Crap... I'm dead?!!!

So, I received a phone call approaching Huntly... a somewhat difficult task given the excessive noise of the rather modest powerplant of the Cessna 152... I shouted "We're still flying" into the microphone of my mobile, pressed the "End Call" button and then sent a text to the caller saying "What's up?"... the reply?

"You're dead, according to SpiderTracks"

Rewind 1hr and 39mins... and Irene and I are taxiing out to runway 03 after ECT (Evening Civil Twilight aka. night time) preparing for a night cross-country down to Hamilton for some circuits.

Unfortunately, my "point and click" digital camera is less than useless at night photography, so I have no pics to show, but it was one of those nights that reminds you why you wait patiently for the sun to descend below the horizon to go flying... we could see the lights of Hamilton as we departed via the downwind from Ardmore... the long yellowish snake of State Highway 1 stretching out into the darkness before us. I was there as pax, with Irene wanting to rack up some PinC/Night flying time...

Following a relatively uneventful flight down, we arrived overhead Hamilton to join a (surprisingly) busy circuit... with 3 or 4 CTC aircraft doing the rounds. 5 or 6 (rather large!!) circuits later and Irene decided it was time to head home, so she called departing and we headed back north...

Despite SpiderTracks indicating that our flight had ended somewhat abruptly somewhere between Ngaruawahia and Huntly, we made it back to Ardmore safe and sound... at which point several phone calls were made to allay the concerns of the parties receiving emergency alerts.

No (real) harm done, but a story about a young man and his fascination with "canis lupus" comes to mind :-/

$200 $10 Fish 'n Chips...

And an Ice-cream! :P

So I found a way to fly about the countryside, sampling the wares of the various Fish 'n Chip vendors without busting my piggybank...

Find a CPL stupid who is "PinC" hour building and wants some company! :)

So I bundled myself (along with sunscreen) into the right hand seat of one of the clubs 152's, and enjoyed the view out the window as we headed for Raglan.

Climbing out of Ardmore


Thankfully, the weather today was a lot nicer than our previous effort (hence the sunscreen) and we arrived into Raglan without incident.

A short walk from the airfield (after paying the "outrageous" landing fees at the camp office) over to the Camp Store and then we were sitting in the sun enjoying some very nice fresh gurnard and chips... OM NOM NOM!! ;)

$5??!? Simply Outrageous! :P


Pilot in Command


Lunch... YUM!


This was, of course, followed by the compulsory Ice-Cream... (I went for the Magnum Gold today) which was duly consumed before arriving back at the airfield!

Irene chose a max performance take-off (probably a good idea with both of us full of fish 'n chips! ;) and we tracked along the coast heading north... Saw some interesting rock formations, I have no idea if it's due to the type of rock or the eroding action of the sea or a combination of both... but they look cool :)

Interesting rock formations on the coast


As usual, we managed to time it "right" so we arrived back at Ardmore just as World+Dog was also arriving, so the circuit was all sorts of chaos :-/

Irene opted for the grass and asked if I'd mind if she did a couple of practise circuits before full stopping.

I gave her my 'Standard Pilot as Passenger Response™'.... "You're PinC, I'm just along for the ride" ;)

View from the Right Hand Seat...

So I tagged along today with one of our CPL students who was doing some "Pilot in Command" hour building...

The plan was Ardmore - Hamilton (some circuits) - Raglan - Ardmore... The weather at Ardmore was blue skies and sunshine and we were both hoping for some fish 'n chips at Raglan ;)

Unfortunately, Mother Nature decided to interfere... Upon arriving in the Hamilton CTR, things got very grey and very wet... and the PinC decided a full stop landing would be a good idea after the 2nd circuit.

So we taxied over to the Waikato Aero Club... checked the weather, let "mother" know what we were up too and waited for the band of showers to pass...

20mins later and we were back into it, going round in circles dodging CTC Twinstar's doing asymmetric circuits and airline traffic, before being cleared to the west at 2500' or below...

So, off to Raglan we headed... the PinC taking the opportunity to get some Simulated IF time while I played "Safety Pilot"... weeeeeeee!

Unfortunately, we (and by we, I mean me, as PinC was busy flying ;) noticed on the first circuit at Raglan that the fish 'n chip shop near the camp ground appeared to be closed, so we decided to cut our losses and head back to Ardmore... :(

Still... a fun day with low stress for me... I just got to sit there and work radio's and organise charts and aerodrome plates and let the PinC deal with all the really fun stuff like dodging clouds, other aircraft, dealing with controllers etc :P

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)

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)

Pilotics...

So I got up early on Saturday to go down to the polling booth and vote for Bill and Ben[1] and then headed off for some brunch with jade followed by the mandatory flying/brownie point earning shopping expedition to one of the local shopping malls. I just happened to txt Nick to see if he was still keen for flying on Sunday, and he replied saying he was out at the club and planning on flying that afternoon!

Luckily jade was not really in "shopping-mode" so I was able to get out to the club and tag along as 'Safety Pilot' for Nick while he did some instrument flying. He had commented that he had not done it for a while, nor had he done any practiced forced landings... so halfway through I told him to take a break and take the hood off for a bit of a breather. As he pulled the hood off and had a quick look around, I pulled the throttle closed and called 'simulating'... muahahahaha!

For someone who had not done any FLWOP practice for a while, he did a very good job. He reckons the checks were a little rusty, but I reckon he would have got the OK from a 'real' instructor.

Afterwards I had dinner with the in-laws, as it was MiL's 60th B'day... a nice dinner followed by a great dessert (read as: watching Winston Peters disappear from the NZ Political Landscape!).

Sunday, I got up early to watch Liverpool demolish West Brom (3-nil! Woohoo!) and checked the weather... looked pretty benign, with winds of 5 to 8 knots forecast all over the North Island. I was thinking a run down to Taupo then over to New Plymouth and back up the west coast via Raglan.

Unfortunately, by the time I got out to the Flying Club around 10am... the winds were up around 20-25 knots!! It was Nick's turn to fly, so we decided we would head for Whakatane (via Waihi Gap and Tauranga) and then cut back inland to Matamata before heading home. What we ended up with was a little different:



Paeroa - World Famous in NZ


Catalina coming the other way through the Waihi Gap


Despite the winds, the flight through the Waihi Gap out to the Bay of Plenty was remarkable smooth... a couple of bumps crossing the ranges, but nothing really unpleasant. Once on the windward side of the ranges the air was silky smooth and the cloud noticeably absent. We cruised through the Tauranga Control Zone and along the coast towards Whakatane without too much trouble.

Cruising along the coast towards Tauranga


Joining Non-traffic side at Whakatane


The wind at Whakatane was interesting... a nice 10-15 knot crosswind that was blowing at a right angle to the runway! It certainly kept Nick on this toes. As for the Airport itselft, the place was like a ghost town! I did not see anyone else, even when I wandered into the Terminal Building to use the bathroom... kinda spooky really.

The rather 'unique' Terminal building at Whakatane



We gassed up JFY (after we finally found the Shell AvGas pump ;) and decided that instead of bounce ourselves around flying back across the Kaimai's to Matamata, we would fly back up the eastern coast of the Coromandel and have a look at the various airfields (Whitianga, Pauanui, Matarangi etc.)

Whiritoa - No airfield unfortunately, as a friend has a beach house here!
Slipper Island - nice looking private island resort with its own strip

Pauanui - must stop for a coffee one of these days


Unfortunately, it started to get a little choppy[2] from this point so taking photos was pretty much an impossible task :(

You can see the rest of the days photos in the photobucket gallery.

We cut back though the Colville Gap at the Northern end of the Coromandel and back across to Ardmore. The arrival back at Ardmore was fun, getting overtaken by a Delfin L-29 jet overheading the Clevedon Rivermouth and then having the 4 aircraft Harvard formation take off and turn crosswind underneath us, and then spiral around over us as we did an overhead join... Always fun and games at Ardmore! ;)


[1] Only joking
[2] Only hit my head on the roof once! :-/

Long (wet) weekend indoors

Over Labour Weekend, Trevor was doing some more IFR work down in Hamilton in preparation for his Instrument Rating Flight Test, so I decided to tag along to learn as much as I can while I'm not paying for it ;)

On the Saturday, as you can see from the outdoor pics below, the weather was a bit crap (30knot winds, embedded CB's etc.) so we ended up in the sim instead of flying.

While waiting for Trevor to take care of the paper work and rebooking his flights, I decided I may as well give jade's camera a bit of a work out. I think my photography skills are really coming along :P

Waikato Aero Club Alpha 160's and WAM (C-172)

Sunair Aztec (PA-23 250) ERM looking lonely

A very tidy (inside and out) Cessna 170, OCC

What we were supposed to fly... Piper Archer II (PA-28 181), FWS

What we ended up flying... AT-21 Simulator pretending to be FWS

As is usually the case, I tried to keep up with what was going on and paid attention when John was explaining concepts on the whiteboard. I think I now have just enough IFR knowledge to be dangerous ;) Seriously though, watching the sim sessions has been a bit of an eye opener. IFR flying = Busy and stressful. I'm sure the 30knot winds don't help...

Looks cosy...

All the knobs, switches and levers you would ever want

The sim is able to be configured to simulate a wide range of light aircraft and you can actually unscrew the throttle quadrant and replace it with one that has condition levers to give a bit more realism when simulating turbo props.

It's not FSX, but it does the job

The graphics aren't flash... but considering you spend most of your time flying around in cloud they don't need to be :) The sim even has a builtin intercom system, so if you wanted to be ultra-geeky, you can hook up your headset and talk to the "controllers" (ie. the person sitting at the instructors console) over the radio.

More of the same (weather and sim) on the Sunday, followed by an attempted flight in FWS on Monday as the rain and CB's had moved away. The weather looked nice enough, I flew us down to NZHN in LMA, but unfortunately by the time we got airbourne in FWS, the 30-40 knot high-level winds from the South-West had re-appeared, and they set up lots of mountain wave. Here you can see the effects as we were departing Hamilton below. There were about 6 of these little 'cap' cloud formations in a nice line.


And some real monsters around Tauranga... about the only people enjoying it were the Gliders who were all up around 12,000'!!!


The sink and lift was so outrageous that at one point we had full power and the aircraft at 10 degrees nose-up and we were still sinking at 200' per minute! Christchurch control ended up giving us a 'block' altitude (from 5000' to 6000') as it was impossible to hold a nice steady level. After one attempt at the hold Trevor and John called it quits and headed for Rotorua, hoping it would be a bit nicer there. It was not as bad, although that is kind of like saying that being shot by a 9mm pistol is not as bad as being shot by a .45 pistol!

Then back home to Hamilton and a nice VOR/DME Arc approach and 20 knot cross-wind landing.

So much 'fun' to look forward too! *gulp*

The crosswind was still up around 20knots when we departed back to Ardmore in LMA, so the tower gaves us the crosswind Grass 25R for departure... a nice headwind = a take-off roll of about 300 metres! ;)


This flight: 1.6 PinC
Total Hours: 156.0 (78.9/57.8 Day, 8.6/10.7 Night, 7.0 IFR)

What do you call...

a day of clear blue skies after 2 days of rain/hail/snow?

MONDAY! Ok, so it was actually 3 days of brutal weather... and it is actually Tuesday, but you get the point!

Despite the abysmal weather, I did get to go flying over the weekend... I just happened to be in Seat 3C, as opposed to 0A ;)

On the saturday we flew from NZAA to NZPM and as you can see from the pics, the weather down below would have been 'interesting'... we had a couple of bumps on the climb out, but nothing too serious once we were up above the weather...


On the way back, we were a little lucky to make the flight... arrived 10 minutes before departure, yay for online check-in and pre-printing boarding passes... to discover the inbound flight had not even arrived... yay for regional air travel :) So thankfully had plenty of time to queue up and pay the $5 departure tax... sorry, "Development Levy"... boo for Palmerston North International Airport :(



I was hoping to get some lovely pics of the central plateau that was all covered in snow... well that is what I heard... what I think I saw was Mt Ngauruhoe poking out from amongst the clouds... the photos are a bit crap, but oh well.




In typical fashion, it cleared up from the Hamilton, but it was still interesting flying along and spotting all the familiar landmarks like Hamilton, Huntly, Lake Waikare, Pukehoke etc..

Oh and if you were wondering, there is more room in a Cessna 152 than row 3 on an Air New Zealand Link ATR72-500 :P

Hopefully this weather will stick around so I can fly over to Tauranga on Sunday... hoping for a scenic flight out to White Island! *crosses fingers*

Animated Sandbag

Got the chance to go along for a ride with Nick (the guy in the picture) while he was doing the first of his solo CPL cross countries. Yes, you can fly 'solo' with passengers :) I though it would be a useful opportunity to get a preview of what a CPL cross country entails while inflight (timing, ground speed checks, ETA's etc.) And I think Nick was happy to have some company... even if I was just an 'Animated Sandbag' as he put it. Rob the CFI was clear that I was not to aid Nick in any way.

As the weather people had been wrong about the weather, the weekend was actually not too bad, so I headed out to Ardmore and got my crap sorted while Nick was working on the flight planning. The plan was to head up to Keri Keri, Kaitaia and Kaikohe. As an exercise you get 1 hour to complete it all, which is not too difficult as long as you follow the 'more speed, less haste' philosophy.


Planning complete and Flight Plan filed, we strapped into JBL and headed out. The engine is still being run in at high power settings, so Nick had planned for slightly faster speeds. It was nice to just observe see how other people do things, but I soon discovered it is a little uncomfortable trying to remain free of the controls in a 152 when you're 6'3" :)


Nick had done most of his planning to/from Musik Point, so after climbing out of Ardmore we headed towards the city getting ready for Nick to start his timings and navigation etc. Nick decided to keep a nice low 1000' and use the Transit lane to get past the Whenuapai Airspace and then climb up to cruising altitude. It was at this point that we could all the weather towards the north, and to be honest it did not look very nice.

As you can see in this pic approaching the Whangaparoa Peninsula, some of the areas up north looked a bit grey. We continued on and I clowned around with my phone (A Blackberry Curve 8310), trying out the GPS on it and taking crappy pictures like the 2nd one above, showing the effects of 'strobing' where the shutter speed of the camera and the prop RPM aren't in sync :)


I also snapped this great pic of yours truly, trying out my homemade, lightweight headset that I built from an old headset and a coat hanger (seriously!) I really love this headset, as it means I can wear sunglasses easily and I don't get a hot sweaty head from the big ear cups and headband of a conventional headset.


Unfortunately, the weather really started to close in as we started to approach Whangarei... the cloudbase was down to around 1700 or 1800' and the MSA for the area was around 2600'!! The rain was starting and the visibility was getting a bit crap. The view to the north was just a big dark gray wall. Nick asked me what I thought and remembering Rob's words, I replied "I'm just sitting here, you're PinC"... To his credit (and my relief) he decided that it was time to turn back.


So we headed back to AR and discovered the airfield had become very very busy. The most annoying thing was, that as we were heading south, we could see how good the weather that way was :( Oh well, as Nick said, it is all PinC time and useful experience. I am hoping to get started on my CPL cross countries at some point, but am still busy studying for the exams... so far I have read the Human Factors book and the first couple of chapters of Air Law. I am getting to know the CAR's, AIPs and AC's pretty well...