It is with great sadness that I am informing you of the death of John Shuttleworth at Matamata air field today, 10/18/2016. John was as far as I know the first to use a rotary engine in an aircraft in NZ . He built and flew a 2/3 scale P51 Mustang. At this stage we have no information as to what may have happened . The CAA will investigate and hopefully we may know more in due course.

Andrew Campbell.

I am very sorry to hear that.
Any info at all on what happened Andrew.

Paul Lamar


That is sad indeed.

I do not know John, but was lucky to fly in and out of that airport once.

Gordon Gao

Better pictures.

 From news reports for what that is worth ????

Apparently he was not wearing a shoulder harness and he hit his head on the instrument panel.

The dumb newspaper reporters also said he "dived" and "crashed" . Hardly the result of a dive. That was a good off runway dead stick landing. The airplane looks flyable.

Paul Lamar

We do know That the accident happened on take off.
Andrew. Campbell

There is a creditable Phd at Chris's airport that built a rotary powered gyro.
He would be the ideal person to help the CAA find out why the engine stopped. I did not record his name but Chris knows him.

Paul Lamar


Yes, I forgot about Chris Wade and his Gyro.
Chris Would be probably the best person on rotary aircraft engines in NZ.
I will be using one of his re-drives on my Pioneer 300.
Andrew Campbell

The Rotary Engine free News Letter. Powered by Linux. If you want off the list PLEASE let me know and I will remove  you.  ACRE NL web site. http://www.rotaryeng.net You Tube http://tinyurl.com/beqqxas Copyright 1998-2016 All world wide rights reserved.