or How I spent almost $400 in 2.2 hours
My first Cross-Country today... A short hop down to NZHN (Hamilton) and back, mainly as a map reading exercise to learn some of the basic techniques and to get an idea of how we work from map-to-ground.
As it was such a short hop (53 nautical miles), I was fairly busy... Trevor did a lot of the flying and I concentrated on working the map.
It was also my first experience in a loooooong time, 7 years since starting out at NZPM (Palmerston North) dealing with controlled airspace and ATC (air traffic control). Trevor was saying that a lot of students who come from an uncontrolled aerodrome like NZAR (Ardmore) often have some problems having to interact with ATC and get a bit nervous that they'll screw something up... having had previous experience, I knew what to expect and what the basics were, so it was not so bad.
Departure was interesting, as lately, I've been doing a lot of solo work, with relatively light fuel loads... given an instructor and completely full tanks the 152 flies like a bus... even with the good conditions, high pressure, relatively low pressure which should give good performace, we were only getting about 200-300 feet per minute climb! Solo, I can easily get around 500-600!
The trip down was busy, and I learnt that things that look big on the map, can be damn tricky to find when you're flying along at 2500ft at 100kts! I don't know what those waikato farmers are moaning about... you can barely see those big power pylons! ;)
The arrival was fairly easy as traffic was pretty sparse, and we were assigned the seal runway... it can handle 737's so its fairly long and wide... and once again having PAPI's to judge my descent profile was nice.
After taxiing to the Waikato Aeroclub, I took 5 minutes, said hi to a mate who had come out to grab some photo's of the airport for a 3D modelling project, and then jumped back in solo for some circuits. Was given 36-Grass, and it was good fun interacting with ATC again... my only complaint was that the circuit some of the aircraft were flying seemed to be about twice the size of NZAR, the students at NZHN must pay a fortune to get the same number of circuits as I do, as following them I only managed 3 in just under 40 minutes!
Then back to the aeroclub to pickup Trevor and an interesting departure (with the lacklustre performance we struggled to get off Grass 25L, the flock of birds didnt help my blood pressure any!) we headed for home...
Overall, Trevor was impressed with my efforts and I'm feeling a lot more confident...
This flight: 1.6 Hours Dual, 0.6 Hours Solo
Total Hours: 60.4 (50.7 Dual, 9.7 Solo, 2.5 IFR)
This was an awesome currency check
1 year ago
3 comments:
Those large circuits are probably CTC students doing their thing. Since they train similar to how they would fly a circuit in an Airbus it kind of makes sense why their circuits are so large, even if it is infuriating to the rest of us.
And I've just realised I flew to Ardmore that very day. We probably flew past each other! If you had a near miss with some idiots in a 172, I wasn't flying! :-)
Yeah... it was the Twinstars doing circuits that a 737 would have thought was a bit wide! ;)
I guess at NZAR with the high ground and the danger zone in such close proximity to the field, you just get used to flying nice tight circuits...
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