Peter Adams recalls Seabird's brief involvement with the Drifter:

"We were agents for the Emdair 2 cylinder 4 stroke engine at some stage. These were made in the UK by the Westlake company. I visited the factory at Rye a couple of times. The Sentinel/Seeker test pilot was a great fan of the Drifter so we made an arrangement with the manufacturer in Boonah to buy airframes less engines. Bill Whitney did the engineering on the engine mount. It seemed a good idea at the time. These were the days before the Rotax and Jabiru four strokes. The first Seabird Drifter, pictured, was used as a demo and we flew it all over demonstrating – mainly to musterers and training schools and got quite a few orders. The first Drifter had mechanical fuel injection and worked well. Subsequent aircraft had electronic fuel injection and engine management system which proved very unreliable. The Emdair/Weslake factory went bust with a lot of our deposits, I think we built 3 or 4 Emdair powered Seabird Drifters and conversions. Without engine factory support, we ended up having to convert all back to Rotax power at our expense. I cannot recall what happened to our Drifter. The engine mount we developed for the Emdair later became the production mount for the Australian built Rotax."