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.