Tuesday 9 September 2008

Everything's coming up Milhouse...

Ahhh... what a great day! 'Why is that?' you ask...

1. I was not at work
2. The cloudbase was above 1500'
3. Enough wind to make it "interesting"
4. I have a PPL

If you've been following this journal for any period of time, you should have worked out that this means I got to go flying today :)

The added bonus being that today is my birthday... so not only did I skive off work, I got to do it by flying ;)

Trevor called me around 0930 and said "you still interested in going flying?"... does a one legged duck swim in circles? Of course I was interested, I just did not think that we would get anywhere with the weather being as marginal as it was.

Turns out we made it all the way to Hamilton for a $300 coffee. As it turns out, it actually cost a bit more than $300, and they don't have a cafe at the Waikato Aero Club, so we had to settle for a drink from the water cooler! hahahah... (Any suggestions Euan?)

According to Trevor, the weather actually made it a perfect day for cross-country flying. Lot's of weather to avoid, some decision making required, navigation more difficult due reduced vis etc. I have to agree, it was actually really enjoyable... and no-one else was around, so the only traffic I had to contend with was a 172 doing circuits at Ardmore, and a Beech 1900D doing Instrument Training at Hamilton.

Was kind of weird seeing a packed carpark at AFS, and a full flight line... and it is probably the first time I've been to Hamilton and seen the entire CTC fleet on the ground!

LMA, as always, was flying like a dream and now that I know it has a fine pitch prop on it (great for short field take-offs!), I can actually get it to cruise at a decent speed... such a lovely aircraft for cruising in comfort...

All up, not a bad way to spend a bday! ;)


This flight: 1.8 PinC
Total Hours: 135.3 (78.9/45.1 Day, 4.9/6.4 Night, 5.1 IFR)

2 comments:

Flyinkiwi said...

Firstly, happy birthday! Secondly, I think the reason the vending machines and a water cooler are there is that there simply are not enough people around regularly to make operating a cafe commercially viable.

If the planned Commercial Air Park gets off the ground (nice pun there don't you think) then a cafe might appear in that vicinity. You never know...

ZK-JPY said...

thx mate... yeah next time I'll bring some coinage for the vending machines ;)

still, it was a most enjoyable day... hopefully one of these days we'll actually get to meet up!