Pilot Expo Ardmore

Saturday was the day Euan and I had planned to go to the Pilot Expo in Auckland, and predictably we left the blazing sunshine of the city and arrived at the aiport to be greeted by the first fog of the year! The first for six months I think. So our departure was naturally delayed somewhat! Euan was keen to go but we had to wait until the PIC (me) was comfortable with the weather. It started breaking up to the west about 10am, so we jumped in FWS and went. We were cleared Special VFR over the city and managed to climb up through a scattered cloud at 600ft agl to a nice cruising altitude of 2500. The trip north was nice and smooth and relaxing, I trimmed up the plane and flew on autopilot the whole way with legs and arms crossed...

At Huntly you could see what the heat from the power station does to the air above it - best not fly over that aye!


We also got to see the site of new prison:



We got to Ardmore, landed, and after a brief talk to Ground we got one of the Follow Me cars:



to lead us to our parking spot:



The expo consisted of a number of nice new aircraft, like this Garmin G1000 equipped Cessna 172:




and a lovely Cirrus SR20:


Here are some more of the aircraft that were for sale that I liked:















There was also a number of seminars. Euan and I went to one, a mountain flying seminar from the folks at Wanaka, which was interesting. We had a look inside the exhibitors tent, which was good:



Then we wandered around for a few hours and decided to go home. The flight back was quite choppy, which wasn't ideal for my mate to gain Archer experience, but it smoothed out as we got farther south. I got a couple of pics on the way back, including the Bombay hills from an aircraft's point of view:



Meremere dragstrip:



Lake Waikare:



And finally, a shot of Euan flying the Archer:



Thanks for coming with me Euan, it was a fantastic day, and I don't often get flown places so that was good too! I am glad we went.