No passengers allowed

I've booked a 172 for a trip to Pauanui with Susan for Wednesday. The forecast rain for today (Saturday) hasn't arrived yet so it was a beautiful spring morning that greeted me as I arrived at the Aero Club to do my 3 circuits to pass the currency test (according to my logbook I have not logged PIC time in a 172 since August). Thats well outside the minimum 3 takeoffs and landings required every 90 days to satisfy the legal requirements of carrying passengers.

I got to fly WAM again for the first time since it had the 180hp STC conversion performed (according to my logbook it was way back in February that I last flew WAM), and it also had some nice leather seats replacing the old velour ones. An instructor asked me to treat the new engine with care, no glide approaches and to try to keep the revs up. I got in to find that half the radio stack was missing, and so I had to give myself a crash course on how to use the radio function of the GPS. Then there was maneuvering for a run up near holding point Golf. There is enough room there for two aircraft and I hesitated because I wasn't entirely sure there was. I ended up in no mans land and effectively blocked the taxiway, which got a polite request from the aircraft behind me (with Club instructor aboard) to move.

On the first circuit despite a slowly falling air pressure WAM showed just how much difference a new engine makes, climbing sharply away. I was overhauling the Alpha in the circuit ahead of me so I widened the circuit out and kept an eye on him.

It was almost impossible to descend with the throttle open. I tried a descent at 2000 rpm, then 1800, then 1700 but WAM just wanted to keep flying. I ended up almost having to glide her in because at those power settings she just resolutely refused to come down.

Once I was on the ground just opening the throttle was enough to get WAM airborne again, never mind raising the flaps. I tried a Vx climb andWAM didn't disappoint. By this time I had worked out a way for WAM to come down at a decent engine speed, using the precision approach method. I needed to practice them so it was good compromise.

I was circuiting on Grass 07, which hardly gets used because Hamilton very rarely has easterly winds. I like approaches to Grass 07 because of the lack of turbulence on short finals. There was a very slight crosswind (less than a knot or two) so I got to practice my crosswind landing technique as well. I aimed to land on the centreline as well, and for the most part I was successful.

As per usual, my last landing was my best, probably because by now I had come to terms with WAMs new flight characteristics and my confidence had returned. I taxied back and shut down, and then came a quick lesson from the polite instructor in the aircraft behind me on runup area etiquette and spacing. All of what he said I knew, I guess I just was thinking about a million things at once at the time and plain common sense wasn't one of them. Thats why the one thing you simply cannot afford to do in aviation is hurry. Haste most certainly makes waste, the consequences of which are most unpleasant.

I'll post again after my flight on Wednesday. Those of you who read Chris's blog would have seen his photos of Pauanui airfield and I hope to post some of my own here after my flight there.