower Airlines in Fiji in February 1985 as DQ-FEA.    From there it
                                           went to Vanuatu* as YJ-RV19 before going on to New Zealand as ZK-EVT where, I understand,
                                           it is still active.

                                     *   Why does ICAO allow these TPIC's (Tin-Pot Independent Countries) to allot these odd-ball
                                          series of regos?  Why not decree that all should be three letter (or straight number) combos after
                                          the national registration identity?     And why wasn't Vanuatu allocated one of their favorite number-
                                          letter combos like, say, 9J?-