More acronyms to add to the collection...

SP MEIR - ADF, VOR, GPS...

Or in "actual" words... A Single Pilot, Multi-engine Instrument Rating, endorsed for NDB[1], VOR and GPS approaches :-)

Another sticker for the log book

After a few false starts and delays (as covered in my previous post), and a flight test postponed due to the crap weather in the first week of July, the stars finally came into alignment and I ended up with flyable weather, a serviceable aircraft and a flight examiner... all in the same place at the same time.

So (very) early on Thursday morning, I headed out to the airfield, pre-flighted the Tecnam Twin (only thing of note were the muddy paw prints and cat fur located on the top of one of the engine cowls ;-) and extracted it from the hangar... thankfully, no "musical aeroplanes" required... and then taxied it around to the apron at the flying club.

I checked the weather and NOTAMs for my expected routes and noted that the freezing level was a little on the low side (5,000')... which was a bit of a concern, as the cloud base was forecast around 4000' and the aircraft doesn't have any anti or de-icing equipment :-/

The examiner showed up as scheduled at 0900 and we got down to business... working through the copious amounts of paperwork and red tape before commencing with the actual flying! :-P

So after confirming what I was testing for (Single Pilot, Multi-engine, with NDB, VOR and GPS) he checked that I had:

• A valid licence and medical
• A "Written Exam Credit" for the Instrument Rating Theory Syllabus
• Completed the required remedial work as stated on the Knowledge Deficiency Reports (KDR's) from my exam results
• A ground theory endorsement for the GPS equipment to be used in the test
• Met the various minimum hour requirements necessary to hold an instrument rating
• A type rating for the aircraft to be used in the test
• A flight test acceptance slip

the examiner went over the format of the test and what was going to be required.  He outlined the basic structure of the flight which was:

• Flight plan the route NZAR (Ardmore) - NZHN (Hamilton) - NZTG (Tauranga) - NZAR
• We would depart NZAR via a published instrument departure
• At NZHN, make the VOR/DME approach, via the DME Arc (demonstrating a hold before commencing the approach) for the duty runway, execute the standard missed approach and then head to NZTG
• At NZTG, enter the NDB hold, then make the NDB/DME approach for the duty runway, execute the missed approach and then head to NZAR
• At NZAR, make the RNAV (aka GPS) approach, demonstrating a GPS hold at the waypoint ORERE before commencing the approach, and then make a circling approach for the duty runway for a full stop landing.

I was then left to create a flight plan, fuel log, check weather/NOTAMs, check GPS RAIM predications and lodge my flight plans with ATC.

The only issue I had with this particular flight plan, was the fact that, despite planning on making some instrument approaches at Tauranga several times during my training, I had never made it due weather on the days we had planned to go.

I mentioned this quietly to my instructor while I was at the computer lodging my IFR flight plans, and he told me not to freak out... just remain calm and remember: "You don't fly at a particular place... you fly a 'plate'"

What he meant was that unlike visual flying, where you can use various physical references and landmarks to aid in making an approach so it helps to have been to a place before or at least received a briefing on what to expect... with instrument flying you just follow the instructions spelled out on the approach 'plate' aka chart and as instructed by ATC, as you may not necessarily be able to see out the window anyway!

Thinking back on it now... this was probably the best bit of advice I got before my test ;-)

By the time I had completed the flight planning, the examiner had come up with a list of around 10 questions designed to test my knowledge of Instrument Rating theory and law... covering things like:

• The privileges & limitations of holding an instrument rating?
• The currency requirements to fly IFR and make instrument approaches?
• Various approach speed limitations for category of aircraft that we're using?
• Can you make a visual departure at night?
• What are the requirements for making a visual arrival during the day? at night?
• Requirements for nominating an alternate aerodrome?
• Non published alternate aerodrome minima for non-precision approaches?
• What do we need to sight to continue below MDA?
• Loss of comm procedures (In IMC on departure, on radar vectors)?

Thankfully, I had covered all of this material with my instructors so was able to answer all the questions (or at least reference the appropriate sections of the AIP to find the answers) without too much trouble.

We then went over my flight plan and the weather... noting the issues with the freezing level and what our options were.  He left the decision up to me, and I decided that given the cloud forecasts we should be OK and in the event that we did encounter icing, we had plenty of options to mitigate the issue, as we could descend to lower altitudes due to the Minimum Safe Altitudes (MSA's) being below our flight planned cruise altitudes and the predicted freezing levels... or climb out of the cloud as they were predicted to top out at 6000'.

We headed out to the aircraft, started up, set up the radio and navaid frequencies, requested and received our clearance instructions from Air Traffic Control, entered the initial flight plan in the onboard GPS and then I worked through the various pre-Take Off engine run-ups and equipment checks.  With everything in place, we lined up on 03 and I made my departure call.

We got airbourne, I was instructed to put on my "foggles" to simulate entering cloud once we had reached terrain clearance height on the instrument departure and away we went towards Hamilton.

The first leg was going well... I had remembered the "Twist, Turn, Time, Talk, Tune"... Twist my course selector to the required headings, Turn the aircraft and heading bug to the required heading, Time (not applicable to time anything), Talk to ATC as required, Tune radios and navaids to the new frequencies...  We were cruising in cloud, and the outside air temp was only 2 degrees, but I'd noted that while we had some visible moisture on the leading edge and engine intakes, there was no icing... I was feeling good.

Then 30 seconds later, the examiner says "What is MSA on this route?  We're going to need to descend, we're icing up, check the leading edge"... sure enough, and less than a minute since I had checked, ice was building up at an alarming rate.  We requested a descent to "non-standard 5000' due icing" and were immediately cleared as requested.  We dropped down from 6000' and popped out the bottom of the cloud and into slightly warmer air.  This was my first experience with icing whilst flying... and the sound the ice made as it started to crack and shed from the wings was a little disconcerting... the examiner commented that it was "some pretty impressive icing".

The rest of the leg to Hamilton was relatively uneventful... we were cleared as requested to join the DME arc and enter the TAYLA hold at 5000'.  That went without a hitch and we requested the approach.  They cleared us to descend to 3000' and to commence the approach for runway 18L.  We flew down to 'minimum descent altitude' (MDA) and tracked to the 'missed approach point' (MAP)... As I had no visual reference to the runway at this point (due to the simulated conditions wearing the foggles), I declared a missed approach, powered up and executed the missed approach procedure.

We received our onwards clearance and headed (for the unknown) towards Tauranga.  I started to feel a little nervous, having never done this before... but I just followed the procedures, and we arrived at Tauranga without a problem.  The first attempt at the NDB hold, which would have been almost perfect, was scuppered by the arrival of an Air New Zealand flight... which was given priority by ATC.  This meant that just as I was about to begin the inbound portion of the hold, they started radar vectoring me away from the aerodrome to create a safety zone for the other aircraft.  Unfortunately, I had to demonstrate a complete hold for the purposes of the test, so I had to do another entry and lap of the hold, from a more difficult position... not a huge issue, but it wasn't as tidy as the first attempt...

We then commenced the approach, I got a little high... this was due to my inexperience with the Tauranga approach and failure to recognise that I would require a slightly higher than normal descent rate to maintain the proper approach profile.  Still, I recognised the issue in time, verbalised my intentions and managed to regain the proper profile through some slightly aggressive descent manoeuvring ... not the best way to make an approach, but acceptable.

Again, we reached MDA and the MAP and again I was not "visual" so we executed the missed approach.  This time however, the examiner simulated an engine failure.  So while trying to fly the missed approach procedure and maintain the required rate of climb, I had to deal with an aircraft trying it's best to fly sideways on only one engine!!?!

I ran through the initial actions

• Control Yaw with Rudder, Maintain Airspeed at "Blue Line" speed
• Rich, Pitch Power! - Mixtures Rich, Prop Pitch full fine, Throttles full
• Identify, Verify, Feather - Identify the "dead" engine by identifying my "dead" leg... When an engine fails on a twin, you end up with asymmetric thrust.  The result being that you need to put in a whole lot of rudder on one side to keep the aircraft flying straight.  So one leg is doing a whole lot of work.  The leg that isn't doing anything (ie. "dead") is the one on the side that has the failed engine.  We then verify that we have identified the "dead" engine correctly by closing the throttle on what we suspect the failed engine is... if it is indeed the failed engine, nothing should change, if we've chosen incorrectly, the aircraft will yaw wildly due to the rudder input no longer having to overcome any asymmetric thrust.  We then decide whether or not we're Terrain Critical (ie. Are we in danger of hitting something solid in the very near future?)  If we are, we just feather the failed engine to reduce drag and increase performance flying on one engine while we figure out what we're going to do to not die :-P.  If we aren't (ie. at a reasonable altitude) we can take our time, run some more thorough trouble checks and see if we can get the engine restarted.

At this point, the examiner asked "If this was real, and you were in IMC, what would you do right now?"  Noting that we were unable to maintain a climb rate necessary to ensure terrain clearance by following the missed approach procedure, I told him I'd turn back towards the navaid beacon at the aerodrome, and climb in the hold to the minimum safe altitude, advise ATC and then make an approach to land.

Happy with this plan, he gave me both engines back and we departed Tauranga for Ardmore.  Then something weird happened... I was tracking what I thought was pretty well, the ADF indicating that I was on the 278 course from Tauranga... the examiner says "check your tracking on the GPS"... turns out we were significantly left of track!!?!  Then ATC advised "MTW, confirm ops normal, you appear to be approximately 2 miles south of track".  I pointed out to the examiner that according to the ADF we were tracking correctly... he agreed, and we adjusted course to intercept the GPS track and the ADF still showed we were tracking correctly!!  ADF's are notoriously unreliable... so the examiner seemed willing to accept that I hadn't done anything wrong.

We continued towards Ardmore and, once again, we needed to request a lower than planned cruising level to prevent icing.  We were then cleared to track via the WAIKA and ORERE waypoints to make the RNAV (GPS) approach for Runway 21 at Ardmore.  They were actually using Runway 03, but that was OK, as it gave us an excuse to do the circling approach, where you fly the approach to one runway, achieve visual reference and then circle around to land on another runway.

Up to now, everything had more or less gone OK (aside from the ADF issue), I hadn't been advised that I had failed (which the examiners are required to do so you can cut the flight short to prevent wasting money flying approaches that are unnecessary) and I had always found the GPS approaches to be relatively easy.

So, naturally, I did my best to screw everything up on the GPS approach. :-/

It went wrong near the end of the holding procedure... for some reason, and I'm still not sure why (possibly just fatigue towards the end of a stressful 3 hour flight??) I got a bad case of "fiddle with the GPS"-itis... I naturally, pushed the wrong button, and ended up making a messy approach back to the ORERE waypoint to commence the final approach.

The whole way down the final approach I was cursing my stupidity under my breath, thinking that I had just blown the whole test.  On the final approach, I got another simulated engine failure, which helped me forget about the mistake and focus on flying... I then flew the circling approach and made a full stop landing on only the one engine.  Ironically enough... one of my better landings! :-P

We taxied back to the club, shutdown and as I started to note down flight times for the aircraft flight logs, the examiner said "I'll see you in the briefing room", he collected his stuff and headed into the clubrooms.  My instructor and a couple of others came to help secure the aircraft and refuel asking the usual "How did it go?" type questions... fearing the worst I replied dejectedly "I think I just blew it on the GPS approach".

I headed into the briefing room to receive the "bad news"... I could hear the examiner and my instructor talking outside, and then the examiner went to make a quick phone call to advise his next test candidate that he was running late.  My instructor came in and said "don't panic, I think you're OK"...

The examiner came in and asked me to debrief the flight to my instructor... basically walk him through the flight, saying what went well, what didn't etc...

I was, in my opinion, brutally honest... I started by saying it was far from the perfect flight.  The initial departure was good, the VOR/DME at Hamilton was OK, the initial NDB tracking and hold at Tauranga was OK, I got high on the approach, but recovered OK, tracking out of Tauranga we had the issue with the ADF tracking, the initial GPS tracking and hold entry were OK, then I got trigger happy and screwed up the end of the hold, the final approach was OK, the circling approach and a fairly decent asymmetric landing.  I commented that some of my height holding was a little poor... and while the conditions were fair from perfect (a bit lumpy and bumpy in the clouds), it was not completely to blame.

At this point, (and to my HUGE relief) the examiner commented "Well, it's a pass, a little marginal, but a pass... based on your self-assessment, you obviously have high standards, don't lose them... I'm giving you a licence to learn, so don't rush off and fly to MDA in hard IMC your first time out OK?" and gave me the customary handshake.

3.1 hours... a long flight test

We finished up the paperwork, I thanked him profusely and he headed off to torture his next victim[2] his next flight test appointment.  I think it only really sank in about 5 or 6 hours later, after the obligatory bar shout, that I had actually passed...

Not all 4 letter words are bad!

I'd like to thank my instrument instructors, Phil Welcome and John Ashman for helping me achieve this rating... MTW for being a sweet little aircraft that flies right and (mostly) works OK... various pilot/instructor friends for various tips and tricks with regards to instrument flying...

and last, but by no means least, my awesome GF... for putting up with a very busy (and stressed!) BF and providing lots of support and being very understanding these last few weeks (and months) as I tried to get this damned rating finished!!  Thanks babe... ;-)


[1] No... I don't know why they use the acronym for the cockpit instrument as opposed to the navigational aid??!?
[2] I think it only fair to point out that the examiner was actually very nice and made the whole thing a lot less stressful than I had anticipated ;)

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* :(

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)

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!

101 Not Out

Without realising it, I have broken through the 100 post mark... I actually did not think I would do this for more than about 3 or 4 weeks before getting bored with it all!

Anyway, to celebrate this awesome accomplishment, I decided to go flying (what a surprise eh? ;)... Actually, I decided to go flying because it was a really nice night. I had been planning on going to Hamilton with Trevor along for the ride, but Chris suggested we try out Whangarei.

Unfortunately, by the time I managed to get out to the field, Trevor's flu had caught up with him and he decided he didnt feel like sitting in a 152 with a cracking headache. Chris, unfortunatelym had to work early in the morning and Rob, while very keen, needed to be up early as well for one of the other club members C-Cat flight test!

Not wanting to waste such a lovely evening, I decided I would solo down to Hamilton and back. I am hoping to go somewhere else soon, as I am getting a bit bored with Hamilton and I think the Crash-Fire guys are getting sick of me wanting the lights turned on!

As an added bonus, Trevor loaned me his GPS... a Garmin GPSMAP 296.


I definitely have one of these on my 'Aviation Wishlist'... but at around $2000 it could be a while :(

Anyway, after filling up at the pumps and then completing my run-up checks, I switched the unit on and waited for it to find some satellites and then stowed it safely on the seat next to me so I would resist the urge to look at it every 5 seconds instead of flying the aircraft!

Being the geek that I am, the first thing I did when I got back was try to figure out how to get the 'Track' information off the GPS. The Garmin website had the USB drivers but the utility (Flightbook) only extracts flight log data (distance, time etc.)... Google, as always, is your friend and I found a neat (and free) little utility called EasyGPS. It download the track points and saved them out to a '.gpx' (GPS Exchange) file. Google Earth will import these directly and voila... a pretty map of my flight :) (you can click the images for a bigger pic)



It was a pretty uneventful flight down, I just cruised along under the various control zones at 2500', approaching Hamilton I contacted Crash-Fire and confirmed they had the runway lights on for me (I had called up prior to departing Ardmore to give them a heads-up on my planned ETA).

I opted for runway 36 for a change and after joining left-hand downwind I did a couple of circuits and then I headed back to Ardmore. On the last circuit I called 'Touch and Go, departing back to Ardmore via the City'. I was going to call up Crash-Fire and thank them for their services and advise they could switch the lights off if they wanted, but I noticed when I looked behind me to check my centre-line tracking during the climb-out that they had already switched them off!

I think my circuits were pretty good and the GPS track tends to agree...



Going back to Ardmore, I had been planning on climbing up into controlled airspace, but unfortunately a patch of low cloud had developed north of Hamilton at around 2500'. By the time I cleared the edge of the cloud patch I was already at Huntly, so it just wasn't worth the effort to get clearance when I was already halfway home!

As you can see, my approach into Ardmore was a little, errr 'crooked'. I had been admiring the view and left my turn on final a little late. Whoops! Still, it was a nice smooth landing and as I taxied back to the club, I called up Christchurch Information and terminated my flightplan.





This flight: 1.6 PinC Night
Total Hours: 146.1 (78.9/50.5 Day, 6.0/10.7 Night, 7.0 IFR)