A day at the mountains...

Finally... a reminder of why I love having a pilots licence...

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!

On arrival at NZAP

11 of us took down 4 aircraft... 2 Cessna 172's (JRA and CWD), a Cessna 162 (AAC) and the Warrior (MBK)... I paxed to Taupo in MBK... then had the pleasure of the scenic flight around the mountain... then paxed back to Ardmore in MBK again after lunch.

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 ;)

Ngaruhoe and Ruapehu

Some interesting patterns in the snow...

Lazy left hand turn at 9500' round Ruapehu

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...

Lake Taupo looking awesome in the afternoon sun

Meat bombs on arrival... "WOOOOOHOOOOOO!"

Apparently the only thing more expensive than an Auckland Taxi, is a Taupo Taxi... $30+ to get from the Airport into town!!?!

The benefits of not flying the last leg home ;)

We had a quick lunch at Lone Star and then I went for a wander to partake in another hobby of mine, Geocaching... before we headed back to the airfield to load up for the flight home.

Another thing ticked off the bucket list... Awesome fun and highly recommended!

Things that DO suck

1. Sadistic Flight Instructors


2. Flat batteries in your Camera

Trevor managed to get yesterday off work, and the fine weather was still hanging in there, so we decided to finish the dual flight that we had aborted on Sunday due to the vacuum pump failure.

AR-(AP)-(MA)-TG, Divert (TH)-AR
The "plan" was to fly Ardmore (NZAR) - Taupo (NZAP) - Matamata (NZMA) - Tauranga (NZTG) - Ardmore (NZAR). But as I have discovered with dual CPL cross countries, what you plan and what you fly are two very different things :P

The trip to Taupo was pretty good. The winds were 'lightish' so the flying conditions were relatively smooth and the visibility was excellent. We could actually see Mt. Ruapehu while overhead Drury, which is a distance of about 250km!!!

I was really looking forward to getting some good photos of the mountains and Lake Taupo, until I handed my camera to Trevor and asked him to take some photos and he discovered that the batteries in the camera, which had been working perfectly in the morning, were now completely flat :( As I was too busy flying the aircraft and trying to do ground speed checks, plan my top of decent, look out for other aircraft and make radio calls, I couldn't be bothered trying to dig my cellphone out of my flight bag to try to get some pics on that...

I think I know what I want for my BDay/Christmas now... a nice little 'point and shoot' digital camera with a battery life longer than about 3 minutes :P

Anyway, we stopped in Taupo, gassed up, I had a bite to eat and visited the little boys room while Trevor checked out a car he is thinking of buying. Then we headed off into the clear blue skies and bade farewell to the snowy capped mountains and silky smooth lake and headed for Matamata.

After deciding I was a little bit off course, Trevor decided I should do a "1 in 60" to get to Matamata. Effectively you work out "Distance Off course divided by Distance Flown" and "Distance Off Course divided by Distance to Go". The first gives you the track error so far (usually a result of the wind not being what was forecast), and if you correct by that much you will end up paralleling your original track, but you will still be off course. In my case 2 nm miles off course after 25 miles flying or ~4 degrees. The 2nd calculation gives you the closing angle to arrive at your intended destination, so I needed to correct 2nm over the remaing 37 miles to Matamata (~3 degrees), resulting in a total correction of 4+3 or 7 degrees.

Now if it all sounds a bit like hard work trying to divide all sorts of random numbers in your head... you are right! That's why we use an "E-6B Flight Computer"... basically a fancy circular slide rule that makes a lot of aviation related calculations really easy ;)

The E-6B "Whizzwheel"
The "1 in 60" worked out pretty good, and I ended up pretty close (less than 1 mile) from Matamata. We dodged our way around the gliders, tanked up with gas and made ready to depart. At which point I learned that a 152, with 2 people on board and full tanks doesn't really depart that well from a runway consisting of relatively long grass! Even with shortfield technique we burned an awful lot of runway, but made it into the air eventually and with plenty of room to spare.

I was just commenting to Trevor that it was an awfully long take-off roll when he pulled the throttle 1/2 closed and called simulating. Lower the nose, Carb Heat On, Throttle Closed, Pick a paddock, Fuel/Mixture/Ignition Off. I hadn't seen the Engine Failure after take-off coming!!

He was satisified with my choice of paddock and we would have made it quite comfortably, so he called go-around and we climbed away on track to Tauranga. I had just got up to 2500' feet and managed to get Christchurch Info on the radio and pushed my SARTIME out when Trevor looked at me with a big grin and "Did I say Tauranga?? Oh, I meant Thames... oh and look at all that crappy weather (Clear Blue skies, visibility of around 60km :-/), ceiling is now 1500'"... So I started my diversion to Thames.

Due to the "crappy weather", I ended up with a ceiling of 800', so I was low (and slow) flying at 700' at 70knots. I called up CH Info and amended my flight plan and started heading for Thames. Eventually, "the weather" cleared and I was allowed to climb back up to 2500'. Just as I got there, and had everything sorted out and was planning my approach into Thames, Trevor pulled the throttle and said simulating.... AARRGGGHHH!!!

I was a bit rusty on the procedure for the forced landing, but I picked my paddock, planned an approach and would have put it in without too much trouble.

The nice long runway (14/32) at Thames is currently closed for maintenance, so I had the really short 500m runway (05/23) with a lovely approach for runway 23 that takes you quite close to some seriously high ground. I flew a really nice shortfield approach, touching down right on the threshold at minimal speed and blasted off again with plenty of room to spare. :D

I set heading for Ardmore and as usually seems to be the case, ended up arriving at the same time as everyone else :( I was just coming up to Hunua at 2000' and was about to report my position and intentions, when no less than 3 other aircraft all reported claiming to be exactly where I was! :-O I could only see one other aircraft and he was about 5 miles away!!!

I decided to stay out of the mix and gave everyone plenty of room and I slotted myself into a gap in the circuit traffic and landed without too much bother.

I was quite happy to be back on the ground after such an 'eventful' flight... and I definitely need to go and do some forced landing procedure revision before my cross-country flight test!


This Flight: 3.7 Dual (242 nm)
Total Hours: 209.0 (91.9/92.8 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)

3rd time's a charm...

Finally made it to Taupo... and my "World Tour" of NZ finally got underway on the 3rd attempt.

Woke up yesterday morning, to some severe blue skies and a nice crunchy frost. Headed out to the field just before 0800 to pre-flight JFY and flight plan for Ardmore - Taupo - Rotorua - Tauranga - Ardmore (AR-AP-RO-TG-AR).



After taking care of the paperwork and filing a VFR flight plan, Nick and I strapped in and I ran through my checks. Despite not moving for almost 2 months, good old JFY started up first time and showed no real issues during run-ups etc.

However, things changed after take-off and heading out into the clear blue skies... I had called up Christchurch Control to get clearance into controlled airspace up to 6500', so I could just cruise along at high level and avoid the bumpy conditions down low.

Unfortunately, the transponder decided to play silly buggers... "JFY, can you please confirm your transponder code is 0334"... "Affirm, JFY"... "JFY, ok, can you squawk ident"... "Squawking Ident, JFY"... "Ok, I have you squawking 7344"... "Standby, JFY"... much fiddling with transponder dials later... "Now, I have you squawking 4342, try one of my sector codes 4000"... some more twiddling... "Ok, now I have you showing 7010"... more dial fiddling... "Ok, I now have you idented with 4000, cleared to climb to 4500', VFR direct to Taupo, expect further instructions"... "Climb 4500', direct to Taupo, JFY".

We eventually got cleared up to 6500' and flew over Hamilton and headed down towards Taupo without further incident. The view was pretty spectacular, pretty much no cloud and soon the mountains were clearly visible and looking postcard perfect all covered in snow.

We parked up at Taupo, gassed the tanks, paid the horrendous landing fee ($4.50 ;) at the honesty box and went to get some lunch at the cafe. Watched the parachuting (including one guy who I think was about to go up for a jump... he looked as white as a sheet and was doing some deep breathing and meditating! hahahah), the crazy jump plane pilots descending from 11000' in about 3 1/2 minutes (do the math!) and getting on the ground almost before the parachutists and a couple of AirNZ Link Beech 1900D's arrive and depart.

We had been considering a bit of a tiki tour down to the mountains for some photos, but the weather looked like it was starting to arrive from the south, and with the fairly solid 20-25kt wind, we figured it would be a fairly unpleasant experience, so decided to just continue on our way and head for Rotovegas.

Nick commented that the easy part was behind us... and boy was he right! Taupo to Rotorua is only about 15 minutes... and Rotorua to Tauranga is not much more... you get very busy, very quickly!

While we were on the ground, I had checked with the National Briefing Office (NBO), to see if the controller had updated our flight plan with the 4000 transponder code she had given us, as we were a little loathe to play with the transponder anymore. Unfortunately, they had not, so we changed back to 0334... or so we thought.

Heading in to Rotorua, we were informed by the tower, that we were actually squawking 4334. But she had us idented, so was happy for us to continue. We were cleared into the zone at 3500' or below and to report again at the green lakes. I had initially asked for a Touch and Go and then onward to Tauranga, but given the continuing issues with the transponder, we thought it wise to just head straight back to Ardmore, so I informed the tower that I was going to amend my flight plan. At which point she informed us that we were now showing the correct code of 0334!! Nick and I looked at each other and asked "did you touch it???"

Seeing as how it appeared to be working, I decided to go ahead and continue on to Tauranga. Which proved to be an interesting decision, as the controller there was juggling about 7 aircraft all arriving from different directions... and 2 gliders!

Luckily though, Tauranga has published VFR arrival and departure procedures... which makes radio calls nice and simple... "JFY, cleared for a Papamoa One Arrival", "Cleared Papamoa One Arrival, JFY"... "JFY, cleared Matakana One Departure, Right Turn approved", "Cleared Matakana One Departure, JFY". It also makes it easy to plan and brief your arrival beforehand, which helps lighten the load a little.

So, despite there being a ton of traffic, things flowed pretty well. Nick was getting a little anxious (and constantly reminding me) that we were short final without clearance, but having 'grown up' flying at a controlled aerodrome (Palmerston North, NZPM), you get used to the controllers doing things last minute... I once got cleared to land when I was only about 3ft off the ground!

So we were in and out of Tauranga pretty quickly (next time I think I'll execute a missed approach to avoid the $24.50 landing charge!!!!) and tracking along the coast towards Waihi. Then it was through the Waihi Gap, across the plains and Firth of Thames and back to Ardmore without further incident.

The first thing I did after landing was terminate my flight plan and the first thing I did after shutting down the aircraft was to write up the transponder issue in the Defect Log.

Here you can see the planned route (in red) vs. the actual route (in blue):

Nick took some photos along the way, so if any of them come out looking halfway decent, I'll post them up.

All in all, a great days flying... which was a huge relief after only getting 3 flights in June and only 2 flights in July due to all the crappy weather!


This flight: 3.6 PinC
Total Hours: 133.5 (78.9/43.3 Day, 4.9/6.4 Night, 5.1 IFR)