New Tamron TC joins my kit...

Just visited Auckland today and picked up a Tamron SP AF 2x Teleconverter to be used with my Nikon 80-200mm f/2.8 and Nikon 300mm f/4 lenses. First impressions are fairly positive, but it does make the 80-200 autofocus hunt a lot, especially on the long end. I haven't tested it in bright light yet, nor have I got sample images back either, but I'm warming up to it. We'll see how much of a hit the image quality takes, but I'm sure that because I'm using good lenses with it, I should be reasonably happy with the images it makes. We will see!!


Update: Dec 15th

I've tested the TC in the field and there is good news and bad news. Good news is the image quality with the 80-200 2.8 is surprisingly excellent! Sample images below. Bad news is the AF hunts too much to be useful for shooting aircraft. Bummer!

I've returned it and swapped it for a 1.4x converter. Bad news with that is I was forced to return it in person. Cue 3 hour drive and an afternoon off work. Which is not all bad news! Further bad news is instead of pocketing the refund for the difference I ended up buying even more stuff :)

Warbirds open day

I wasn't going to go to the Warbirds open day at Ardmore last Sunday, but Euan twisted my arm and convinced me to go. Sunday was a glorious day so we grabbed FWS and shot up in the morning nice and early. At Ardmore were a lot more aircraft than I was expecting, including these:








There were also the usual suspects, including the ME108 and NUT, both of which I was very happy to see..





Then we had the Harvards, which did their usual thing...







The photo above looks like a bad case of lens flare but if you look close it's actually a smoky engine start...







The Thunder Mustang was a welcome sight, looking beautiful in the sun as usual. The hangar was immaculate, and the coffee was very nice as well! Big thanks to the Thunder Mustang team for making us feel welcome!






Unfortunately even though the Spitfire looked very nice it broke down just before it's scheduled display and wasn't able to be flown. Damn shame!






Some nice cars and planes were around the place, here's a couple...






Evan posing beside FWS... I don't think he saw the camera in my hand, and I suspect he wished he could fly back with us :-)




Just a photo on the way home of Hamilton central city from the air..



Sorry for the image quality on these, I had the lab do me a CD to save time... Looks great at 6x4" but not much chop fullscreen. Oh well...

I'm a winner! Yay!

I'm very pleased to be able to say that I won NaNoWrimo this year!!!! What's that, you ask? Oh, just write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days!

I completed my 50,000 words this morning so I'm a winner!! Now, back to catching up a month of real life that's been piling up! Oh, and I should probably sleep as well..

This was about as good as it gets...

I hadn't flown for a month or two so decided to go on Saturday, and invited 3 friends to come with me. Originally we were going to go to Tauranga in the Arrow for a $100 hamburger, but the Arrow became unavailable at the last minute, and I realised on Friday that due to the regionals this weekend, Tauranga would be a really bad place to try and go to. So, on the day I ended up with WAM, our (now 180hp) 172R, which I haven't flown since it got the new engine, and we decided Pauanui would be the go. Weather was scattered cloud @ 3500ft, wind approx 060 @ 10kt.

I went out and got current, then came back and put enough gas in to make it there and back with 45min reserve, and drew lines on the map, worked out the heading etc. My passengers and I piled in to WAM and we fired it up. I decided that even though we would only be in controlled airspace for maybe ten or fifteen minutes, that I should call up Control and get clearance up to 5500. I have never done this before, at least like this, so I was keen to try it out - when I called up from the ground and asked for clearance to Pauanui, I asked for that clearance @ 5500. The controller told me he'd sort out a climb for me later. We took off and headed out IAW the departure procedure, and we'd barely levelled off at 1200 ft when we got the go to contact Control. I did so, and we were cleared up to 5500 ontrack. Woo Hoo!!

The flight at that altitude was well above the clouds, and very smooth and cool. The plane went well, and before I knew it we needed to begin our descent. The landing was a little challenging but I think I pulled it off okay - did a bit of a greaser. We all then went to the shops for lunch, and after that and a walk down the beach, it was time to come home. As we were near MAUW I did a max performance takeoff, and we were off with no problems whatsoever. We came home at 4500 ft, and I executed a steady descent pretty much all the way to touchdown.

All in all, this was about as good a flying day as I could have hoped for...

A few photos from Black Sands

Popped in to the Black Sands Flyin at Raglan today - was pretty windy (15kt xwind) and there weren't too many planes there, but here's a few piccies of them.