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 ;)