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)