After a couple of attempts that we had to abort due aircraft issues, last Saturday we made it to the Barrier finally... The weather forecast looked like it was going to be okay, with only light showers forecast for the afternoon, so we decided to go. The trip up was nice and smooth, and thankfully uneventful. A squall to the west of the airfield didn't look to inviting so I decided to have a crack at a straight in on 28 which worked fine as the wind was completely a crosswind. We were on the ground and stopped in about 400 metres which was nice.
I then told my SLF (Self Loading Freight) that I'd hired a car, thinking that the smallest, cheapest rental car would be a good idea, and then we found out what the roads were like!!!! But still, even though the car felt like it would fly to pieces, it made it, and we got to see the island. We had lunch in a nice place at Tryphena and then fought our way up past Okiwi airfield to Port Fitzroy, which turned out to be pretty uninspiring, then back to Claris. We also had a look round the club's lodge, right by the airfield, which I've stayed at many times but my pax hadn't seen.
We knew that ECT is pretty early this time of year so we raced back to the plane and got going. A friendly GBA pilot told us that Blind Bay was now clear, so we took off out to sea, and once I cleaned up the plane and set climb power we turned around and tracked back over the field and out Blind Bay. I stopped climbing at 1000' as we heard an incoming GBA Islander at 1500 and passed underneath him, which looked pretty cool. Weather was just as predicted, with a few showers around Thames way, but directly on track was completely clear so we had a clear run back to Hamilton.
We switched to Hamilton frequency about 20 miles out and could hear stacks of Fieldays air traffic all buzzing round Hamilton keeping the controllers very busy so I got my radio call in ASAP, about 17 miles out. Our clearance took us right over the city at 1700 which is always fun. On finals, we were told to make for the grass, but an aircraft that wasn't paying attention thought I was lining up for the seal and proceeded to line up for the grass. I think he must have looked out the window and seen an Arrow a few feet away, and all I saw was a flash of white off the left wing and got a hell of a fright when I saw him at what looked like 50 feet away, peeling off to the left!!! I then looked ahead just as we flew through a flock of about 30 birds, which saw us and scattered! The little buggers were swooping and wheeling to the left, right and all over the damn place!! Thankfully we didn't hit any, and the landing was uneventful.
I'll post some photos shortly - the light wasn't terribly conducive to nice photos and my scanner software couldn't cope with the deep shadows, but US$39.95 fixes that problem so I've got some scans finally for you.
