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 Port Hedland, WA 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 TPIN's (Tin-Pot Independent Nations) 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?-