We were supposed to go to the War Museum at Waiouru. It was going to be a pretty awesome adventure, the army base which has its own airfield were going to open it up to members of the Tauranga and Hawkes BayAero Clubs to fly there and then go by bus to the museum. Since my mateAaron has a lot of contacts at the Hawkes Bay Aero Club he organised for himself, Chris and me to tag along.
The weather this morning was quite nice looking until you read the met information. A 2000 foot wind forecast at 30 knots didn't make for fun times. I arrived at the club to find I was the first one there. Aaron arrived bearing bad news, Hawkes Bay were a non starter because the cloud cover was so low there was no way for them to get inland. Tauranga had decided not to go either and it wasn't feasible for us to go alone so we looked for an alternative destination and found one in the North Shore Aero Club. Neither Chris nor I had ever been there so we decided to give it a go.
Chris was chosen to fly us there, with the intention for me to fly the return leg. We got airborne and although the expected turbulence was present it wasn't nearly as bad as we had feared. We gained clearance to and climbed up to 2500 feet. At that height the turbulence was bad enough to make accurate flying a challenge so Aaron and Chris decided to climb up to 3500 once we could and attempt to cross direct through Auckland airspace at 3500. Being a Sunday morning you would assume that Auckland International Airport would be fairly quiet. WRONG! While not as busy as it can get, there was a lot of aircraft operating within the vast chunk of airspace Auckland Control looks after. Chris requested 3500 and they said it was not available and to remain clear of airspace. That was the end of it. We descended to 2500 to get under it and made for the transit lane at Bucklands Beach. Crossing the hills near Hunua we hit a patch of pretty nasty clear air turbulence. I hit my head on the roof hard, and things went flying inside the cockpit. I asked the guys if they minded not continuing and diverting to Ardmore. They agreed and a scant 4 minutes later we were on the ground having a coffee at the airport cafe.
They chose me to fly us back to Hamilton, so I chose to climb to 2500 as quickly as possible to avoid the turbulence. We still were tossed around the sky a bit initially which cleared once we cleared the Bombay hills and entered the Mercer MBZ. In fact, the further south we went the better the flying conditions got.
I contacted Hamilton tower 3 nm east of Huntly at 2300 and requested joining instructions. At first I was instructed to perform a north arrival but that was amended immediately to a clearance to enter the city sector 1500 feet or below. I've never been asked to do that before so I made sure I articulated my reply clearly to make sure there was no mishearing on my part. I was not corrected so I began a shallow descent to 1500 and headed us towards Hamilton city.
I reported my position at the Showgrounds visual reporting point and was cleared to continue approach number 1 for Grass 07 Right. Below is the movie Chris took of my landing. A few seconds after the movie begins the tower amends my clearance to Grass 07 Left and clears me to land.
Not my best landing, but we landed safely and have plenty to ponder about over a cold beer.
I'm writing this a week after the fact because various events in real life have taken precedence over writing a blog, and I will not relate them to you for fear of boring you to death.
Last Friday, Susan and I were driving out of the University car park on our way home when she looks up and the sky and says to me, "why don't we fly out to Raglan for dinner"? I considered this for a second and said that would be a great idea.
Funnily enough the Aero Club is closer to work than it is to where our house is so by 5.10pm we were standing on the deck at the clubroom looking at the parked aircraft. Since it was Raglan I wanted to take a 172, and JGP was available so I asked for it.
A quick preflight later we were taxiing out to do the runup with just over 3 hours fuel on board. We were cleared to take off from the tarmac runway which Susan commented she had never taken off from before. I got us airborne and was surprised at the lack of turbulence. There was a little shaking but nothing like what I was expecting.
About 12 minutes later I was joining overhead Raglan and trying to spot the windsocks. I had to circle a couple of times because the windsocks were definitely not in agreement and I had to think about how I was going to land and which direction was the right one. I eventually chose 23 and reported I was joining non traffic side for 23. What I didn't realise at the time was that the wind was in actual fact blowing across the runway, and the location of the airstrip was such that the surrounding terrain made the wind funnel past it rather than blow steadily.
My first attempt at a landing was a shocker because I was getting plenty of lift during the final approach and ended up very high. I went around and the second time I was ready for it and managed a slightly high approach profile but it was manageable.
Strangely enough the aircraft was not behaving like it would in a normal crosswind approach, so I suspect there might have been a vertical sheerzone somewhere. We landed long, and Susan was worried we might run through the fence, but I had kept us airborne as long as possible to bleed off airspeed and we landed sufficiently slowly that even had the brakes failed we probably would not have hit the fence very hard if at all.
I taxied us back to the parking spot and shutdown. After getting out I studied the nearest windsock closely for several seconds and it was certainly doing some strange things. The apparent breeze where I was standing was blowing across the runway at about 70-80 degrees.
We had a lovely dinner at a local restaurant, and during the walk back I was considering the best method to tackle the takeoff and departure. We could go in either direction, but I chose to continue in the direction we had landed. My plan was to take off on an oblique angle as Raglan is 65m wide so we would get as much of a head wind as possible, climb to a safe height and make an early turn into wind to take advantage of the extra lift. I have written before about JGPs climbing ability, and I knew that it was more than capable of performing as required. My only question marks were about possible sheer and its affect on JGPs ability to climb. My calculated gamble was that once into wind JGP would easily outclimb the low hills to the south of the airport.
As it happened we got airborne fairly early in the takeoff roll (gotta love JGP), so once I got to 300 feet AGL I began a shallow left turn to keep away from the houses and we climbed away as planned, with no drama at all.
The flight back to Hamilton was even smoother than the flight to Raglan, and once I got to cruising altitude I trimmed up JGP and asked Susan if she wanted to put her hands on the controls and feel the plane for a moment or two. She chickened out a couple of times but dug up enough courage to follow my movements for a moment or two. The interesting observation I made was that when she closed her fingers around the control column, the clenching motion moved the elevators about 1 cm rearwards causing a slow pitch up of the nose. She immediately released the controls and I corrected our climb. She admitted after she had calmed down that she wasn't expecting such sensitive controls, and that comment transported me back to my first ever lesson with the club. We landed without incident and taxied back to the club where I shut down, tied down and covered JGP for the night.
For a relatively short flight, and one that I have done quite a few times in my flying history, it threw up a number of challenges that I had to solve to my satisfaction before I was confident we would be able to fly out. In reality, it was a no brainer (yes really it was - call me overanxious if you like) but I hope you get an idea about some of the multitude of considerations pilots must weigh up before choosing to fly.
Welcome to 2008 everyone! Well lets briefly look back before going forwards. In 2007 I said I wanted to:
"1) Get more cross country time in the Archer 2) Fly to White Island and back (in the Archer) 3) Take Susan and friends out to Great Barrier Island (in the Archer) 4) If time and finances allow, get a rating in the Piper Cherokee Arrow. 5) Go landing on airfields around the Waikato as suggested by one of my readers Aaron.
I managed to achieve 1), didn't do 2 (see the relevant blog post) or 3, don't qualify to get 4 (yet), and 5 was financially out of the question. Total flight time for the year was 10.5 hours, with a total overall time of 117.5 hours.
So for 2008 lets look at my goals for this year:
1) Fly more than 10.5 hours 2) Fly to White Island and back (in any aircraft) 3) Take Susan to Great Barrier Island 4) Go on some longer cross countries than I've been doing 5) Go airfield hopping as Aaron suggested 6) Get approval to land at Waiheke Island (I know there are some minimum hours before they'll let me take club planes in there for insurance reasons so I'll check out what they are and let you all know).
{edit} I forgot the most important goal (drum roll please)... pass my BFR!
I want to wish everyone a prosperous and safe 2008!
