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| Airline Prep |
The last couple of weeks have been busy and great fun. I've done a fair few flights, consisting of navs, general handling, instrument flights and my first ever night flight which was so much fun!
One of my planned navs ended up being an entire flight of diversions due to patches of low cloud so rather than turning around and going back to Hamilton, I used the time to practice mid-air diversions. At first it's quite difficult because you need to know exactly where you are, pick a suitable place to go, draw a line from where you are to that place, estimate a heading, distance and ETA and then fly it. All this while still maintaining straight and level flight at 105 kts! In some of my earlier navs my attempted diversions have been very messy and to be honest quite poor, but after this lesson I improved vastly and feel really comfortable with doing it now. Like all things, it gets better with practice.
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| Lake Taupo |
The general handling and circuits flights were pretty bog standard; just going out to a suitable area to practice all the manoeuvres and then into the circuit to practice normal, flapless and glide landings. When you get these lessons later on you really start focusing hard on the proper techniques and making it as perfect as possible since there is a test looming.
My instrument lessons were good too, again just practising what has been learnt so far (compass turns, climbing and descending under the hood etc). My compass turns have improved vastly and I seem to be able to fly quite accurately on instruments now. I've got out of the habit of chasing the dials which is easy to do at first but makes flying seem much harder than it really is. We also navigated to airfields I hadn't been to in those lessons and practised the overhead join procedure with a few circuits which I really enjoyed and it was good practice. IF 6 (the last IF lesson) was basically treated as a PT1 mock, so you do a bit of everything. It was a busy but very fun lesson. (PT1 is the internal CTC flight test at the end of the VFR stage).
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| Mt Doom |
On the 7th of November I had the most amazing day! The weather was perfect and I had a late afternoon nav to Taupo where I did a touch and go. I then tracked right along the big volcanoes in the centre of the North Island, one of them a very famous one (Mt Doom from lord of the rings). The views I got were absolutely sensational! I'd been wanting to do that route for ages and I finally got the perfect weather for it.
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| The volcanoes |
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| The kind of terrain you DO NOT want an engine failure over |
As soon as I got back from that flight I had to plan for my first ever night flight whilst scoffing down a pot of noodles. The weather was so calm and the tower had gone off watch so you aren't being told what to do. Obviously there are a lot less flights and not very much radio contact at all. It was so peaceful and so different to what I'm used to. We flew around the area identifying various towns and landmarks to go off which looked beautiful with all the lights lit up. There were also loads of fireworks going off below us which just added to the enjoyment. We then joined the circuit and practised a few landings and take off's using the runway lights. I found it a lot easier than I was anticipating. You do seem to get massive tunnel vision when on finals at night though. I just seemed to be fixated on the lights but all my landings were pretty decent. I can't wait for my next night flight!
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| Flying towards Hamilton |
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| Circling Seddon Park on match night |
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| Taxiing outside the main terminal |
Amongst all these flights I've managed to play a cricket match which went well. I made a valuable 44 runs on a wicket that seemed to have a mind of its own. We won the game too which was good! A few of us went kayaking on lake Karipiro (30 minutes from Hamilton) yesterday as well which was good fun and relaxing. I didn't get anywhere near as wet as I was expecting, I guess that shows the maturity of some of us.... or just the fear that if we got someone else wet, we would get twice as wet. I think the temptation was always there.
I haven't got many flights now until my PT1 test so I'm really trying to make the most of my lessons. I've still got to get my long cross country qualifier done. I have an awsome route planned so I just need the weather for it. With any luck I should be done with VFR flying by the end of the month and on to IFR by the beginning of December.
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| Myself and DJ queuing at the fuel pumps |
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