Played at being a "Taxi Driver" today... I flew down to Hamilton with Trevor, to play in the sim... well actually Trevor played in the Sim and I sat there and tried (unsuccessfully) to keep up!
Was an interesting flight down, flying into a 20-25 knot headwind and dodging showers, one lot so heavy that I actually had to make a bit of a detour around it. Then when we were approaching Hamilton, the tower decided to put all the light aircraft onto the crosswind grass runways as the crosswinds were gusting up to 20knots. Luckily for us, they did this before we were anywhere near the traffic pattern, unlike several aircraft who were in the circuit and had to reposition for the new runway.
Was a nice change as I had never landed on the crosswind runways at Hamilton before and it gave you a slightly different perspective of the place.
Going out after the sim session, they gave us the grass again as the wind had not really died down. I was a little nervous, as my last experience taking off on the grass crosswind runway at Hamilton had involved a large flock of birds and a fence that got very close, very quickly! Thankfully this time, I was in LMA, and with the fine-pitch prop it really hauls arse... Rumbling along to 50kts and then popping on 2 stages of flap and it just leaps into the air ;) We were off in less than half the runway length (300 metres or so)!
Heading home with the tailwind made for a quick trip and we were back on the ground at Ardmore in about 35-40 minutes!
This flight: 1.7 PinC
Total Hours: 147.8 (78.9/52.2 Day, 6.0/10.7 Night, 7.0 IFR)
This was an awesome currency check
1 year ago
4 comments:
Hehe welcome to Grass 07/25 Jarred. I normally do max performance takeoffs on the grass in an Archer. The 172's (especially JGP) can easily get airborne and clear fully loaded.
Gee you've been flying at Hamilton more than I have! I must remedy that soon!
Dude, have you read "Stick and Rudder" by Wolfgang Langeweishe? That t/o technique is something he talks about. Good book.
@Euan, it is quite amazing what those 172's can do when. After getting back from HN on Saturday, I went along as a passenger for a couple of circuits in a 172 with one of the guys at the club who is a 737 F/O for AirNZ... he did a Stop and Go on 21 at Ardmore before the runway intersection which is maybe 200m! 40 Degrees of flap is very useful for landing short!! I think he would have used less runway if he hadn't (out of habit I suspect) come over the threshold at 50 feet ;)
@Dan, A lot of people recommend this one... I am just waiting for my turn with it from the library! Due back 31/10 ;)
People either love or hate Stick and Rudder. I think its a great read.
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