3 weeks and I am starting to get itchy... Have spent the last couple of weekends in Hamilton with Trevor. First one was in the Sim, I am actually picking up a bit of the instrument flying stuff and can follow along quite well.
This weekend just gone, we actually got airbourne in FWS. Massive frontal system was moving in from the North-East, so the planned trip to Tauranga and Rotorua was out, so he decided to just bash the Hamilton approaches. This was the view climbing out from Runway 36.
For someone who, as an instructor, does not actually do a lot of hands-on flying, I thought he did great. Notice the perfect (climbing) Rate-1 turn! Very smooth... I actually thought the auto-pilot was flying... but turns out he did not even use it!
Top Down view of NZHN... looks quite small really, but they put 737's in here. At least, they did, before Air New Zealand shut down Freedom Air. Believe it or not, but the small area on the right is the commercial terminal building. All of the stuff on the left is the Aeroclub, CTC, maintenance hangers etc.
Glad someone can "see"... This, ladies and gentlemen, is the reason people get instrument ratings! Unfortunately, Instrument Meteorological Conditions are not very conducive to photography... and neither is the Blackberry Curve 8310! ;)
I also got a chance to compare my in-ear homemade headset to my normal headset and deduced that it it indeed quieter... not a staggering amount, but once you factor in the comfort value of not having your head in a giant vice and getting hot, sweaty ears, I can definitely see the value in it! :) Now I just need to decide if I want to drop some $$$ on an ANR headset.
Given that I have not been flying for 3 weeks, I can probably afford it now! :P
5 comments:
Give us a break Jarred! That "little runway" is 2255m long, thats longer than all other runways in NZ except Christchurch, Auckland and Ohakea.
I know that... but it does look small (especially from 6000' ;)
Trev's off again to deepest-darkest Africa huh?
So did you like FWS? I prefer it to UFS our other Archer but there is one gripe, and thats the pilots lap belt is way too short.
@Dan, yep... I believe Plans A + B (and possibly E) involve Africa. Going to make finding an instructor difficult!
How is the land of the long white ho-bag?
@Euan, well I cannot comment on the seatbelts in the front, but the one in the back was OK. Other than that, FWS seems very nice... It sits a long way off the ground compared with LMA (makes pre-flighting a bit easier). But I don't like the central console on the ceiling... kept whacking my head on it!
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