Sunday, April 22, 2007

South Island trip - the other bits

For those that have asked... After the airshow at Omaka, the only flying we did was to take a day trip to Wellington, which sounded like a good idea at the time (an Air NZ pilot we know had just landed at WN and told us it was fine - bring it over), which turned out to be not such a good idea, and got the shit kicked out of us on the way in and out of Wellington, with a ground speed of 40kt on finals with an indicated 75kt. Welcome to Wellington.

Couldn't fly to Christchurch for Armageddon, had to drive instead, and the damn car was being blown all over the road so in a plane would have been life-threatening!!!

The trip back from Blenheim to Hamilton turned out to be not so much fun either, with beautiful blue skies at Blenheim, and very ugly cloud on the way up the coast that got progressively worse as I went north, but we managed to find a gap by Taharoa and scoot across to Hamilton. Thank God I had a mapping GPS with me!!!


The other thing I wanted to mention was my Arrow rating today - did my MAUW check with Roger, and that went surprisingly well - for those that know Hamilton, we were at max all up weight and Rog made me take off on Grass 18, from Echo 1, which cuts a good deal of 18 out, and she still got airborne by the end of the runway, with only 10 flap.. Very cool!!

I am much much more comfortable with the whole retract + CSU business - it just seems like a heavy Archer to me now. No worries!!!

Once Rog has gone over my paperwork for the rating I believe we're all go, and you Arrow drivers will have someone else to share the plane with!!

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