Hawkes Bay for the day..

At the AGM on Tuesday, Aaron asked me if I wanted to come with him on a trip to the Hawke's Bay on Thursday in DQV. I was dubious because it didn't give me much time to arrange time off work, but I asked my boss who very kindly gave me the day off. Thursday rolled round and the weather didn't look too bad, so off we went. I was a bit dismayed that Aaron wanted to go at 7:45am, not being an early riser and all that, but since there's not many hours of daylight this time of year I agreed..

We got the aircraft out and got going, and we realised that although the day was quite dismal, the high cloud was much higher than it looked, and as we climbed up we easily made it to 6000 feet, and trucked along nicely, all the way to Napier. To my delight the horizon was lit up with a fantastic sunrise. My only bummer was my GPS wouldn't acquire any satellites, so I made a note to drop it in to Ham Avionics when I got back.

Our trip to Hastings was so smooth it was almost scary - much smoother than any flight I can remember for a long long time. I've only been to Napier once and it was ugly weather, this time we were nice and high, and I got some nice pics on the way. We descended and arrived at Hastings, and Aaron did an excellent landing. We parked up and our ride arrived, and off we went into town. At this point Aaron had work to do, and I wanted to have a look around town, so I grabbed my camera and headed off.

Aaron suggested I might want to go for a fly, and after a couple of hours mucking round town I was ready to go flying, so I shot off back to the airport, and had a look at the chart and VFG to get myself familiar with the area. As per Aaron's suggestion, I took off out of Hastings and headed east. Using the DME to ensure I remained clear of Napier airspace, I flew round Te Mata, then out to Cape Kidnappers which I flew round at 2200 feet to stay above the 2000ft high restricted area. I then requested and was granted clearance into Napier airspace. I flew over Napier city and did a couple of orbits, then did a touch and go at Napier airport before heading back to Hastings, did an overhead join and landed. Wind was calm so I picked the runway that would allow me to roll out and not have to brake hard or backtrack to taxi off, and after the best damn landing I think I've ever done, which of course no bastard was watching, I taxied back and parked up. A wonderful little experience, and I now have much more of an idea about the geography of the area. I also am much more relaxed about flying around there now I have the lay of the land. Shortly afterwards, Aaron txted me and asked how much fuel was in the aircraft, and after checking, I thought 90 litres was cutting it a bit fine, so I went and filled it up, and as I was doing that Aaron arrived.

Shortly after 3pm we took off, and headed back to Hamilton. This was another wonderful smooth, fast flight, the aircraft went beautifully, but I wish the heater didn't just cook your feet - as copilot I was in charge of the heater and spent the flight adjusting it to and fro, as we'd go from cook to freeze and back again.. When we arrived at Hamilton we were told to hold at Mystery Creek as there were 5 in the circuit, and I counted six orbits by the time we got clearance to descend and join. Shortly afterwards we were all instructed to land and get clear as there was an ATR in trouble on approach. We parked the plane and ran back to the runway with probably everyone else on the airfield, only to watch the aircraft in question land normally. The paper today mentioned something about hydraulic problems, but it looked fine to me!!

I ran over to Ham Aero with my GPS, and managed to catch them before they went home. They had a look at it and pronounced it had probably lost it's almanac due to not being used for a few weeks, and I remembered the batteries had been flat after using it last time. I didn't realise they can lose their almanac but now I do, and if this happens, I know all I have to do is choose New Location->Automatic, and leave it by the window for half an hour and it will pick up the local satellites. Much relief was to be had when it started working again!!!

Thanks to Aaron and my manager at work who let me take time off at such short notice, I had an absolutely fantastic day. I was just thrilled how it worked out, and I managed to take lots of photos and videos, my favourites are all on a flickr set. A couple of the good ones are here, but by all means go and check out the set. Most of these photos and videos were shot using a Canon A570 IS


Sunrise over a sea of fog, somewhere near Taupo I think


Some snowy looking mountains - no idea what they're called, sorry


160kt IAS - yeah!!


Taupo Racetrack


Napier city


Taking off at Hamilton


Landing at Hastings


Landing at Hamilton


Flying round Te Mata peak - at least I think it was Te Mata, I kinda just headed east for the rockiest looking hill I could find :-)

Tom Cruise's P-51

I didn't know Tom Cruise owns a P-51, but here is a photo of it. Whatever I might think of him, anyone who flies a Mustang can't be all that bad, right?? :-)

Mac vs PC with a twist.

Yeah, I know, I am one of those odd types who uses a Mac. The rest of the world thinks we're a bit funny in the head, I think, but I sure love my Mac. And I love to see when the Mac kicks the PC's ass.

Only, in this article, it's a 1986 Mac Plus versus a 2007 Windows XP box. You'll never guess who wins!!

Makes me want a classic Mac so badly right now it's not funny :-)

Accidental gear up landing in a 182

This was apparently on a flight test or some such. I wonder if he passed?

White Island trip.. boy oh boy!

Well, Sunday dawned nice and fine, and hopes were high for a fantastic club trip to White Island, how were we to know how it was going to turn out??!!

Purely by chance I ended up in a plane with Euan and a couple of others in a very arse-heavy JGP, unfortunately for us the chap sitting to my left was a non-flyer who unbeknowns to us suffered from motion sickness. This did not become apparent until the very rough air on the way to Whakatane smoothed out, and less than one minute from landing this turkey blew chunks everywhere, and I do mean everywhere. I discovered then that the difference between a pilot and a non-pilot is that when a pilot is sick in a plane he moves the microphone out of the way first!!

After landing at Whakatane, we were overcome by the smell, and cleaning the aircraft was the first order of business. Unfortunately, thanks to the smell, neither Euan or myself felt well enough to attempt to fly the "Vomit Comet" out to a forecast-severe turbulent White Island, so we ended up staying while the others flew out, in an attempt to rid the plane of the guy's lunch. Not that I remember him helping us much, mind you.

By the time the others returned, we were feeling better and the Comet was much nicer to stick your head in. Soon after that we had to leave to make it home in time, so several old Air NZ magazines on the back seat and many sprays of the deodorant we thieved from the mens room at the terminal later, we headed off, myself PIC this time.

On a whim, almost, I decided that having never travelled in controlled airspace except for airfield control zones, this would be a perfect time to try it out, and once again, thanks to Aaron, I was armed with everything I needed to get back at 5500 feet through controlled airspace, which may or may not explain why the trip home was smoother. Thanks to a howling tail wind, were were averaging 150kt ground speed in the cruise while only showing 115kt indicated!!

Here's a video of Euan's takeoff and a couple of photos I took on the day...

DQV to NZMA - Again!

Well, I wasn't going to go flying this morning, but Euan rang, and the weather was good... And before long I was out at the aero club. There was a slight scheduling conflict so the only aircraft free turned out to be DQV:



Last weekend's Matamata trip was quite enjoyable, so I thought that would be a nice place to go to... This was the takeoff at Hamilton - see, I have improved!!



And this was my landing at Matamata:



And while we were there, we saw a couple of meatbombs have a bit of a nasty landing - big time faceplant! They were both fine though...




Oh, and this has nothing to do with flying but is quite cool nonetheless - a test of a truck going 55 mph into a barrier - ouch!

DQV to NZMA

I had booked the Arrow for the whole of last weekend to go to Tauranga and possibly take my friend over there flying. Turned out, though, that the weather had other ideas. The forecast for Sunday progressively deteriorated, and I decided in the end to just do my Matamata trip on Saturday to check on my friend’s glider trailer, and that would give me a good reason to take DQV for a short hop. One of the club members who was hanging around when I got there came with me, and we went and extracted the plane from the hangar. I must remember next time to try and do my pre-flight on a hard surface – the knees get quite muddy from crawling underneath to check on the landing gear :-)

After pre-flighting we got in and taxied out and did a run-up, then we got clearance to backtrack and line up on the sealed runway. As we were rolling for takeoff, I took Aaron’s advice and began raising the nose as I do in a Cessna, rather than the way I’ve gotten used to in Pipers, which is to wait until about 60 before raising the nose. The problem I found with doing that in the Arrow is the nose seems incredibly heavy and I end up wrenching the thing off the ground. This time I began pulling back from probably 40kt and found that although the nose is still heavy, it’s much more manageable and you can get the nose to start coming up so when it gets to the speed it’s happy to fly at, we’re away. Thanks Aaron!!!

When we got to Matamata we did an overhead join and found there was a glider operating off runway 22, and I wasn’t keen to land anywhere near him, so I checked out runway 28, which had a bit of crosswind, and I decided that not only would it be good to get crosswind practise in the Arrow, but using 28 kept me away from the gliders, and put me closer to the part of the airfield I wanted to go to. So I joined for 28, and found the crosswind not too bad. I did my normal Arrow landing which involved bleeding power off in the roundout and flare, until you touch down as the power is brought back to idle. In this case I still had a smidgen of power on, and that made for a super smooth touchdown.

After checking out the trailer we wandered back to the plane and took off, once again trying to raise the nose as the airspeed built up, which was once again a great success, and once airborne we headed back to Hamilton. I was given a South arrival, which basically entailed flying south in order to fly north, and in we went, with a clearance on the seal, which I am getting more used to. Once again I bled the power off as we flared which made for a nice soft landing, and off back to the hangars we went.

A good way to waste an hour, and yet more proof that flying is a way to convert large amounts of money into small amounts of forward thrust!

And if anyone decides they want to fly to Matamata and can’t find it when they get there, a really good way I have only just clicked to, is to look for where the main road and railway from Matamata part company. Exactly the point they diverge is where you’ll find the airfield.

Our weather forecasters are doing well...

According to the NZ Herald, our weather forecasts in New Zealand are right less than half of the time! NIWA clocked up an unimpressive 48% hit rate on forecasts.

That explains why the last two weekends the weather hasn't matched the forecast at all! Bummer for those of us who actually need forecasts that are half accurate! Last Sunday, for example, up until the night before, the forecast was for sunny skies, and only on the Sunday morning did they revise the forecast to fog then sun. Turned out to be fog until lunchtime then low cloud (400ft base) all afternoon - by 3pm it was a sloping 800ft cloud base, still not enough for me to be comfortable about going flying..

I might as well just ignore the forecast and look out the window on the day!!

The BEST freephone number ever!!

Seen on the Auckland motorway on Saturday:

The new Kai Tak ???

First seen on another blog I visit this has to be the craziest approach I have ever seen!! Enjoy...

Flight training Monty Python style