Well peoples, after dreaming about it for months, I finally got my Arrow rating! I have a bit over 200 hours total time, 100 or so hours of which in Archers, and now have taken the next logical step.
Anyhow, on Sunday I had my first flight with passengers since getting my rating, and it was awesome! It was originally only meant to be a short local flight but the prospect of sharing the piloting duties with Aaron, who convinced me that if I got us somewhere he would pay his share to get us home, which turned it into a much longer, much more fun flight!
We decided on Rotorua for lunch, so off we went. I flew the first leg from Hamilton to Rotorua, and had a airspeed of 135 showing most of the time, much nicer than the 120 I am used to! Had my GPS 96C with me, which made navigating there trivial, and Rotorua doesn't have any special procedures, so we called up and were cleared in straight away. Pulled the throttle back a little and got the speed back to below 130, then dropped the gear, and did a good approach and a slightly misjudged landing (was a bit lower than I thought, ended up touching down before I had fully flared, but was still mains first then nosegear and quite a smooth touchdown, so no worries). I then parked up and we went off for some lunch, and the decision was made to fly to Whakatane via Mt Tarawera, so I switched seats with Aaron, who, after being made to hold on the ground for ages, took off and flew us to Whakatane, and I got some nice scenic pictures along the way over Tarawera.
We landed at Whakatane and got fuel, then wandered around for a bit and met some friendly local pilots, plus the hangar cat.. The terminal building is the most wacky, bizarre terminal building I have ever seen - I initially thought it was a big McDonalds(tm) kids play area attached to the terminal, but it turned out to be the damn terminal building itself!!
I had promised myself I would visit a former customer at Whakatane, Air Discovery, so we trotted over to their office and had a chat to them for while. After that, we refuelled and took off back to Hamilton, with what seemed a much slower takeoff with full fuel, and this time we obtained clearance to fly back in controlled airspace at 5500ft, which turned out to be between cloud layers, and since the layer beneath was broken but we could still see down, we were still legal VFR, and we also got a nice smooth ride home.
In preparing for this rating, I spent a lot of time mucking around on a flight sim (X-Plane), getting used to flying a CSU and retract, and found that helped a lot when it came to the procedures. I also found an excellent set of Piper aircraft at air.c74.net, which is a commercial package, but it's so inexpensive and so amazing you'd be silly not to get it. It contains a couple of fantastic Arrow models (I and III) that I've been using and they seem pretty close to the real thing..
I had planned a photographic extravaganza, but since the photos belong to Euan and he's done such a nice job of it on his blog and I can't really be buggered, this is all you're getting!
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