on both topics...
Sir Ed tells us who his hero is... from the
NZ Herald: "...he was never simply going to be support crew for another adventurer and rolled his Fergusons straight over the outraged sputterings of organisers, who felt he should defer to Fuchs. So it is interesting to learn that Sir Ed's hero is not Robert Falcon Scott, the straight-bat British officer after whom the New Zealand base is named (Scott and all his party died of starvation after being beaten to the Pole in 1911 by Norwegian Roald Amundsen). Instead, Sir Ed identifies with the boisterous egalitarianism of Scott's great rival Ernest Shackleton, who twice survived appalling hardship to rescue all his men from death on polar journeys. "Shackleton was undoubtedly my heroic figure," said Sir Ed."
And for anyone interested in learning about the current state of the NZ airforce...
http://www.nzfpm.co.nz/