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Importing N133RM

At some point in time when Rudy owned N133RM, it had been assessed as requiring significant repairs. Rudy decided not to fix it and put it into his barn. After Rudy passed away, Bruce Utting acquired N133RM from the Wenk estate. Bruce reached out to the KR Net group for help and eventually decided he didn't want to take on the project. I wrote back and forth with him several times and came to an agreement to buy it if Bruce could help me with the logistics without travelling to Okatki, NZ myself. He graciously accepted and together we began the steps.

Bruce moved the airplane to his home

on a little trailer he uses for cars

Across this bridge!

Together we found an agent who would handle the transportation logistics. This entailed providing a shipping container, hiring an aircraft structural engineer to secure the airplane in the big box, moving the container to the shipyard and loading onboard for transoceanic shipping, Finding a trucker to bring a "loaded container" across this bridge took almost 2 weeks in itself. Once again Bruce persevered.

 

 

The container went from truck to "tramp steamer" up to Auckland's main port and was loaded onto a transoceanic freighter.

About 7 weeks later, Cap Pasado arrived in Seattle. The container was offloaded, inspected by customs officials (who didn't believe a loaded container weighed 400# net), transferred to a train and rolled the 180 miles to the Portland freight depot. Through amazing coordination, the local importer got the container onboard a local freight hot-shot trailer and delivered to my house the next day!

We clipped the import seal and pulled N133RM back onto US ground!


Very happy to have made it to this stage!