Wednesday, January 30, 2008

A photo with a story attached..

This is a Cessna 152 that the club had online for a while. It was the plane that I picked on Dec 17 2003 on the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers first flight, when we decided we just had to go flying that day of all days! Myself and one of the club members had a chat and decided we should do something we hadn't done before. We decided that 10,000 feet in a 152 was a good thing! I remember it was 13 degrees on the ground, so ISA conditions, and I also remember grinding slowly up to 10,000 feet. The controller couldn't grasp why I'd ask for 10,000 feet but not want to actually go anywhere!!!

So, almost an hour after takeoff, after passing the service ceiling for the aircraft many thousand of feet below, and while holding 65kt, nose right up, mixture 1/4 turn from ICO, we made it to 10,050 feet. This was the absolute ceiling, as in it absolutely wouldn't go any damn higher!!! Turning the mixture at all or pulling carb heat out at all resulted in a loss of 100 or so feet, and it just wouldn't go a single foot higher!!

Then we started down the hill, I suppose we could have shut the engine down really - instead we did lazy circles to keep the airflow from turning the prop too much... Finally we landed, 1.2 after takeoff!!!!

Monday, January 28, 2008

Visit to Waikato Microlight Club

Not to be outdone by Rodney I've got yet more photos to post :)

I was out on Collins Rd on Saturday and ended up visiting the Waikato Microlight Club. This is an airstrip and hangar on a farmer's property that's within the Hamilton control zone, and they've been kind enough to arrange a little piece of class G airspace for them up to 500ft AGL. This is an impressive strip - 750 metres long, which is 100 metres MORE than we have at Hamilton airport!!!! It also runs east-west, so into the prevailing wind, which is handy. It's also got a lovely view of Mt Pirongia.

All photos here taken with a Pentax WR90 point+shoot 35mm camera (donation from one of the WAC members, thank-you-very-much!)


Hangar and a couple of aircraft that live there



Inside the hangar



Looking down the strip (view large is best)



Zenith microlight



Zenith panel




ZK-DXO, C172 with 150hp



Can anyone spot the cardinal sin being committed here?



Inside DXO

New Hamilton terminal building

Forgot about these when I posted my last entry. These were shot on Saturday in the newly revamped terminal building when I shot over for a looksee - haven't been into it since they did it up. Much nicer, I must say... All shot on Olympus OM40 (or was it OM10?) with a 35-70mm f/4 lens.



Some photos from today...

These all fly but not necessarily all aircraft...


A visitor from Ardmore



WTF is this little guy doing?



An ATR taxiing out (Yes Euan, I looked this time :)



Same ATR rotating...

Saturday, January 26, 2008

Our military's response to the Japanese whalers...

So, Helen Clark says that if the Japanese whaling fleet comes into NZ waters, the Orion tracking it will... take photos of it. You WHAT??? So we got rid of the Skyhawks and now we're reduced to taking damn photos of them?? What are they going to do.. drop Polaroids onto the Japanese ships??? "Look, we got photos of you"

Maybe we can drop Helen Clark on their ship - the sight of her would have them running!!

Friday, January 25, 2008

Now this dude's got a cool name...

From stuff.co.nz today:

An unemployed man of no fixed abode pleaded guilty in Wellington District Court today to importing LSD and Ecstasy.

Judge Denys Barry remanded Megatron Eardley-Wilmot [subs correct!!] in custody for sentencing in the High Court on February 22.

The offences were committed between 2003 and 2005.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Alpha Aviation in liquidation

Which is really really bad news for the whole aviation industry, not just for my good friends who work at Alpha, and of course there is the small issue of spares availability for the three club Alphas. Very sad.

This seems to be the theme with local aviation companies - I've worked for two, and got laid off at one and was on the list at the other when I resigned. This is the sort of shit they pull, with everything apparently rosy until one day the doors are closed.

Slightly belated 2007 roundup

Now I’ve finished entering my hours from last year in my pathetic excuse of a computerised logbook, and inspired by reading Aaron’s year end roundup of his hours and highlights, I now present my year end summary (only a month late !!!)

Hours in 2007: 39.7 (Total Time: 222.6)

Time per aircraft:
DQV (Arrow) 11.5
FWS (Archer) 9.0
JGP (172) 14.9
UFS (Archer) 3.1
WAM (172) 1.2

Time with each instructor:
Ash: 1.2
Marie: 0.7
Roger: 3.0

Highlights for the year:
• BFR passed
• Arrow type rating
• Intro Night flight (the plane broke down halfway through the lesson and then we ran out of time to do more)
• South Island trip (Classic Fighters)

Goals for 2008:
• Lots more Arrow time
• At least one Barrier trip
• Alpha rating
• Aerobatic rating

I know I probably won’t get all that done but it’s good to set goals in aviation..

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Not nice...

Well, supposedly we were off to Waiouru on Sunday to visit the museum along with a couple of other clubs. This sounded like a bloody good idea to me, how often do you get to land at a military base?

So, the morning of the trip rolls round and we hear the other clubs can't make it, so the lads (Aaron and Euan) decide to head off somewhere, and who am I to avoid a trip in the back of a plane??? The destination chosen was North Shore, and I was chosen to fly the first leg. As it turned out the 35kt @ 2000 ft from the east made the trip pretty uncomfortable, and as we approached Ardmore and needed to descend to enter the Victor lane (our request to transit Auckland airspace having been declined) the turbulence started to become a lot worse, to the point where one of my passengers requested to stop at Ardmore, which I quite happily agreed to. As we were just passing the extended centreline all it took was a quick left turn and we were on early downwind. I thought we should get on the ground ASAP before my passengers went from uncomfortable to sick, and I decided to do a short approach, which required a decent bank onto finals and full flap, throttle closed and nose right down @ 80kt for a hell of a rate of descent with a 20 plus knot headwind, then for a solid landing. After parking we stopped for a rest and a drink then slowly made our way back to the plane. Euan flew us home, and did bloody well in the conditions!!!

Thanks to all for a jolly good day, even if we didn't get to our first 2 destinations, and the weather was damn nasty, but we still got to go flying and we brought the plane home in one piece.

Cheers chaps

Friday, January 18, 2008

Today's history lesson...

From Wired.com:

Jan. 17, 1966: H-Bombs Rain Down on a Spanish Fishing Village

1966: A U.S. Air Force B-52 bomber collides with its refueling tanker jet in mid-air over the Spanish coast. Its four hydrogen bombs fall to earth near the fishing village of Palomares.
The bomber collided with the KC-135 tanker at 31,000 feet. Exploding fuel completely destroyed the tanker, killing all four crew members. The B-52 broke apart, spilling its payload -- four Type B28RI hydrogen bombs equipped with 1.45-megaton warheads. Three hit the ground near Palomares while the fourth fell into the Mediterranean Sea.
Three members of the bomber's seven-man crew were killed in what became known as the Palomares hydrogen bombs incident.
Although the conventional explosives contained in two of the four bombs detonated, there was no nuclear holocaust. But there was radioactive contamination around the crash site, with plutonium scattered over 2 square kilometers. Around 1,750 tons of earth was excavated and shipped to the United States for disposal.
The bomb that landed in the sea went missing for 80 days and became the object of an intensive search by the United States, which was afraid the Soviets might try to recover it.
A local fisherman, Francisco Simo Orts, had seen it hit the water and was enlisted to help the U.S. Navy establish the basis for its search operation. When the bomb was finally found, Simo Orts turned up in New York with an attorney, demanding the salvage award he claimed was due him in accordance with maritime law.
The U.S. secretary of defense said the bomb was worth $2 billion. Simo Orts asked for $20 million, or 1 percent of the bomb's value, again in accordance with the custom of maritime law. The Air Force eventually settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Oops, forgot a picture...

Here's one for you Evan!! TYS in forground, Thunder Mustang in background...

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Thursday, January 10, 2008

Blocked sink causes 747 emergency...

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

THE potentially disastrous power failure on a Qantas flight carrying 344 passengers above Bangkok was caused by a blocked sink in a galley, the agency investigating the incident said yesterday.

Flight QF2 - a Boeing 747 travelling from London to Sydney - lost power from all four of its main generators 15 minutes from the airport, and the pilot was forced to switch to battery back-up for the landing, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau said.

The passengers arrived safely in Sydney yesterday, three days after leaving London.

The bureau confirmed last night that the power cut was the result of faulty drainage in the first-class galley of the 747-400, which resulted in water entering the generator control unit - the aircraft's central electrical distribution system.

Water from the blocked drain collected in a drip tray under the floor. A crack in the drip tray caused the water to leak into electrical wiring.

Each of the plane's four engines has its own generator, but the water shorted out the aircraft's power supply. A backup battery system was immediately activated.

The cabin crew on the flight will be interviewed as part of the investigation.

In a statement issued yesterday, Qantas's executive general manager, John Borghetti, said the aircraft's pilots had "handled this unusual situation in line with their training".

However, a spokesman for the Australian and International Pilot's Association, Colin Adams, said that those on the flight were "very lucky" the incident had occurred close to an airport.

"In that situation you have a minimum of 30 minutes before you lose power to the flight instruments," Mr Adams, a Qantas pilot, said. "After that the only idea that you have of airspeed and where you are in relation to what's around you is what you can see out of the window. There is no written procedure for what happens in that situation - it's the pilot and his wits.

"If you were a long way from an airfield at night it would be an extremely hazardous situation. If you were in cloud you would not know where the ground was and you could end up in an extremely dangerous situation."

Mr Borghetti said Qantas had inspected its entire fleet of 747-400s after the incident, with all aircraft cleared to fly.

However, Mr Adams said the fleet was nearing the end of its useful life. "These are 15-, 16-year-old aeroplanes that work 16, 17 hours a day. It's a bit like a car - a new one is always going to function better and be safer than an old one."

The director of aerospace at RMIT University in Melbourne, Arvind Sinha, said that a total failure of all four generators on a Boeing 747 was "unheard of".

"The engines have their own independent power source and the steering is operated by a hydraulic pump system, but the critical issues are the navigation and communication systems that you need to find your way to a runway to land," Dr Sinha said.

As news of the incident broke yesterday, the Herald received a number of reports of other technical problems on Qantas flights.

James Vozzo from Eastlakes said the take-off of his Qantas flight from JFK Airport in New York on January 3 had been aborted twice, due to a faulty cabin lock and a problem with the plane's braking system.

"We ended up sitting on the runway for 5½ hours and then they eventually had to cancel the flight," Mr Vozzo said.

Another Qantas passenger said that his flight had experienced power-generator problems that caused sweltering cabin temperatures

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

LWN visits Hamilton


The same aircraft that visited Rodney visited me a week or two back (been slack uploading photos aye). thought I'd post a photo.

Monday, January 7, 2008

Some visitors to the club on Sunday


A good number of fantastic looking aerobatic machines..


And a ME108. The sign in the back says it was manufactured in 1944 in occupied France, rebuilt in 1984 using a 300hp IO540 Lycoming

Tuesday, January 1, 2008

First casualty of the new year...

My most used and most useful lens, the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8. I was trying to extract my car keys from an armful of camera and lenses and down she went! 4 feet onto a hard floor and it just exploded!

I am quite gutted about this, really, as you might imagine. She served me well in her short life :-)

First casualty of the new year

Some photos to start your year off

Happy new year all..

Here's some photos to get you started this year - all taken on Sunday, developed in my bathroom cum darkroom tonight. I could have done it earlier, but what can I say - I'm lazy :-)

ATR rotating
ATR lifting off... Photo credit: Euan Kilgour

Archer FWS + Harvard 078
An Archer, a Harvard and some Cessna in the way

Some likely lads...
A couple of likely lads...

Harvard 078
Harvard 078

Nice Harvard engine + prop shot
Closer shot of the engine + prop

Cessna 172 ZK-JGP
My normal 172.. The Millenium Falcon