Houston, we have lift-off!

Gong Hai Fat Choi... and what a way to start the Chinese New Year! After a hiatus of around 3 1/2 years, I finally got back behind the controls of an aircraft today.

Drove out to NZAR around 0830, clear blue skies and hardly a breath of wind. Arrived at Airline Flying Club to find my instructor all good to go. So a pre-flight of JBL (a C-152 aerobat), a flight authorisation and a B-Cat signoff later, and we were in the cabin doing startup checks.

I have pretty much forgotten everything in terms of checklists and radio calls (it does not help that I am in a fairly unfamiliar aircraft, at a fairly unfamiliar airfield), so my instructor Trevor took care of all the finer details, leaving me to concentrate on "getting my groove back". Flying is not like riding a bike, its very easy to lose "The feel"(tm), as I found out later in my flight ;)

We taxiied out from the club apron towards the threshold for 21 seal. I'm not sure what the issue was, probably just out of practice, but I was having some trouble keeping the aircraft on the straight and narrow. We finally pulled up on the old, unused runway for some run-up checks, then lined up behind one of the AFS aircraft. Trevor put in the "Rolling on 21" call, I pushed the throttle all the way in and away we went.

I pretty much nailed the take-off roll and climb-out, right on the white line down the runway and a steady climb at 70kts, which considering my rather ordinary taxiing was quite surprising. Climbed to 500ft AGL and put in a nice climbing turn to get onto downwind at circuit altitude, before departing for the Training Area via WaterWorks.

After flying some lovely "S" turns up the Hunia Valley to avoid some incoming traffic we made it out to the training area, out by the Firth of Thames. Time for some medium turns, one to the left, one to the right. Then some steep turns, one to the left, one to the right. Nailed the second one, getting the tell-tale big bump at the end as I ran into my own wake turbulence.

Then we cruised up the southern side of the training area near Mercer, heading towards Pukekohe, with Trevor pointing out some handy landmarks like the Waikato river, the Mercer Airfield, the Comms Tower on top of one of the hills, Pukekohe etc.

Then a right hander to ensure we stayed outside of controlled airspace and headed up the right hand side of the southern motorway towards Drury to begin out approach back into the NZAR circuit.

Downwind was fine, base leg was fine, was hitting all my speeds. Finals I was a little slow, and a little high, but was under control... until I flared about 5ft to high and dumped it onto the runway. Remember what I said about flying not being like riding a bike? I shudder to think what the G-force meter was reading...

Anyway, as they say, any landing you walk away from is a good one, and it was my first landing in over 3 years so I'm not too worried. Some circuit practice next week will sort that out :)

All in all... a perfect start to the new year.

This flight: 1.0 hours Dual
Total Hours: 36.9 (33.8 Dual, 3.1 Solo)