After mentioning to one of the instructors at the Auckland Aero Club that I had a bit of time in Piper Cherokees/Warriors... he twisted my rubber arm and convinced me to tag along on their club trip "Round the Mountains"...
I had always wanted to go for a trip specifically to do a scenic flight around the mountains and I had been past them a couple of times, but for one reason or another, had never managed to go get a proper look.
The weather in the Auckland area wasn't stellar, but over Taupo and the Central Plateau it was absolutely stunning!
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| On arrival at NZAP |
MBK is an old Massey University aircraft, and surprisingly, one that I never actually did any flights in back when I started flying towards the end of my time at university. I have almost the entire alphabet soup of the "Mike Bravo" aircraft in my logbook... Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, Juliet, Lima, Quebec and Sierra... but no Kilo...
It has also recently had a brand new engine put in... so new it had only just finished it's 50 hour "run in" when I went to do some currency circuits on Thursday. Consequently, it was purring like a kitten, and with the cold temps and high pressure... it climbed like a climby thing... maintaining at least a 500 foot per minute climb rate all the way up towards 9000'!!
And it was totally worth climbing all that way... as the pics below will show ;)
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| Ngaruhoe and Ruapehu |
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| Some interesting patterns in the snow... |
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| Lazy left hand turn at 9500' round Ruapehu |
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| Crater Lake |
After a few left hand orbit of Ruapehu aka "The SkyTower" (no Ben, you'll never live that down! :P) and a few more round Ngaruhoe for good measure... we headed back to Taupo for some lunch...
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| Lake Taupo looking awesome in the afternoon sun |
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| Meat bombs on arrival... "WOOOOOHOOOOOO!" |
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| The benefits of not flying the last leg home ;) |
Another thing ticked off the bucket list... Awesome fun and highly recommended!
