Answer: in a Cessna 152 of course!
Could not believe my luck yesterday when, after getting up anticipating a full day of mall crawling with her, jade says to me around 1100 "It is such a nice day, you should go flying this afternoon".
Not being one to look a gift horse in the mouth, we grabbed some lunch and after dropping jade off at home, I headed out to Ardmore.
I found Nick waiting for me, but having spent the morning dealing with a 'difficult' group getting wedding photos taken with his helicopter he decided that he wouldn't come flying but would play the part of 'annoying' C-Cat instructor and made me plan and pre-flight for a cross-country to Kerikeri, Kaitaia and Kaikohe.
Under CPL cross-country rules, you are supposed to be able to do this in one hour. Due to being a little unprepared for this adventure, I didn't quite make it in the one hour, but was not too far off. I am going to take Nick's suggestion and make up some 'cheat sheets' so I am not running about photocopying flightplan sheets and P-charts and having to hunt throught aircraft flight manuals looking for weight and balance data.
Having finally got everything organised and my flightplan filed, I taxied out in JBL.
A nice long cruise up to Kerikeri, where I had to hold for a few minutes due to parachute activity, a quick touch and go there and then off to Kaitaia. I have to say that some of the scenery up that way is just breathtaking, lots of unspoilt wilderness.
After having a stretch and topping the tanks up at Kaitaia, following a pretty ordinary crosswind landing :(, I had a quick hop to Kaikohe and got out to have a quick look around and drop some money in the honesty box for landing fees.
It was such a picturesque place I thought I'd snap a couple of shots just to test out jades new camera (Canon 450D)
Then off for home. I was getting a little anxious climbing out of Kaikohe as my SARTIME was fast approaching and I could not contact Christchurch Info to amend it. Thankfully, once I got some altitude and cleared the surrounding hills I managed to raise them on the radio about 5minutes before my SARTIME expired :)
Heading home I managed to get some nice smooth air, so I decided to try some 'random' photography. This basically consisted of flying with one hand, while holding the camera in the other, pointing it in the general direction of something 'interesting' and pushing the shutter button :)
The results were mixed (lots of blurry shots of nothing etc.) but some of the shots of the Kaipara Harbour and the Auckland CBD came out OK.
4.0 hours of flying later I made it back, cutting it a little close to the ECT curfew :)
Conclusion: Flying solo, into airfields you've never been to before is an interesting mix of fear and excitement! Fear that you might not find it ;)
This flight: 4.0 PinC
Total Hours: 151.8 (78.9/56.2 Day, 6.0/10.7 Night, 7.0 IFR)
2 comments:
You've been busy eh? Nice photo's man.
I've moved my blog to Blogger, same name "Onwards and Upwards". Wordpress wasn't as flash as I'd hoped.
Yeah... lot's of flying this month and I have the credit card bill to prove it! :(
I think I took about 100 pics... lost half of them when the memory card got corrupted and what you see are the pick of what was left. I was actually surprised how well some of them came out!
Post a Comment