Back now, and have a few photos to share.
Taupo was awesome- although I didn't get a window seat on the 1900 down, sat right behind the cockpit though so it was interesting to watch what was going on with the instruments and see a LAN A340 touching down a few metres from the windscreen whilst holding for takeoff.
Stayed with Tom and his mates in Pukawa (other end of the lake) which was really nice, met a few amusing characters down there too, and drove up to the race track last weekend on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday where we met Gary, aka Chairman.
I think we did about 18 seconds of work over the three days- just timing the pit stops for one team (I was assigned RSA) and writing down any observations on a sheet of A4. Spent the rest of the time perving at the cars and watching the races from the grandstand or on the garage TV's. Was good fun, but bloody hot. 38 degrees on the Saturday afternoon I think, and it didn't help that we were all wearing black!
Couldn't be bothered getting up early for the return flight on Tuesday morning, so we roadtripped down Desert Road to Wellington and I caught a 737 back in the evening instead- got a few aviation related pics from the airport which I'll post at the end of this message, there's about 30 in total, but I havn't put a 56k warning on the thread because I don't think anyone even has that sort of connection any more!
The 'new' DHL bird:
No autopilot on this thing- all flow by hand:
Pitlane:
Team China:
The French A1 car:
Team Portugal:
Team NZL:
Inside the Team Italy garage:
The GBR car after the feature race- check out those tires!
Black Beauty:
The Hulme NZ supercar:
Sexy Ferarri safety car 
One of the Red Checkers doing a donut after landing on the back straight- got a real good view of their aerobatic routine as the crowdline was along the main grandstand, and we were well infront of that.
RNZAF promo Huey- saw it fly in, and heard it fly out:
Mr Maturity with his legs out the window:
Random shot of the lake driving to Turangi:
Token sunset shot:
Cloudy morning shot:
Ruapehu:
At the lookout:
Tom's Merc:
Cookietime DC3 at Mangaweka:
The beast we found under a bin at the Vincent's:
This is what a naked 1900 looks like:
An unexpected ANZ visitor in the VA hanger:
Yours truly inside the engine of ZK-SJE:
The Lifeflight Metro from next door (3news were actually filming this aircraft carrying a baby to Auckland Starship while we were taking the above pics, which was on Nightline that night and you could see us in the background- think the vid clip is on their website somewhere but can't remember the name of it)
And my ride home:
Got a few snaps from Hawkes Bay where I've been staying since last Wednesday, but first I better go and clean all the bugs and roadkill remnants off the family car- will properly post them in a new thread later. (I'll sort out the newsletter and screenie comp tomorrow also)
Big thanks Gary for getting us into the race, was great to meet you mate
