The perfect end...

What a day yesterday... the cloud played its part and stayed up high enough that it was perfect for some solo revision.

I took JFY out to the training area to practice stalls, forced landings and precautionary landings... Stalling was fun. I still have no idea why it scares some people?!? Having said that I got a little surprise when doing one of the basic stalls and had a wingdrop! I was about 1/2 a second away from trying to roll the wings level when the training kicked in with power/elevator first, then roll level...

The ironic thing is that when I tried for a wingdrop stall JFY refused! ha ha ha...

FLWOP and my precautionary landing were OK, I reckon I would have been OK had they been for real...

Then back to NZAR for a cup of tea... All in all, a most pleasant way to end 2007.

This flight: 1.3 Solo
Total Hours: 78.6 (60.1 Dual, 18.5 Solo, 4.0 IFR)

Nothing but gray...

So it was a lovely blue sky day yesterday... maybe a little on the breezy side at 19 knots... but a really nice summer day...

and I got to spend my flight staring at a piece of gray plastic...

Almost an hours worth of simulated IFR... almost at the minimum required 5 hours worth of IFR... it was good fun, but a little bumpy which made holding headings and altitudes a bit of a mission...

He was nice and gave me a quick 10 second peek at the scenery about half way through... an absolutely glorious day out over the water about halfway to the coromandel peninsula... blue skies, blue water... lovely... then back to the gray plastic :(

It didnt help that he keep remarking every 10 minutes or so about how awesome the view was... bastard! ;)

The best part of the flight was when Trevor said "Ok, take off the hood" and I was at about 400' on final approach. "Ok, now fly the approach" he says :) I had managed to join and fly the circuit without being able to see anything!

Good fun, and hopefully, now that I have a couple of days of leave, I might even get some flying in over the Xmas break...

Happy Christmas and Merry New Year!

This flight: 1.0 Dual (0.8 IFR)
Total Hours: 77.3 (60.1 Dual, 17.2 Solo, 4.0 IFR)

Success and Failure

So i sat there soberly on friday night at the work xmas party (turning down all the free booze) as I was going flying on saturday morning...

so of course the weather was crap on saturday morning! but at least my head felt good! ;)

Sunday was looking OK... so I headed out to the field to check what was happening... cloud base was up over 3200', which was more than enough for some stalling practice so I booked JFY and headed up...

I also decided to test my new (homemade) toy:



I originally got the idea from Nick Ugolini... but didnt really think much about it until I stumbled across Drew Chaplin's site while trying to 're-find' Nicks site... and with extra ideas/inspiration from a couple of guys from here and here I thought "Why not?"...

Originally had some issues sourcing an old headset to scavenge parts from, but luckily got hold of an old Telex Airman 750 (the -100 model)... I borrowed the mic and boom, the circuitry from the earpiece and the cables/plugs...




Then I had to try and source the earphones... what a nightmare! No-one in NZ or AU seemed to stock what I wanted (I would have like the Shure e3c's but they're ridiculously expensive here)... so I settled on the Hearing Components NR-10's... aroun 35 to 40 dB's of noise reduction and an inline volume control... sweet!

the next mission was getting them to NZ... for some reason everyone in the US wants to ship international orders via Fedex or UPS... so a US$50 pair of earphones, that weigh about as much as a packet of gum, come with a US$75 shipping fee! crazy! Luckily a friend in the US was coming back to NZ for Xmas, so I shipped them to him (for like US$4) and he bought them back... really it should not be this hard!



I tried the earphones out while mowing the lawns and they worked really well... I plugged them into my phone and got to enjoy mp3's while getting dirty and sunburned :)

Then, I had some issues with the mic, as after making the headband and mic assembly I took it up for a test fly (i just plugged it into the spare sockets while flying solo) and it was constantly transmitting... regardless of the squelch setting... so after some investigation (ie. 'googling') I discovered that the little adjustable potentiometer on the circuitry actually controlled the mic gain. So I got out the multimeter and adjusted the 'pot'... testing last week proved that the mic was now working as it should (albeit with aircraft on the ground and engine off).



I could not test the whole unit, as I was flying dual, and I wanted to be able to have my 'real' headset plugged in as a backup incase it was a dismal failure. But as I was going solo yesterday, it was the perfect opportunity to test it out...

and it worked perfectly! So much lighter and way more comfortable than having a whopping great big headset clamped to your noggin... you dont have to worry about your sunglasses ruining the seal on the earcups (because there arent any!) and letting in noise... and you dont get all hot and sweaty from the bit headband etc...

Anyway, the flying was good... I nailed the medium, steep and compass turns and feel comfortable with stalls etc. but my forced landings were poor... I just felt really rushed and only got 1 semi-decent approach out of the 3 attempts... I will definitely need to practice some more...

Trevor should hopefully finish his MEIR (Multi-Engine Instrument Rating) this week, which will free up his time and hopefully mean we can get some midweek flying after work now that its light until around 9pm...

I am still missing some instrument flying, so I think the next lesson is going to be a good solid hour of instruments... with partial panel and unusual attitude recovery... good fun!


This flight: 1.4 Solo
Total Hours: 76.3 (59.1 Dual, 17.2 Solo, 3.2 IFR)

Wild and Windy

was what Trevor was wanting so we could finish off the low flying part of the syllabus... and we got it!

Cloudbase was down around 1500', light showers passing through and the wind was up over 20 knots (the reported 2000' wind was 35 knots!)... thankfully almost straight down the runway, so not too trick for the take-off or landing...

We headed out to the low flying zone, and the strong headwind was quite obvious as despite the 75 knot (around 140-150 km/h)indicated airspeed on the climb, the cars on the roads below were crossing the ground faster than us!

First up, some Steep Turns... at 2500', this is almost fun... at 300' while setup in the bad weather config (20degrees flap, 70 kts) it is a little scarier! The optical illusion of sliding into the water is very dramatic and you really have to fight the urge to yank the yoke back.

After successfully completing a few of those, we started on Coastal Reversal Turns... basically used when we need to turn around and runaway (ie. thunderstorm ahead) but performing a standard 180 degree turn is impossible due to terrain etc... essentially you head away from your coast or line feature on a roughly 45 degree angle and (allowing for wind) roll back with a steep turn and roll out when you're confident of completing the turn within the space left...

The first one was OK... I managed to complete it fairly comfortably, the second one was a little closer... at 300', you really get to see the effects of a 20 to 30 knot wind!

After nailing the coastal reversal, we tried some constant radius turns... sounds easy flying round in circles, but with a strong wind your circle fast becomes an eggshape if you're not paying attention! Good fun!

All in all a good flight... the day would have perfect had I not hit a small patch of oil and performed some unintentional 'aerobatic maneuvers' in my car on the drive to the airfield and backed it into an embankment... thankfully it was a relatively low speed impact, as I had slowed right down for the corner due to the wet conditions, but my brand new bumper (only been on the car for about 3 or 4 weeks after getting rear-ended on the motorway) is a little messed up :( I know for a fact that its around $600 to $700 to replace, but I only have 3rd party insurance and the car is only worth around $2500, so I don't think i'll bother... besides, thats like 4 hours flying! ;)

This flight: 0.9 Dual
Total Hours: 74.9 (59.1 Dual, 15.8 Solo, 3.2 IFR)