Committed

So I have finished up at work... FREEEEEEEEEEDOMMMMM!

And I have dealt with other things that required my attention, such as being best man at my friends wedding. And my bank balance is looking healthy thanks to my severance package and the weather, while less than brilliant has been very flyable.

All of which means I went and got my Class 1 Medical renewed on Monday (no major issues, yay!) and I've spent the last two days being assessed by CFI Rob as to where I currently am flying-wise, and what we'll need to do to get me to CPL Flight Test Standard.

Yesterday was just over an hour of cloud and shower dodging, while trying to demonstrate compass turns, steep turns, stalling in the turn, Forced Landings, Low Flying in the bad weather config, Coastal Reversal Turns and a nice Overhead Join with a shortfield grass landing to finish.

Today looked like it was going to be a washout, but I could almost have got sunburnt this afternoon, as the drizzle and low cloud gave way to blue skies and sunshine! So it was more steep turns, Max Rate Turns, Forced Landings, more low flying and coastal reversal turns, Steep Gliding Turns, a flapless landing and another shortfield landing onto the grass.

The upshot of all this (aside from being about $600 poorer) is that Rob thinks I am around 10 to 15 hours away from a CPL Flight Test. Which is better than I thought, bearing in mind that I had not been in an aircraft for about 2 months and had certainly not done any "proper" flight training for almost 3, I figured I was probably going to be a little underdone.

As expected my forced landings were a little rusty... the flying is not a problem, it is the rest of the procedure (initial actions, trouble checks, mayday call, passenger brief etc) that I get mixed up with. But this is really just a practice thing.

Most other things I am relatively competent at, I just need to polish them up a little to get them to a CPL standard. As Rob is fond of saying "Attention to Detail".

I am under no illusions that the next few weeks/months are going to be a lot of hardwork, but I'm up for it. So, I have more flights booked up for the rest of this week. Fingers crossed the weather holds ;)


These Flights: 1.1 Dual + 1.3 Dual
Total Hours: 219.2 (101.3/93.6 Day, 8.6/15.7 Night, 7.7 IFR)

One door closes... another door opens?

So I'm another year older... and perhaps a little wiser, depending on who you ask :P

The last couple of months have been something of a roller coaster both professionally and personally.

I've managed to sneak the odd flight in here and there, trying to keep my hand in and learn some of the CPL skills at the same time. However, for the most part I had been holding off due to the chance of being made redundant which meant that, one, I needed to be a little careful with the funds until I had a clearer picture of how everything was going to pan out and, two, that I might soon be able to fly "full time" which would help with currency.

The last couple of weeks have been particularly bad, having picked up this years rather nasty flu that left me in bed for 3 days and nowhere near able to fly for about 2 weeks :(

To top it off last week I got my letter informing me that my services would no longer be required effective October 16th. While this was not entirely unexpected, given that we were told back in May what the master plan was which basically gave us no longer than April 2010 but possibly, it still leaves you with that slightly numb feeling to be given a set date.

Being something of a "glass half full" kind of guy, I am looking at the opportunities that have presented themselves, namely "Time" as I no longer have to be at work Mon-Fri and "Money" as I stand to get a fairly healthy payout.

So I have decided that Time+Money = full-time flying to finish off my CPL and invest in a multi-engine instrument rating. Hopefully the Spring/Summer weather will be a bit nicer than the rubbish we've had the last week or so!! ;)

When you least expect it...

Saturday morning saw me drag my butt out of bed at ridiculous o'clock to drive down to Hamilton for a sim session with Trevor (and the promise of a ride in the back of the Twin Comanche, DOK)...

In typical fashion, the only thing that occurred according to plan was that we drove to Hamilton and back :P

It turned out that the twin was booked most of the day by someone else. So John, Trevor's Instructor, decided we would do a quick session in the Sim and then we would take the nice "new" Archer III, WIT, for a ride so Trevor could familiarise himself with the cockpit instruments as it has the same "glass" instruments as the Twin Comanche.

While we were at it, John decided Trevor would fly us Matamata and they'd play with all the fancy pants equipment like the 3-axis autopilot, dual Garmin 430's and the Aspen Avionics EFD1000, then we'd swap over and I could take him for some circuits and do some stalls and a forced landing etc. on the way back to Hamilton and thus get "checked to line" for Waikato Aero Club purposes.

So my cruisy day of sitting in the sim and the backseat watching proceedings quickly turned into a $200+ mini-checkride :-/

So while Trevor and John finished up in the sim, I went out and pre-flighted WIT.
There are more excellent photo's that Chris has taken over on his blog here and here. Note that these pics were taken before the avionics upgrade. You can see a demo of the Aspen EFD1000 here.

The aircraft is still in pretty good nick... it even has that nice "new car leather" smell... Ooooo Shiny! ;) My only complaints are that there isn't enough room in the back (I couldn't wear my normal headset as I simply didn't have enough headroom!! So I had to resort to my homemade headset that wraps around the back) and because of the auto-pilot, the controls are quite "heavy" as the controls are all run through servo's. Other than that, the machine is a real dream!

The "check-ride" actually went pretty well... although due to an impromptu airshow being conducted at Matamata by a homebuilt scaled-down Fockewolfe FW-190, ZK-FWI our plan for circuits ended up being the stalling and forced landing component of the ride which went pretty well, although I got a little wide on the forced landing due to the longer wing on WIT compared with LMA, so my visual references using the wing-tip to judge spacing was a bit out. To my credit I did pick up on it and corrected it as best I could.

We came back and landed at Matamata to pick up Trevor and then headed back to Hamilton to finish up for the day and head back to Auckland.

So, not quite the day we had planned, but I think it turned out pretty well... and I have finally flown an aircraft that is actually younger than I am! It's a 2004 model with around 420hours TT ;)

Sunday, I came crashing back down to "reality" as I went and did some simulated IFR and forced landing practise in one of Airline Flying Club's C-152's :( Actually, to be fair, they're pretty tidy, and fun, little aircraft... and cheaper too ;)

The IFR was OK and I did a fairly decent job with the Partial Panel work. The forced landings were a little poor, I keep getting fixated on finding a field to land in before actually running through the procedures and checks, the end result being that I get everything mixed up and it just makes things really messy.

I thought I was doing pretty well with the glide approach onto the grass until Trevor suggested I use more flaps than I thought was necessary... the end result being that we came up "a little short", and I got a first-hand lesson on just how much you can steepen an approach using flaps... and why you should never extend downwind when doing glide approaches/forced landings!


These Flights: 0.9 Dual + 1.1 Dual (0.3 IFR)
Total Hours: 216.0 (98.9/92.8 Day, 8.6/15.7 Night, 7.7 IFR)

Glide time...

Glide Approaches that is.

The purpose of the glide approach is to practice the last part of the forced landing. ie. everything that happens after you hit your 1000' point abeam your 1/3 aiming point in your paddock/field/road/clearing/beach etc. Basically, as you come abeam the aiming point, you pull the power back to idle and glide the aircraft down onto the ground as if you were carrying out a forced landing. It's just that in this instance, instead of pretending to land in Farmer Joe's paddock, you land it on the runway :)

This is excellent practice, because when doing forced landing practice out in the training area, aiming for a paddock, you usually get to 500' (if solo) and say "yeah, I would get that in from here"... but you never really know for sure. Doing glide approaches, you definitely find out.

Sunday was looking a bit iffy weather-wise, but as we were planning on remaining in the circuit I was pretty confident we would be OK.

As it turns out, the iffy weather was just what I needed, as it kept everyone else on the ground meaning I had the entire circuit pretty much all to myself, making it relatively easy to get some decent glide approach practise without having to slot in amongst guys flying battleship sized circuits.

Along with the light showers and relatively low cloud base, we also had 25kt winds at circuit altitude. It was "only" 14kts gusting 20-ish on the ground, and being 20 to 30 degrees off centre meant a nice 5 to 10kt crosswind component to deal with.

Things happen quite quickly when a 25kt tailwind is increasing your normal ground speed by a 1/4! Turn downwind, make radio call, do downwind checks, initiate glide approach. Doesn't sound like it would be too difficult, until you only get about 5 seconds to do all of it!! :-/

Was quite challenging, but good fun... and unfortunately cut a little short due to approaching "bad" weather. Still, I got a good look at the effects of various techniques used to ensure you make your field... ie. making allowances for strong headwinds and turning a little tighter so as not to get blown too far downwind, carrying extra speed to get better forward penetration, losing altitude faster initially to get out of higher winds sooner, not using flaps until completely sure you're going to make the field etc.

The good news is that I "made" every approach and I think I have a much better appreciation for the approach profile that I should be aiming for when doing practice forced landings.


This Flight: 0.6 Dual
Total Hours: 214.0 (96.9/92.8 Day, 8.6/15.7 Night, 7.4 IFR)

Going around in circles...

Saturday was meant to be a Sim session in the 'Tron, watching Trevor get put through the multi-engine emergency procedures wringer... However, due to some confusion over dates, we got all the way there to find no instructor!

So we decided to do a BIG circle and headed over to Matamata for a look-see... great 'little' airfield with quite a bit happening... at least on the gliding front.

Sunday, was 'revision' day for me. Trevor and I headed out to the Training Area for the first time in months to see if I could remember how to actually handle an aircraft. Medium Turns, Steep Turns, Basic Stalls, Approach Stalls and a couple of Forced Landings. Not too shabby, but definitely not perfect my any means.

Then we tried some of the CPL level manoeuvres... Steep Gliding Turns and Max-rate Turns.

After getting a good bicep workout trying to hold the aircraft level while whizzing about in circles as fast as possible, we went through the basics of the CAA's new favourite topic 'slow flight'. As the name suggests, you fly slow... maintain straight and level and then try a couple of turns. Not exactly rocket science, but is now part of the flight tests... yay! :-/

Was a good blowout... and really emphasised how different the aircraft handling is compared with flying 1 hour legs from A to B!


This Flight: 1.4 Dual
Total Hours: 213.4 (96.3/92.8 Day, 8.6/15.7 Night, 7.4 IFR)

One step closer...

and another sticker in the log book.

The latest one declares that I have successfully completed the CPL Cross Country Syllabus and passed the cross country flight test. :)

After not being anywhere near an aircraft for almost a month due to weather and prior commitments, I got a call from CFI Rob last wednesday... "Long range forecast looks good for the weekend, let's go flying!"

Saturday was just too good a day not to go flying. Light winds, and visibility forever.

I flight planned Ardmore (NZAR) - Hamilton (NZHN) - Taumarunui (NZTM) - Taupo (NZAP) - Ardmore (NZAR).

Being a cross-country flight test, I knew that out of all of those, I was likely to only visit Hamilton (and Ardmore :P) and everything else would be a combination of lost procedures and diversions!

We started with a simulated engine failure after take-off (yay... lots of sports fields and paddocks off the end of runway 21!) and then headed for Hamilton. We made it in and out of NZHN relatively unscathed... and then we started the various "fun activities" that Rob had planned.

First of all we had the forced landing, cunningly disguised as "a ground speed check". Obviously I was caught a little off-guard, but I did OK. It was not great and I got a little low, but I made my field. Climbing out, Rob handed me the instrument hood. This is where the lack of currency really showed. I got the leans about 3 seconds after putting the hood on and it took me a minute or two to really get on top of the aircraft :(

We flew around for 10 or 12 minutes at which point Rob told me to take the hood off. My first reaction was "How the !@#$@# did I get into this valley?" We were at 1700' and had been holding a steady altitude the entire time I was under the hood, as I was in this bowl shaped valley, completed surround by hills that were higher than we were flying!!

My next reaction was "Where the $##@$^ is this valley?" when Rob said to me "Ok, remain at 1700' and tell me where we are and what that town over there is called."

We circled over the top of the town, while I put my "Lost Procedures" into practise... "Ok, about 10 minutes flying at roughly 90kts, should put us around 15nm from where I put on the hood... we were mainly flying headings from 090 to 130 magnetic... so that should put us in this general area on the map..."

"How can you confirm that?" asked Rob.

"Ok, we have a railway line over there... some transmission lines... and the road following the railway line and then curving away through the valley while the railway goes through a tunnel. That would match up with these features on the map... so we are here and that town is XXXXXXXX." (removed to keep it secret for future victims... errr I mean students -ed.)

"Excellent" said Rob, "Spot on!"

I must at this point give a big shout out to Trevor for giving me the low down on lost procedures. Despite knowing where this spot is, he had refused to tell me... no matter how much bourbon I offered! ;)

But his advice of noting the time when entering IFR, so I could calculate the time spent in IFR conditions, plus keeping tabs on the general direction of flight so as to be able to narrow down the area on the map was spot on.

Rob then instructed me to set course for Tokoroa, work out how far it was and how long it was going to take to get there. So out came the map, a rough course hand drawn and heading worked out. Distance calculated using fingers (2 of my fingers = 10nm ;) 30 nautical miles at roughly 90kts will take us around 20 minutes. I called up Christchurch Information to amend our flight plan, give them our rough ETA at Tokoroa[1] and amend my SARTIME.

After Tokoroa, it was VFR nav back to Ardmore, doing ground speed checks and amending my ETA at Ardmore[2] all while avoiding controlled airspace around Hamilton and trying really hard to ignore the cramp that was developing in my bum from being stuck in a 152 for 3 hours!!!

After landing, we debriefed over a cup of tea at which point Rob said somewhat matter of factly "oh.. by the way... you passed" and shook my hand ;)


This Flight: 3.0 Dual (0.2 IFR)
Total Hours: 212.0 (94.9/92.8 Day, 8.6/15.7 Night, 7.4 IFR)

[1] - My mental arithmetic was actually not too bad... I was only off by about 1 minute ;)
[2] - You get +/- 2 minutes for your ETA's at CPL level... I was bang on ;)

One engine good, Two engines better?

Not necessarily!

Saturday, I was back in the Sim at Waikato Aero Club, watching Trevor get back up to speed with Multi-Engine flying...

Light twins don't traditionally cope too well with an engine failure... and watching what happens when one dies was certainly a wakeup call!

As the old saying goes "When one engine fails on a twin-engine aircraft, you always have enough power left to get you to the scene of the crash."

In a single engine aircraft, when it all goes quiet, you're basically a glider and the aerodynamics are pretty much the same (minus of course the thrust). The aircraft will generally fly pretty straight... but, of course, not so much level! ;-)

In a twin, when one engine goes out, everything changes. The thrust line is now offset from the centreline of the aircraft (asymmetric thrust), with the result being that it wants to constantly yaw left or right, depending on which engine has died, as one side of the aircraft is trying to fly faster than the other!

You're then left trying to troubleshoot while trying to maintain control of an unstable aircraft... and for added fun, you can try it with only reference to instruments!

The idea of keeping aviation as a 'fun hobby' is starting to look more and more appealing! :-/

Following the sim session, I almost scored a ride in the back of WIT (WAC's newish Archer III), but unfortunately, they were pushing a little close to maximum weight as it was full of fuel :(

Meanwhile, I'm hoping to catch some nice weather soon so I can get the Cross-Country Syllabus completed and tick another of the CPL boxes!

Things that DO suck

1. Sadistic Flight Instructors


2. Flat batteries in your Camera

Trevor managed to get yesterday off work, and the fine weather was still hanging in there, so we decided to finish the dual flight that we had aborted on Sunday due to the vacuum pump failure.

AR-(AP)-(MA)-TG, Divert (TH)-AR
The "plan" was to fly Ardmore (NZAR) - Taupo (NZAP) - Matamata (NZMA) - Tauranga (NZTG) - Ardmore (NZAR). But as I have discovered with dual CPL cross countries, what you plan and what you fly are two very different things :P

The trip to Taupo was pretty good. The winds were 'lightish' so the flying conditions were relatively smooth and the visibility was excellent. We could actually see Mt. Ruapehu while overhead Drury, which is a distance of about 250km!!!

I was really looking forward to getting some good photos of the mountains and Lake Taupo, until I handed my camera to Trevor and asked him to take some photos and he discovered that the batteries in the camera, which had been working perfectly in the morning, were now completely flat :( As I was too busy flying the aircraft and trying to do ground speed checks, plan my top of decent, look out for other aircraft and make radio calls, I couldn't be bothered trying to dig my cellphone out of my flight bag to try to get some pics on that...

I think I know what I want for my BDay/Christmas now... a nice little 'point and shoot' digital camera with a battery life longer than about 3 minutes :P

Anyway, we stopped in Taupo, gassed up, I had a bite to eat and visited the little boys room while Trevor checked out a car he is thinking of buying. Then we headed off into the clear blue skies and bade farewell to the snowy capped mountains and silky smooth lake and headed for Matamata.

After deciding I was a little bit off course, Trevor decided I should do a "1 in 60" to get to Matamata. Effectively you work out "Distance Off course divided by Distance Flown" and "Distance Off Course divided by Distance to Go". The first gives you the track error so far (usually a result of the wind not being what was forecast), and if you correct by that much you will end up paralleling your original track, but you will still be off course. In my case 2 nm miles off course after 25 miles flying or ~4 degrees. The 2nd calculation gives you the closing angle to arrive at your intended destination, so I needed to correct 2nm over the remaing 37 miles to Matamata (~3 degrees), resulting in a total correction of 4+3 or 7 degrees.

Now if it all sounds a bit like hard work trying to divide all sorts of random numbers in your head... you are right! That's why we use an "E-6B Flight Computer"... basically a fancy circular slide rule that makes a lot of aviation related calculations really easy ;)

The E-6B "Whizzwheel"
The "1 in 60" worked out pretty good, and I ended up pretty close (less than 1 mile) from Matamata. We dodged our way around the gliders, tanked up with gas and made ready to depart. At which point I learned that a 152, with 2 people on board and full tanks doesn't really depart that well from a runway consisting of relatively long grass! Even with shortfield technique we burned an awful lot of runway, but made it into the air eventually and with plenty of room to spare.

I was just commenting to Trevor that it was an awfully long take-off roll when he pulled the throttle 1/2 closed and called simulating. Lower the nose, Carb Heat On, Throttle Closed, Pick a paddock, Fuel/Mixture/Ignition Off. I hadn't seen the Engine Failure after take-off coming!!

He was satisified with my choice of paddock and we would have made it quite comfortably, so he called go-around and we climbed away on track to Tauranga. I had just got up to 2500' feet and managed to get Christchurch Info on the radio and pushed my SARTIME out when Trevor looked at me with a big grin and "Did I say Tauranga?? Oh, I meant Thames... oh and look at all that crappy weather (Clear Blue skies, visibility of around 60km :-/), ceiling is now 1500'"... So I started my diversion to Thames.

Due to the "crappy weather", I ended up with a ceiling of 800', so I was low (and slow) flying at 700' at 70knots. I called up CH Info and amended my flight plan and started heading for Thames. Eventually, "the weather" cleared and I was allowed to climb back up to 2500'. Just as I got there, and had everything sorted out and was planning my approach into Thames, Trevor pulled the throttle and said simulating.... AARRGGGHHH!!!

I was a bit rusty on the procedure for the forced landing, but I picked my paddock, planned an approach and would have put it in without too much trouble.

The nice long runway (14/32) at Thames is currently closed for maintenance, so I had the really short 500m runway (05/23) with a lovely approach for runway 23 that takes you quite close to some seriously high ground. I flew a really nice shortfield approach, touching down right on the threshold at minimal speed and blasted off again with plenty of room to spare. :D

I set heading for Ardmore and as usually seems to be the case, ended up arriving at the same time as everyone else :( I was just coming up to Hunua at 2000' and was about to report my position and intentions, when no less than 3 other aircraft all reported claiming to be exactly where I was! :-O I could only see one other aircraft and he was about 5 miles away!!!

I decided to stay out of the mix and gave everyone plenty of room and I slotted myself into a gap in the circuit traffic and landed without too much bother.

I was quite happy to be back on the ground after such an 'eventful' flight... and I definitely need to go and do some forced landing procedure revision before my cross-country flight test!


This Flight: 3.7 Dual (242 nm)
Total Hours: 209.0 (91.9/92.8 Day, 8.6/15.7 Night, 7.2 IFR)

Things that don't suck...

1. Broken Vacuum Pumps


2. Getting released from Jury Service on the first morning


3. Large High Pressure weather systems covering the country in blue skies and sunshine

On Sunday, I had been planning a dual cross country with Trevor. Everything was looking good until about 1/2 an hour into the flight. We were overhead Lake Waikere, about 5 miles east of Huntly and noticed that the AH had fallen over. Thats when I noticed the Suction Gauge was reading right off the top end of the meter. Just as I said to Trevor "I wonder how long until the DI plays up?", The DI started doing it's best impression of a roulette wheel. Technically, an AH and a DI are not required for VFR flight, but seeing as we were so close to home, I decided to abort the flight and returned to Ardmore.

Monday, was the beginning of Jury Service... I was actually kind of keen (read as: curious) to go along and see what it was all about. So I headed down to the courthouse on Monday and sat in a room with about 100 or so others (most of whom were just interested in when they could go home).

After an hour or so, they did the 'lottery' and called up a whole bunch of people and sent them off to the various courtrooms... The rest of us sat around for another hour or so at which point they did another lottery for a trial that was due to start on Wednesday and then told everyone else they could go...

Seeing as how I had already arranged for most of the week off and the weather for the next couple of days was looking pretty good, I called my boss and asked if I could have Tuesday and Wednesday as annual leave.

So instead of debating guilt or innocence, I spent the week flying :)

Trevor was unable to get Tuesday off work, so I headed off for another Solo cross country. This time, I headed up North, hoping it might be a little warmer up there... I was wrong :(

Cold, frosty start
AR - WR - KK - KT - o/h WP - AR
I had planned for Ardmore (NZAR) - Whangarei (NZWR) - Kerikeri (NZKK) - Kaitaia (NZKT) - Ardmore (NZAR). The winds were a bit shifty at Whangarei, and even with full flap and power at idle, I was only descending at about 100' per minute! The end result was that I ended up high and executed a go-around. The next approach was much better and I got in with no trouble. I taxied back to the holding point and departed for Kerikeri. It was as quiet as always at Kerikeri, so I filled up with avgas, paid my landing fee in the Honesty Box and headed for Kaitaia.

Welcome to the Bay of Islands!
Tiger Country!
I noted on arrival in Kaitaia that the aircraft seemed to be burning a lot more fuel that it should be... I filled up again and made a mental note to check this with Chris when I got back to Ardmore. As it turns out, the dipstick was calibrated incorrectly (it was under-reading by about 5 litres), so I actually had more fuel than I thought.

Kaitaia Airport
Kaipara Harbour at 4500', Nice and smooth but hazy
Following a suggestion that Chris had made before I left, after departing Kaitaia, I amended my flightplan to fly down the Kaipara Harbour and overhead the airforce base at Whenuapai (NZWP) and cut across their control zone back to the city. Some new airspace for me, and a slightly different perspective of the Harbour Bridge and CBD :)

Cleared to overfly the tower, 2500' VFR, Juliet Foxtrot Yankee
Approaching the Harbour Bridge from the west
Overhead the Harbour Bridge - Awesome weather
The rest of the trip was fairly uneventful. Ardmore was actually pretty quiet for a change. Usually about 10 aircraft all arrive at the same time that I do! I secured the aircraft and went to have a well earned beer ;)

The trusty steed - JFY

Flights: 1.0 Dual + 4.3 Solo (295 nm)
Total Hours: 205.3 (88.2/92.8 Day, 8.6/15.7 Night, 7.2 IFR)

Upstairs, Downstairs

The atmosphere is truly a strange and bizarre place...

Take today for instance, downstairs on the ground it was light and variable winds, while upstairs at 2000' it was 30+ knots!!

I was somewhat apprehensive, given some of the forecasts were for 45 to 50knots, and some of the terrain on my planned route was "less than flat" ;) But given that the skies were clear and this is CPL level you cannot let a little bit of wind stop you!

I had flight planned for Ardmore (NZAR) - Tauranga (NZTG) - Taumarunui (NZTM) - Raglan (NZRA) - Ardmore (NZAR), a nice little 265 nautical mile route that was a bit of a mix of new and old.

The flight out to Tauranga was fairly uneventful and relatively smooth until crossing the Coromandel Ranges where, as expected, the southerly winds were generating some turbulence. I met a student from CTC, also on a solo cross country, at the fuel pumps and we traded some small talk about the cold weather and how annoying leaky cabin air vents are when you're trying to keep warm at 3500'! ;)

Clear and smooth
I tanked up just in case there was no fuel at Taumarunui and made ready for departure. Despite there being a quite a few arrivals and departures, everything was flowing pretty well so I didn't have much of a wait and was cleared ontrack to Taumarunui (yay, no complicated departure procedure).

The leg to Taumarunui was a little more interesting than the first one to Tauranga. At one point I swear JFY was moving left, up, right and down all at the same time! The lenticular cloud forming over the central mountains was a fairly good indication that the forecast winds had indeed arrived... as was the concrete mixer like flying conditions! :-/

The terrain was also more 'interesting'... a series of deep gullies with very steep sides and large sections of almost perfectly flat land between. As opposed to the normal 'rough' terrain that appears to be sharp ridges rising up, this looked like large areas of earth had been scooped out.

A great shot, ruined by turbulence dropping a wing
NZ's answer to the Grand Canyon?
After topping off the tanks again, I finally had a chance to pickup a tail wind as I set course for Raglan. While it made the groundspeed faster, it didn't help all that much with the turbulence ;) Still, the views were kinda cool...

There was a small airforce at Raglan... several Cessna 185 tail draggers, a Cherokee 140, a Fletcher, a Cessna 206 Stationair and a Hughes Helicopter. An RV 'homebuilt' and another Cherokee arrived shortly after I landed. I just hoping everyone wandered over to the camp ground office and paid their $5 landing fee like I did!

Busy busy at Raglan
And then back home... in somewhat record time. I had flightplanned 21 minutes flying at something like 135 knots groundspeed. I had landed, taxiied back to the Airline Flying Club apron and shutdown in 20!!! :-o

In other news, I have reached (exactly) 200 hours total time! :D

CPL here I come...


This Flight: 3.8 Dual (265 nm)
Total Hours: 200.0 (87.2/88.5 Day, 8.6/15.7 Night, 7.2 IFR)

An expensive week...

I think that must be the most money I have spent on aviation in one week that didn't involve international air travel!!

After the first 2 CPL cross countries, I decided that a 3rd seemed like a good idea :-/

Originally, the intent had been to have CFI Rob as PinC again, with Trevor in the back getting a bit of a "live" refresher on CPL Cross Countries, so I could finish off the syllabus with him. We had a spare seat, so invited one of Trevor's PPL students along so she could get some practise at map-reading, navigating and the use of AIP aerodrome charts etc.

Unfortunately, about 15 minutes prior to our planned departure, Rob decided he was not feeling to flash (turns out he had an ear infection), so decided that Trevor would conduct the flight. They disappeared into a briefing room to plot all manner of evil schemes for the flight, while I filed the flightplan.

The planned flight was Ardmore (NZAR) - Kaikohe (NZKO) - Kerikeri (NZKK) - Whangarei (NZWR) - Ardmore (NZAR), but being a CPL cross-country, I was expecting diversions, so I made sure I had the AIP plates for the surrounding airfields like Dargaville, Kaitaia & North Shore handy. As it turned out, the 'surprise' exercise for the day was instrument flying... I had not done any IFR flying for a looooong time, October 2008, so I was a little alarmed when flying the first leg Trevor turned around and retrieved the instrument hood from the back seat and handed it to me :( I had not even seen him put the hood in the aircraft, so it was something of a shock.

Anyway, I managed to keep the aircraft the right way (shiny side) up, and pointing in the general direction that I was instructed to, and managed to hold my altitude fairly well despite the lumpy conditions. After about 10 to 15 minutes, Trevor told me to take the hood off, which I was really thankful for... until he asked me where we were!!

I had figured we were flying for a little of 10 minutes, and roughly knew the direction we had been heading in, so had a vague idea... but trying to pinpoint your location is a real exercise. Thankfully, the 'Far North' is a relatively 'thin' piece of land, so there is not too many places to go... there is also the enormous Kaipara Harbour to help pinpoint your position. I was trying to using railroads, transmission lines and tunnels to help pinpoint where I was. As it turns out, we were a long way off track and it actually took me a couple of goes to figure out exactly where I was... but I soon had it nailed down and we proceeded to Kaikohe without any further problems... until all the wind disappeared as I was crossing the threshold and the cherokee decided it didn't want to fly anymore :-/ Exciting stuff... not!

We tanked up with gas, triple-checking the fuel drains as I don't trust the watertightness of these 'out of the way' airfields that don't get a lot of fuel turnover. I dropped some coins in the honesty box to cover the landing fees and with everything in order we headed to Kerikeri and I got a lesson in time management. The leg is quite short... only about 10 or 12 miles and we had a 20 to 25knot tail wind... making it a planned leg of around 7 minutes! Pro-tip: Listen out on the destination frequency and see if you can get an idea of traffic and runway in use before you depart!

I joined overhead, established wind direction and best runway to use, landed, back-tracked and departed for Whangarei. After dodging a Beech 1900D and a much better approach and landing, we headed to the Terminal Building to enjoy a bite to eat... only to discover the cafe was closed while the owner had gone to pick up her son! We waited around for about half an hour or so and they returned and I finally got to enjoy the 'Double Happy' (double sized sausage roll) that I had been looking forward to all day!

Fed and watered, we all climbed back in and departed for home. The final leg becoming a lesson in weather avoidance as we "dodged, ducked, dipped, dived and dodged" rain showers on the trip south. As I had discovered on my trip to hamilton a few weeks ago... making sure you have an escape route is a really good idea. Thankfully, I didn't need to use any of them, as most of the large patches of weather were just that, patches... so we were able to fly around, between and under them.

There were lots of backup plans, like Omaha Flats airstrip, Spring Hill, Kaipara Flats and North Shore available should anything really bad come our way, but soon enough the Whangaparoa Peninsular and Auckland City came into view and we could see the weather was, not necessarily nice but clear...

So we ducked down to 1000' to use the VFR transit lane through Whenuapai's airspace and VFR'd our way back through the harbour area to Ardmore.

Plenty to talk about in the debrief, with lots of really useful tips from Trevor which I have filed away for future reference.

So I am now about 1/2 way through the CPL Cross Country Syllabus... and about 3/4 way through the available credit on my credit card!!! :-O


This Flight: 3.7 Dual (241 nm, 0.2 IFR)
Total Hours: 196.2 (87.2/84.7 Day, 8.6/15.7 Night, 7.2 IFR)

On the clock...

I've taken the plunge and commenced my CPL Cross Country training... I have 12 months to finish it off. Tick Tock... Tick Tock.

Rather than wait for the good weather and a weekend to arrive at the same time, I caught myself a bad case of 'Midweek Altitude Sickness'... Twice! ;) 9 hours over 2 days...

Wednesday and Thursday were ideal VFR flying conditions. A big fat high sitting over the country (Pressure was 1033 over the entire country on Wed!), with clear blue skies and temperatures in single digits.

I went flying with CFI Rob on Wednesday, with the route Ardmore (NZAR) - New Plymouth (NZNP) - Taumarunui (NZTM) - Ardmore (NZAR). I was told to expect a diversion in there somewhere. This turned out to be between New Plymouth and Taumarunui... where I was instructed to fly to Ohakune. It is shown on the charts, but not in the AIP. Turns out it is a private strip, owned by CFI Rob's 2nd Cousin, who owns one of the Ski shops in Ohakune.

A very interesting little one-way strip with a curved approach, sitting at 2000' AMSL. Good fun!

I was concentrating on height and heading holding, and over all I think I did a good job. During the debrief Rob said flying-wise there was not too much to be concerned about, but I needed to improve the efficiency of my ground work, as you only get 1 hour once given the route to flight plan and pre-flight. I took about probably about 1hour 10mins... No real drama's, just a little out of practise.

During the flight itself, Rob emphasised the things they were looking for in 'professional' pilots... constantly assessing the situation and always planning ahead. The necessity for this became apparent during the diversion when we flew over some real 'tiger' country. Very rugged with large expanses of forest that would just swallow a light aircraft. Being constantly on the lookout for likely landing spots should an emergency arise, while accurately flying, map-reading, being aware of controlled airspace etc... makes for a very busy pilot ;)

Quite a long day at 4.6 hours of flight time, over 300+nm's distance and a shade over 6 hours of 'real' time (7 if you include the groundwork).

During the debrief, he asked when I would be interested in doing a solo flight. I told him I already had the aircraft booked for the following day!

So on Thursday, I got up and did it all over again... only on my own and without the diversion. I decided on another 300+nm flight, as it is a requirement for a C-Cat, so will help out later on. Rob (and Trevor) suggested Gisborne, and while it sounded like fun, I didn't fancy spending 2+ hrs flying back on a westerly heading directly into the sun. So, I flight planned for Ardmore (NZAR) - Whakatane (NZWK) - Opotiki (NZOP) - Taupo (NZAP) - Raglan (NZRA) - Ardmore (NZAR), which is just over 320nms. I checked the weather, and it looked like I was going to fly a large circle around a huge patch of fog covering most of the Waikato and north of the Central Plateau. Which, as you can see from the pics below, I did!

I ended up delayed a little, due to the severe ice buildup on the aircraft overnight and a minor "technical difficulty" (read as: Engineers taking aircraft for a compass swing), but other than that it was a great day.

Please excuse the photo-quality, I was sure I'd be too busy flying the aircraft to be fluffing about taking photos, so I didn't bother taking a camera. However, the views were just too good not too, so they're off my cellphone. They really don't do do justice to the stunning sights to be had around our country!

Overhead the southern end of the Hunua Valley, looking south towards Lake Waikare and Huntly.

Tauranga and the Mount... looking pleasant as always

Whakatane was it's usual deserted self... and despite the "Variable 5knots" winds, it still managed a nice crosswind :). I soon, after about 5 minutes of looking, discovered that they've moved the landing fee honesty box. It's now tucked away in the airside entrance to the terminal building.

Opotiki was much nicer than my previous visit. And my approach and landing was about a million times better!

The 'Cloud Factories' north of Taupo

Taupo was busy with helicopters in the circuit, about 3 different sky-diving operations running and various transient aircraft. I thought about stopping here for lunch, but parking space was at a bit of a premium, so I decided to head off after a quick snack (mmmm One Square Meal).

Not going anywhere in a hurry

Notice the fog to the left, clear to the right

Picture Postcard Perfect

Raglan was quiet. REALLY quiet. But the locals are very friendly and after paying my landing fee at the camp office, I asked if there was anywhere close by that I could get a bite to eat and a drink as I needed a break after being couped up in a 152 for 4 hours. The office lady suggested the camp store. So I called the National Briefing Office and added an hour to my SARTIME and went for a look.

Pro-tip of the Day: The camp store at Raglan makes great fish and chips ;)

It was perfect afternoon... blue sky, sunshine, great food and a cold drink...

I thanked the ladies at the store and headed back to the airfield before departing for home, once the people walking their dog across the airstrip were safely out of the way! :-/

Glad I decided against that return trip directly into the sun...

All up, 4.4 Hours flight time and 320+nm's... Much better than sitting at my desk :P Must remember to thank my (very understanding) boss!


Flights: 4.6 Dual (334 nm) + 4.4 PinC Night (326 nm)
Total Hours: 192.5 (83.5/84.7 Day, 8.6/15.7 Night, 7.0 IFR)

Doing a favour

My Boss recently got married, and as such, had a lot of his family from the UK visiting. As a favour to him, I took his dad, who is quite keen on flying, and his dad's partner for a scenic flight over the city. As it turns out, my boss also tagged along, despite his "concerns" over flying in light aircraft ;)

We had originally planned to go the day before (which, of course, had perfect weather), but it clashed with the Champions League Final, so my boss and his dad were busy getting wrecked watching ManU lose (muahahaha!), so I didn't think it was the best time to put them in a light aircraft...

It wasn't the best day for it... as there were a few showers in the area that meant we couldnt get much higher than around 1500' and the visibility was pretty variable. You could just see Great Barrier Island in one direction (about 50nm's) but the North Shore was hidden in a dark grey murk (about 5nm's). Over the central city was nice and clear though, so we managed to get to see some good sights and the ride was surprisingly smooth.

Despite my feelings that it wasn't the greatest day for it, everyone else had a great time (even my boss the nervous flier!) and got a lot of pics and videos and declared it to be a fantastic flight :)


This Flight: 1.0 PinC
Total Hours: 183.5 (78.9/80.3 Day, 8.6/15.7 Night, 7.0 IFR)

A "Free" prize

I had received a call from Edna at the Waikato Aero Club to tell me that I had won a spot prize after filling in an entry form at the Open Day a few weeks ago.

So I decided that I would claim my "free" prize by flying down and picking it up (and spending about $300 in the process :P)

Weather was looking good, although the forecast was for a front to move up from the south later in the day bringing some rather crappy weather. As it turns out, this front was moving a little faster than forecast! It probably didn't help that we were steaming into a 20 to 25knot headwind all the way to Hamilton.

We ran into a wall of grey just as we were entering the control zone at Hamilton. The rain was quite heavy and the vis dropped pretty rapidly, but I could still see the airport and behind me was clear blue sky, so I was happy to continue with the approach.

Following some interesting vectoring from ATC and a real greaser of a landing (20 knots on the nose always helps ;), I commenced the long taxi to the aeroclub. This was due to the fact that the airport company has decided to dig up the grass 18/36 runway... and pave it! creating what will be NZ's only parallel paved runways (Technically, NZAA has parallel runways, but they're using one as a taxiway)...

I secured the aircraft, ran inside and claimed my prize. Due to the weather I thought it prudent to depart immediately, so I headed back out into the rain.

By this time we were operating Special VFR, as we were at minimums. Nothing too bad, just poor vis. But it was still clear to the north and we had the luxury of radar and ATC, so away we went. By the time we got to Te Rapa, the rain had eased, we easily had 10k vis and By the time we were over Ngaruwahia, we were back in brilliant sunshine with clear blue skies!

The 20 knot tailwind made for a quick trip home, and we were back on the ground at Ardmore in no time.

Trevor commented that it was good experience, flying in marginal weather, and that he was impressed with my decision making and that I had at all times been keeping an eye on my 'escape route'.

The only downer on the whole experience was that the prize, a really nice jacket, didn't bloody fit!!! So jade now has a nice new, warm, waterproof, fleece-lined jacket :P


This Flight: 1.9 PinC
Total Hours: 181.6 (78.9/79.3 Day, 8.6/15.7 Night, 7.0 IFR)

Wet and/or windy...

So after finishing all my CPL exams, I have been busting to get stuck into the CPL flying... a large component of which is the CPL Cross Country Syllabus.

Unfortunately, the weather gods are once again tormenting me by hurling large amounts of wind and rain at me on weekends... and making Mondays and Tuesdays lovely and sunny :(

And of course, the day after my mate's "Stag Day" (when I was no where near passing the "I'M SAFE" check) it was blue sky and sunshine... *sigh*

However, as my wife will no doubt attest, I am very very VERY stubborn... so I shall continue to defy the weather gods and continue booking aircraft on weekends until I get these flights done... or it becomes summer again ;)

I am once again thinking that, as this winter is looking a bit nasty, I might push the IR up the schedule... that way I will get to spend the crappy days in the simulator... rather than sitting on the couch at the aeroclub drinking tea and talking bollocks...

In the meantime, I will continue to read the Instrument Rating study guides and prepare for the exams, do the odd flight when I can (I have done a couple of scenic flights and some night flying) to help keep my hand in...

And keep prepping for my cross-country flights ;)


Flights: 0.8 PinC + 0.8 PinC Night
Total Hours: 180.6 (78.9/77.4 Day, 8.6/15.7 Night, 7.0 IFR)

Membership has its privileges...

Air New Zealand Technical Operations held an open day out at Auckland International for staff and family today... and jade (knowing how much of a 'Tech Geek' I am) was more than happy to take me along. She also invited her sister Pearl, a naturally 'inquisitive' person ;) and Pearl's husband Greg, who is an engineer by trade and, like myself, a bit of a 'Tech Geek'...

I suggested we get there as early as possible, which turned out to be the best decision of the day, as we finished looking at the last of the things to see pretty much right on finishing time.

The various trades amongst TechOps had setup various displays in their departments and we wandered around looking at some pretty cool stuff... and talking to some very interesting characters who were, in general, pretty eager to talk about their world.

We started with the calibration unit, which tests and calibrates a lot of the equipment used by the various TechOps departments. One of the highlights of which was completely unrelated to their actual function... They had a little laptop connected to a projector and webcam which was using motion tracking as you walked past the webcam to pan the view on the projector[1] ;)

They other highlight was the little 'pads' they use to weigh aircraft. A group of kids were trying to get the scales to read 747... as the info sign said a 747 weighed something like 178,000Kg's... They were happy that such a big guy as myself showed up[2]... and not just because I helped them cheat by changing the display to pounds! :P

Following this, we made our way to the main hangar and apron area where they had several aircraft on display like a 777-200, a couple of 747's, an RNZAF Hercules, a 737, an old jetstream j32, the warbirds DC-3, an old tiger-moth and the little Cri-Cri...

First up we had a nosey around and in the 777-200. It is a truly impressive piece of kit... the sheer size of everything just blows you away. I'm sure the wheel wells are bigger than our old apartment and the tyres themselves are almost 5ft in diameter! This one was in the shop having an internal refit to put in more premium economy seats.

Plenty of room under a 777-200

Jade thought it was quite amusing that the tyres had Boeing Part numbers on them... mind you, she also thought the person dressed as B1 (from Bananas in Pajamas) was amusing too...

need a spare? just calling Boeing and order one!

Then we 'queued' our way up the stairs for a peek inside... not much to see as they had walled off the main cabin due to the refit, but at least we got to visit the flightdeck.

Made it... LHS of a heavy :)

They had some engines in various states of repair on display and had set one up for photo ops. To give you some sense of scale, I am 6' 3".

Yeah, they're pretty big...

We wandered outside to have a peek at the RNZAF C-130 Hercules, as I was hoping to get some flightdeck shots. While we were climbing up the ramp they towed another 747 onto the apron area and jade got all artistic...

The world famous Koru... from the belly of a C-130

As is usually the case, we queued... and queued... This led to jade getting a little bored and, being part of the AirNZ Safety and Employment Wellbeing team, she started taking some very random 'safety related' pics...

Safety first...

In case you didn't pay attention...

Surprisingly comfortable

We finally made it to the front, only by the time we got there, the guys keeping an eye on things must have decided they needed a bit of a rest and had pulled the ladder out and taped the flightdeck off, so all we could do was poke our heads up into the flightdeck area for a nosy :(

So, we headed off to what jade likes to call 'A Real Aeroplane'(tm)... otherwise known as a 747. After an enormously long wait[3], we finally made it onto the upper level and onto the flightdeck...

Let's take this puppy for a spin!

jade getting artistic again...

A nice bit of tail

We wandered around the 'hobby' section, where various TechOps guys had their 'toys' on display... everything from model RC aircraft, drag bikes, blo-karts, a hovercraft, a Ford 429 Cobra, a simply stunning Mini Cooper, a tiger moth and the Cri-Cri, to a 'world famous' brewer displaying some of his wares (here's hoping I win the raffle for 4 bottles of his limited edition India Pale Ale! ;)

We then headed off to some of the quieter sections... like the 'Safety' section, which was all about fire fighting equipment and life rafts... The staff member on hand was really friendly and seemed thrilled that we were interested in something as 'boring' as life rafts... but when you find out they can inflate a liferaft the size of my double garage in less than 6 seconds, well I find that kind of thing pretty cool! What actually surprised me the most, was they way they actually inflate. I always thought they were like the lifejackets and they had gas stored in a little canister and this is used to inflate the raft.

However, the gas canisters are not used directly to inflate them as they are actually only about the size of normal scuba diving tank (although they're made of aluminium and carbon fibre and pressurised to 3,000 PSI), so they don't hold anywhere near enough gas to inflate the huge liferafts... What they do is feed the gas into an 'aspirator' (basically a large venturi tube arrangement) which creates a huge vacuum and basically sucks in all the air required... quite ingenious really.

We also found out that as the material the liferafts are made out of had a limited lifespan, they don't just keep rolls of it on the shelf waiting for you to order a US$85,000 liferaft for your 767. Nope, they make the material when you place your order, which results in a lead time of some 120 days to get a new liferaft! So, if you want one for christmas, you'd better order now ;)

Pearl testing out a liferaft...

Following this we went to Air New Zealand Gas Turbines... who, ironically, don't actually service the gas turbine engines for aircraft... but for ships and oil-rigs!!! We ran into a really nice guy who, when he figured out I was actually genuinely interested[4], gave us a personal mini-tour and answered all of our questions. He quoted some very impressive numbers... 25,000 hours between overhaul for the engines... 10,000RPM when running near maximum... each blade on the turbine is worth about USD$7,000 and just the turbine component of the engine was worth around USD$1.85million... they had a unit on display with about 4 or 5 blades that had huge chunks taken out of them... "Most probably a nut went through the engine"... yikes!

Then he showed us a unit they had recently finished overhauling and were packaging up ready to ship out. Apparently, they don't come in quite as clean as this :P

General Electric LM2500 - Ready for export

We wandered through the composites section and had a look at various bits and pieces of carbon fibre, fibreglass, honeycomb and the way repairs are made etc... It never ceases to amaze me how something so thin and light can be so strong! We headed back to the main hanger to see if the queue for the scissor lift had got any shorter, as jade was keen for a ride, but if anything the queue was even longer, so we decided to give it a miss and call it a day.

On the way out stopped off to have a look at the 'Simulator Simulator'... I'm not sure what the purpose of this unit is exactly, but I get the feeling it is used to let crew familiarise themselves with the layout of the instrument panel.

I think this gauge is faulty...

All in all, a very fun and informative day out...


[1] I really am a geek...
[2] We made it to 747 too!
[3] At least they had plenty of seats :P
[4] I do after all have to study Basic Gas Turbine theory at some point... oh and I am a geek ;)

Under pressure...

1033 hectopascals to be precise ;)

A (very) high pressure system has been sitting on the country for the last couple of days... and as they pointed out during "Principles of Flight and Performance", High Pressure + Low Temperature = Awesome Performance. So, I figured I was in for a little fun last evening.

I was somewhat un-current at night, so I decided I would take the 152, 172 and Cherokee and do my 3 take-offs and landings. I pre-flighted DJU (the 172) and LMA (the Cherokee) and double checked I had enough gas... which I did. Chris and CFI Rob were taking JBL (the 152) for a quick jolly, so the plan was to go 172, 152 and finish with LMA.

I was under a little time pressure, as the night circuits curfew kicks in at 2230hrs local, but thankfully the circuit was pretty much empty, so I didn't have to worry too much about other aircraft. With the conditions the way they were, DJU leapt off the ground and I struggled to keep the airspeed below 80kts and was still climbing at over 1000' per minute!

I was feeling a little rusty... and the GPS track (yay, the GPS on my new phone + OziExplorer works really well!) kind of bears witness to this.

What a mess...

After taxiing back in, I pre-flighted JBL as Rob and Chris had returned, double-checked I had enough gas, had a quick pitstop and taxied out. I was feeling more comfortable for the 2nd lot of circuits, as the GPS track for that flight shows... Not too shabby if I do say so myself ;)

The way it should be...

And then it was time to take LMA... I was really pushing the curfew cut-off, taking out at 2210, but I snuck in 2 circuits before 2230 and vacated to the city for a quick scenic cruise. After flying up the harbour, I rounded SkyTower, headed out to One Tree Hill and requested (and was given) permission to enter the control zone to overfly NZAA and take a shortcut back to Ardmore.

And then things got interesting as the tower informed me I might have a bit of a hold at Mangere Town due to some departures... unless I wanted to turn left, head east until I crossed the southern motorway and then direct to Ardmore. I was more than happy with that, as I didn't really want to overfly NZAA, I just wanted the shortcut ;)

So I turned east, and enjoyed the slightly different scenery... before realising that I was heading towards my house :) Unfortunately, just as I was nearing the motorway and before I got too close to home, I was advised I could track direct, and as I didn't want to overstay my welcome, I set heading for Ardmore and watched my house slip by the port wing.

Looks like a giant sock puppet!

A most enjoyable evenings flying... and I am now current like a current thing ;)


This flight: 0.5 + 0.5 + 0.8 PinC Night
Total Hours: 179.0 (78.9/76.6 Day, 8.6/14.9 Night, 7.0 IFR)

A complete set

Well Euan was right... I did indeed kick some arse on my CPL Met exam... 96% to be precise ;)

So now I have the full set of CPL exams completed, which has now earned me a 'CPL Exam Credit' which is valid for 3 years. I'm really hoping it does not take me that long to actually get the CPL :P

Seeing as how I am in 'exam mode', I have decided to push on and do my Instrument Rating exams as well... so it is more book time for me. I am hoping to get started on the CPL cross-country syllabus as well.

I have also been tagging along with Trevor on some of his Instrument Rating adventures... Eyes Open, Mouth Closed... 'Sponge' mode engaged!

I have picked up quite a lot and I'm hoping this will pay off when I am the one in the hot-seat trying to do fifty million things at once :P

I successfully managed to miss the Whenuapai Open Day... but I was in the back of a PA28 going around the hold at Tauranga and shooting the missed approach etc... so it was a fair trade-off ;)

On the "New Gadget" front, my boss made me an offer I could not refuse... and I have upgraded from the Nokia 6275i to an Okta Touch (Windows Mobile 6.1) PDA-Phone. Was bummed to find that it had no GPS or wifi... until I found out a firmware upgrade enabled the GPS ;) (Still bummed about the lack of wifi tho)

I have successfully got Garmin Mobile XT running on it which allows routable car navigation and am investigating my options for airbourne GPS. Unfortunately the Windows Mobile version of the software I had been using on the Nokia, TrackMyJourney, does not seem to work with the GPS on my phone... I will continue to test it, but am thinking I may need to look at OziExplorer...

Which means I will need to redo all my maps *sigh* :(

Deadlines...

Nothing provides motivation like a deadline ;)

1 more week to figure out how "The Weather"(tm) works... Not sure how I am supposed to understand it all, given that the MetService, who get PAID to understand this stuff, still can't seem to figure it out! :P

Optimism pays dividends...

It was looking like another crappy weekend... with a big storm rolling on through. However, it looked like it was going to arrive a little earlier and move fairly quickly, so I had been hoping that Sunday would in fact be a 'Sun Day'...

and it was!

I had been planning on going and doing some flying with Nick in the afternoon, but decided not to waste the conditions, so I I headed out to Ardmore fairly early to get the aircraft pre-flighted and fueled. This turned out to be a great idea, as there were a number of visiting aircraft in town for the Pilot Expo which was putting a strain on the refueling guys. One of the club members had been waiting for an hour for fuel when I got there! So when the tanker finally arrived, I got the guy to fill up my aircraft as well.

I had been keeping an eye on the weather and it was steadily improving so I figured it would be all go for the afternoon. As I was really early, I decided to take ETZ for a few quick circuits to get it warmed up, so when Nick arrived we could get airborne relatively quickly.

I totally messed up the first landing... the conditions in the circuit were a little bumpy due to some blustery winds and mechanical turbulence coming off the terrain to the northwest. My approach was a bit messey, so I ended up high and consequently I was descending quite rapidly and I flared a little late... and a little too much... and proceeded to balloon and then hit a little hard.

The 2nd circuit I opted for a flapless... extended my downwind, and flew by the numbers... everything came together beautifully and I greased it onto the runway.

The 3rd and final I tried for a short-field approach. I flew the final leg at 60kts all the way down (theoretically the approach speed should be 54, but I was carrying extra speed due to the gusty conditions). I managed to be 50ft over the threshold and still get it down and stopped (without excessive braking) by taxiway Bravo. A landing roll of maybe 150 to 200metres, so I was pretty happy, especially given the wind conditions.

I taxied back and waited for Nick to arrive... only to get a text message saying he had been called into work and wouldn't be coming. So I decided to solo. Grabbed the weather for the far north which looked decent. Put in a flight plan to overhead Dargaville then on to Kerikeri, Whangarei and back to Ardmore. Double-checked the fuel onboard and then grabbed my gear and headed off.

Flying across the harbour to Rangitoto and the VFR transit lane by Whenuapai I was dodging aircraft left right and centre... seems everyone was doing city scenic flights! After that I saw a grand total of about 4 aircraft the rest of the flight, until I got back into the circuit at Ardmore.

Once I reached the far edge of the Whenuapai Control Zone I set course for Dargaville and climbed up to 2500' for the cruise north. It was a little bumpy so I tried 3000' and it was a lot smoother.

I also got a chance to test out the GPS on my phone after having spent ages getting the aeronautical charts loaded. It seemed to work really well. My reckoned position on my paper chart matched up pretty well with the GPS, and the actual location. The only issues I had were that it was giving bearings in degrees True. Which is problematic when you're navigating using a magnetic compass and a DI aligned to the magnetic compass ;) Not a huge problem... just have to allow the -20 or so degrees for magnetic variation. The other issue was that the phone battery died after around 3 hours... into a 3.5 hour flight! Might have to see if the cigarette lighter is compatible with the cigarette lighter charger I have... or go on shorter flights :P

Overheading Dargaville, I set course for Kerikeri and flew over some real tiger country. Some 2500' ranges and dense forests. A little unnerving and somewhat bumpy in spots. I found Kerikeri pretty easily and landed without incident and taxied to the pumps to fill up.

Heading back south at Whangarei, I thought I was going to run into some issues with myself, a parachute jump plane and one of the EagleAir Beech 1900's all arriving at the same time, but thankfully being in the little slow 152 meant I was able to sequence in behind everyone else pretty nicely without any hassles. The weather off to the east of Whangarei looked pretty bad... some massive cloud development and lots of rain. However it stayed where it was and I was able to touch and go and set heading for Ardmore without getting anywhere near it.

I made it back without further incident and managed to slot into the traffic pattern without too much hassle. Just a 172 from AFS that was overheading at the same time I was joining non-traffic side. Again, as I knew he would be faster than me, I just slowed up a little to get the spacing right and it all worked out pretty well.

If you look closely, you can see where the GPS died

A nice little afternoon jaunt, another 3.4 hours of cross-country time and another little personal milestone...

I now have more PinC time (89.7) than Dual time (87.5) ;)


This flight: 0.4 + 3.4 PinC
Total Hours: 177.2 (78.9/76.6 Day, 8.6/13.1 Night, 7.0 IFR)

Where's my snorkel?

Unfortunately, Yellow does not equal sunshine
AUCKLAND (NZAA):

METAR NZAA 191900Z 02015KT 9999 SHRA FEW006 BKN010 BKN013 21/20 Q1009
TEMPO 4000 RA BKN008 =

SPAR NZAA 191658Z
360/20KT X/W MEAN15KT 15KM RED 4000M SHRA FEW006 BKN010 BKN015=

TAF NZAA 191701Z 1918/2018
02018G30KT 9999 -SHRA FEW012 BKN035
TEMPO 1918/2001 4000 RA BKN008
BECMG 2001/2003 32015G25KT
TEMPO 2001/2006 3500 TSRA BKN012 FEW020CB
TEMPO 2006/2012 6000 SHRA BKN012
BECMG 2012/2014 26008KT
2000FT WIND 02025KT
BECMG 1918/1920 35035KT
BECMG 2005/2007 31015KT =


New Zealand is hiding in there somewhere!


Anyone got a bucket?

All quiet on the western front?

Despite the mostly good weather[1] we have been fortunate enough to enjoy over January and February, I have managed about 3 hours worth of flying.

This is not to say that I haven't been flying, I just have not been doing the actual flying.

Went with one of the other club members up to Whangarei as safety pilot so he could rack up some instrument time under the hood. I commented it was the first time I had been to Whangarei in the daytime... I got that same "WTF?!?!?!" look I usually get when I tell people I like flying around doing cross countries in the dark ;)

And the past few weekends I have been down in the Tron picking up tips on an instrument rating again as Trevor has been preparing for his Instrument Rating Flight Test. I did actually fly us down one trip. Just to help with the currency.

Also, I have been told to consider doing an IR before I do my CPL... as a bonus I can use the IR hours towards the 200hr minimum requirements for a CPL, so in a way, the hours are 'free'. Plus it also teaches you about precise flying.

One stumbling block however will be the 50 hours PinC Cross-country time as I currently have around 35. So I would need a couple of decent 4 hour trips to top it up to the minimums. Maybe a weekend down to see my folks near Palmerston North.

And of course, the exams required... *sigh*... I am currently struggling through the study book for my last CPL exam, which is meteorology. If only it were as simple as the weather rock ;)

Something to think about anyway...

In other news, I received a new mobile phone from work as we recently moved from Vodafone to Telecom... not really news, except for the fact that my new phone (a Nokia 6275i) has built-in GPS. And a really shitty built-in GPS application which does little more than give you your co-ordinates. Which got me thinking[2]... I wonder if anyone has written any cool little GPS apps for these phones???

I found a couple of things... MGMaps, which was relatively easy to install and setup and I even found a complete copy of the GoogleMaps street maps for New Zealand that someone had thoughtfully compiled for this application, so you could put it on a memory card and not get horrendous data charges for downloading maps on the go.

I thought it would be useful to get a 'rough' idea of where I was while flying around the countryside, as a handy little backup device. I even tested it when I was safety pilot for Joseph on the trip to Whangarei and it worked really well. I even had the crazy idea of scanning in my aeronautical charts and using them instead of googlemaps, and had some initial success, except the application kept crashing if you scrolled around and zoomed in or out too much.

Aside from the odd crash, this program had one serious flaw. It did not do 'tracking'. So, at the end of the journey, you cannot see the path you took. It has an online service so you can see live updates of where you are, and people have written scripts that simply poll the server every 30 seconds and log all the individual points as you move about... but that was a bit clumsy and too much like hard work[3]...

So I went looking for a better solution. Which is when I discovered TrackMyJourney. At first it looked like a service similar to the live update feature of MGMaps... but it turns out that is just part of it. This application is pretty much a full-featured GPS system for your Java capable phone/pda etc...

It did not suffer from the same application crashes when scrolling about or zooming in and out... it offers all sorts of views, options, waypoints, routes and most importantly tracking! :)

So then this idea of scanning in my aeronautical maps popped into my head again. TMJ provides a little utility for generating your own maps from picture files. So all that was needed was images of my maps, so I:

• 'Patiently' scanned in all my VNC's for the North Island (thank heavens for the A3 sized colour scanners at work!)...


• Then I stitched them back together using photoshop...


• Then I loaded them into a really nifty tool called 'MapCruncher' by Microsoft Research... essentially you take "your" map and load it into the application which displays it alongside "Virtual Earth". Then by lining up exact locations on each map, you calibrate your map to the 'real world'. In my case, the aeronautical charts have the latitude and longitude graticules printed on them, so I could mark fairly precise locations all over the map giving a decent rendering. I actually had to write a Perl script that would go through and 'edit' the map (or Mashup) config file generated by MapCruncher, as it was just too tedious to edit 50 or 60 points on each of the 6 North Island VNC's...


• Then I rendered out the re-projected map using MapCruncher... which broke it down into little 256x256 pixel tiles, named in 'Quadkey' format... If you're really interested you can read about it here, but be warned it is not exactly riveting!


• As this format is not in nice rows/columns, it was going to be a total mission to stitch these tiles back together to create a nice copy of the map to load into TMJ. So I wrote another Perl script that renamed the files into the format Y_X_zoomlevel.jpg so I could use some handy cut+paste and macro's to generate some commandlines to stitch these back together using the commandline batch processing options of a handy image utility called IrfanView...


• Once I had stitched all the tiles into a big giant map, I could load it into the TMJ image utility, and use it to generate the required map files the program needed... only I need to know the "Top-Left" and "Bottom-Right" 'Real World' Co-ordinates of my image... but I only had QuadKey's and/or X,Y values... so I wrote a third Perl Script that would automatically calculate it for me...


• Once I had those I was able to generate TMJ map files and load them onto the phone... and then repeat the entire process of stitching/aligning/rendering/stitching/re-aligning etc. for the other 5 maps!!!!

Quite simple[4] really! :/

All in all, it has been about 2 weeks of trial, error, head+desk, face+palm, lightbulb moments and extreme elation upon finally getting it all working.

The end result is a fairly useful little backup tool that should come in handy should I ever find myself situationally challenged while out flying.

I have already started 'upgrading' the functionality, as my scanned map is effectively still just a picture, so you cannot search for an aerodrome or anything like you can with a 'normal' aviation GPS. So I have also started messing about with the "waypoint" features of TMJ... I've added in all the North Island Aerodromes listed in the AIP with their co-ordinates and frequencies, so I should be able to pick an aerodrome and generate a direct track to it etc. and even do some basic 'flight planning' if required.

Now I just have to pray they don't update the charts in the near future ;)



[1] I'm choosing to ignore the ridiculous 30+ weather with 98% humidity ;)

[2] Always a dangerous thing

[3] Kind of ironic when you see what I ended up doing :/

[4] See... told you!