Paul Havill - New Zealand.

JHW is a HH/912, originally built in 1997, s/n 1434D. The original builder rushed the finish and systems, and flew it rarely. It had two coats of silver, and brushed on reg marks. The panel and wiring were a mess, but worked. I'm the third owner. I learned to fly it (after 500 hrs in a ChallengerII ), then took it out of the air for a year to do a total rebuild. The only thing I didn't remove was the fabric.
It flies nicely now and I get 80 kts @5000 rpm, with a GSC prop. I've only done 50 hrs since getting it back in the air (Nov 03), and have yet to play around with prop setings. It has an Icom A5 and Garmin3+ built into the panel,( the web site pix still show the origonal G12 I had ) and is fitted with a microair transponder, pilot comms with noise cancelling headsets ( worth every cent !!!) The full depth transparent doors are excellent. I have written 3 of the 4 articles promised for the RAANZ newsletter, each about 3000 words plus pictures. An aviation magazine is currently considering them for publication, but if that falls through, I'll send them to you for the site.
Cheers
Paul

I uploaded 4 part article written by Paul about his Avid experience. I changed the format from Word Document to Web to reduce the size of the file - some formating was lost.

Episode 1 -The decision to buy a taildragger, the reasons behind it, and the aquisition of JHW
Episode 2 -Learning to fly a taildragger, and the initial settling in period with JHW
Episode 3 -The Rebuild - What was done and why, including modifications.
Episode 4 -Back into the air - initial hiccups and sucesses.

Links below take you to a two part article Paul wrote about his flight to Chatham Islands. We had an Avid at the North Pole, now Paul takes it over the water. Very intereating please read -

Oceanic Avid Part 1
Oceanic Avid Part 2