Finally got a chance to overfly my house on Friday night. This is a particularly unique experience for me as my house is buried in the middle of Auckland International's Instrument Sector... traditionally a bit of a no-go area for Cessna 152's flying VFR!
After the failures of the previous week, Nick and I decided to laugh in the face of adversity and try again to fly up to Whangarei. Nick pre-flighted and fueled up ETZ while I went ahead and did the Nov 20 Volume 4 AIP updates so we had all the 'legal' bits of paper required.
Evening Civil Twilight arrived and we taxied out just before 2100... I took the first leg, so Nick could have a chance to read the map and familiarise himself with the surroundings.
Climbing out of Ardmore and heading towards the north via Brookby and Whitford Town, I called up Auckland Control and got a clearance up to 3500', so we could just point ourselves in a straight line and go. No drama's there and we cruised along quite happily, if somewhat slowly into the 20knot headwind!
Whangarei is not that hard to find, especially with the Marsden Point refinery acting like a light house... the big flame they have for burning of venting gas was pulsing and looked just like a light house!
Upon arrival at Whangarei, I showed Nick the lead-in light system and did a quick touch and go before he took over for some circuits and then tried a couple of tailwind ones as the windsock was showing about 2 or 3 knots at ground level. Unfortunately, the winds above were a different story and we were catching some pretty severe chop off the hills to the east of Whangarei, so Nick decided to call it a night and we headed back to Ardmore.
Coming up to Auckland, he called up Control and asked for permission to track direct to Ardmore. It was around 2300 hrs and most of the 'big boys' are safely tucked up at this time, so the airspace is pretty empty. I think the controllers are happy to have something to do, to be honest, so the controller cleared us through his airspace and had even checked with the Tower Controller that we were fine to cross the airports Control Zone as well... Talk about service!
So, we made a direct track to Ardmore which resulted in flying right over my house! YAY!
Still working on getting a videocam... and the only pics I got look like "weird, blurry fireworks" according to jade :(
Nevermind... It was the perfect start to an excellent weekend... with my Mum's 60th bday party on Saturday and the Kiwi's winning the Rugby League World Cup! Not to forget the awesome brekkie my dad cooked on Sunday morning... ham off the bone, hash browns, eggs, tomatoes... all fried up on the BBQ!
I think I may have to move back home! ;)
This flight: 1.1 PinC
Total Hours: 162.0 (78.9/62.7 Day, 8.6/11.8 Night, 7.0 IFR)
This was an awesome currency check
1 year ago
4 comments:
Night nav's huh? Sweet! Good weekend in the Manawatu?
Night nav's rock... and the controllers seem much more relaxed ;)
Great weekend in Manawatu... glad I left the flying to the Pros tho! The arrival back in AKL was err... 'interesting' ;) 25 to 30 knots across the runway!
Night photography is hard enough to do on the ground, let alone in a 152 being bumped about all over the sky. I hope some of the pics made it
Unfortunately not. I have not really mastered the art of night time photography :( All that fiddling with aperture and shutter speed etc.
So all the pics are just streaky lines of light on complete blackness.
I think video is the way to go, and take still frames from that... maybe Santa will be nice and leave a little vid cam in my stocking!
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