$200 $10 Fish 'n Chips...

And an Ice-cream! :P

So I found a way to fly about the countryside, sampling the wares of the various Fish 'n Chip vendors without busting my piggybank...

Find a CPL stupid who is "PinC" hour building and wants some company! :)

So I bundled myself (along with sunscreen) into the right hand seat of one of the clubs 152's, and enjoyed the view out the window as we headed for Raglan.

Climbing out of Ardmore


Thankfully, the weather today was a lot nicer than our previous effort (hence the sunscreen) and we arrived into Raglan without incident.

A short walk from the airfield (after paying the "outrageous" landing fees at the camp office) over to the Camp Store and then we were sitting in the sun enjoying some very nice fresh gurnard and chips... OM NOM NOM!! ;)

$5??!? Simply Outrageous! :P


Pilot in Command


Lunch... YUM!


This was, of course, followed by the compulsory Ice-Cream... (I went for the Magnum Gold today) which was duly consumed before arriving back at the airfield!

Irene chose a max performance take-off (probably a good idea with both of us full of fish 'n chips! ;) and we tracked along the coast heading north... Saw some interesting rock formations, I have no idea if it's due to the type of rock or the eroding action of the sea or a combination of both... but they look cool :)

Interesting rock formations on the coast


As usual, we managed to time it "right" so we arrived back at Ardmore just as World+Dog was also arriving, so the circuit was all sorts of chaos :-/

Irene opted for the grass and asked if I'd mind if she did a couple of practise circuits before full stopping.

I gave her my 'Standard Pilot as Passenger Response™'.... "You're PinC, I'm just along for the ride" ;)

View from the Right Hand Seat...

So I tagged along today with one of our CPL students who was doing some "Pilot in Command" hour building...

The plan was Ardmore - Hamilton (some circuits) - Raglan - Ardmore... The weather at Ardmore was blue skies and sunshine and we were both hoping for some fish 'n chips at Raglan ;)

Unfortunately, Mother Nature decided to interfere... Upon arriving in the Hamilton CTR, things got very grey and very wet... and the PinC decided a full stop landing would be a good idea after the 2nd circuit.

So we taxied over to the Waikato Aero Club... checked the weather, let "mother" know what we were up too and waited for the band of showers to pass...

20mins later and we were back into it, going round in circles dodging CTC Twinstar's doing asymmetric circuits and airline traffic, before being cleared to the west at 2500' or below...

So, off to Raglan we headed... the PinC taking the opportunity to get some Simulated IF time while I played "Safety Pilot"... weeeeeeee!

Unfortunately, we (and by we, I mean me, as PinC was busy flying ;) noticed on the first circuit at Raglan that the fish 'n chip shop near the camp ground appeared to be closed, so we decided to cut our losses and head back to Ardmore... :(

Still... a fun day with low stress for me... I just got to sit there and work radio's and organise charts and aerodrome plates and let the PinC deal with all the really fun stuff like dodging clouds, other aircraft, dealing with controllers etc :P

$200 Fish 'n Chips...

Ingredients:

1x PA28-180 (ZK-LMA)
1x CPL
1x Freshly minted C-Cat
Plenty of AvGas 100
1x Fish 'n Chip shop
1x Seat by the beach
Some decent weather

Directions:

- Take decent weather, put CPL and C-Cat in PA28, add AvGas.
- Point PA28 in the general direction of Pauanui.
- Let PA28 cruise for about 40mins.
- Upon arrival in Pauanui, remove CPL and C-Cat from PA28.
- Combine Fish 'n Chips and a seat by the beach with CPL and C-Cat.

(Optional)
- Garnish CPL with Gooey Raspberry Memphis Meltdown and Watermelon Chupa-chup before sending back to Ardmore.

C-Cat getting current on PA28


OM NOM NOM!


NZUN



I'm living the dream ;)



This Flight: 0.8 PinC
Total Hours: 279.4 (139.9/114.8 Day, 8.6/16.1 Night, 11.9 IFR)

No rest for the wicked...

Despite lugging an "Instrument Rating Manual" all the way around the world and to China and back, saying "Yeah, I'll have like 10+ hours on all those long haul flights to study"... the manual came out of my bag once... and that was because I needed to use the bag for something else at the time :P

However, I haven't been totally deliquent in my studies... so at 0800 this morning, I rocked up to the "ASL Examination Centre" (read as: a small upstairs area in a small commercial unit in a small business park in East Tamaki with some computers), ready to once again engage in a battle of wits and english comprehension with the ASL question writers...

30mins later, I walked out a little disappointed that I didn't get an immediate result, which I had thought was one of the benefits of the computer based exams... especially after I got this nice green screen after clicking submit which I initially thought was a "Congratulations! You're totally awesome and kicked ass on that exam!!!"-type screen...

Instead, it was a "Congratulations, we didn't lose all your answers when you clicked submit. They're now safely stored in some super secret data centre in a super secret location. So you won't have to do the exam again... unless, of course, you failed! We'll be in touch"-type screen :-/

It turns out that they only mark the exams when everyone sitting an exam at that time has finished. As ASL also do various exams for the LTSA, and most of those exams are at least 2 1/2 hours... I was in for a bit of a wait... Thankfully, I am a posterchild for patience *cough*

So, I just logged into the results website and around 11am (after hitting refresh every 30seconds or so for about 2 hours ;) my results had been posted...

w00t! 93% for Instruments and Nav Aids... guess I'd better get that Instrument Rating Law study guide out :P

What goes up... hopefully comes down!

Full throttle, airspeed increasing, lift-off... climb established... flaps up, climb power set, climb RPM set... nil runway remaining, tap the brakes, gear up... bzzzzzzzzzzz *THUD*... orange light...

And so began my foray into "suck-up wheels"... aka. retractable landing gear

The club recently got a Cessna 172 RG "Cutlass" ZK-EWP on the flightline, and I had been dying to try it out. I was supposed to start my type rating last weekend, but had to defect the aircraft during the pre-flight due to some misbehaving cowl flaps.

The defect was fixed earlier this week, so then it was a matter of waiting for the instructor... Today was not a bad day for aviating... a little bumpy, but nothing like the 30knot+ winds we've had recently! And besides... I needed an excuse for not studying for my Instrument Exams :P

So I duely pre-flighted EWP, strapped in the CFI and headed for the training area for the usual runthrough of maneuvers required for a type-rating... turns, stalls etc... only this time we also played with the gear, getting used to the pitch changes as it went up and down... what the "gear horn" sounds like etc.

After that we headed back to the airfield for an overhead join and some circuits which I thought were barely passable... the circuit gets very busy when instead of throttle, mixture and flaps, you now have throttle, mixture, flaps, pitch, cowl flaps and undercarriage to worry about... and an aircraft that will easily do 120+knots downwind if you let it!

As Rob had said during the briefing, if you get setup early, and slow down before you enter the circuit, you'll be fine... Apparently these old, gray-haired instructors know a thing or two about this flying malarky :P

A couple of circuits later and we taxiied back in as Rob had another booking... and I needed a cup of tea and a lie down!

1.0 hours of pure busyness :-/

Later in the afternoon, we rounded up some self-loading ballast (ie. a couple of CPL students lounging about the club) to get the aircraft to maximum all up weight (MAUW), so I could do the MAUW check as required by law...

A standard circuit (very average), a go-around (executed nicely), a flapless landing (not too shabby), another standard circuit (better, but still average) and then I surprised myself by making a very nice shortfield landing onto the grass to finish.

0.7 hours of pure busyness with onboard spectators :P

All in all, a fun day's flying... and I now have a 172RG Type Rating... (and an appreciation for why "cup" checks are important ;)



These Flights: 1.0 + 0.7 Dual
Total Hours: 278.6 (139.9/114.0 Day, 8.6/16.1 Night, 11.9 IFR)