Want a reason to get up at 0550? Feel like freezing your proverbial off sitting out in the middle of an airfield counting aircraft? Then be a landing judge at the Aero Club fly in! The upside is you get very close to the action and you get to see some excellent landings and some not so great ones.
The weather when I left home for the airport was dreadful, wind and driving rain, temperature down around 4 degrees C, the kind of weather that has you wishing you hadn't bothered getting up, but on the way out as the sun was rising I could see clearer skies in the distance to the east.
It was still relatively dark by the time I arrived at the Aero Club but the sun was rising in the east and the day was definitely improving, at least in the east. Westwards things looked fairly bleak, with low level stratus and embedded Cb's.
MCT was listed as being 0755 hours so at 8am we stepped out of the clubrooms to head out to the landing area when someone suggested we contact the tower and ask them if we could drive a car out. ATC said sure so we drove my car out and parked up west of the Golf run up area where we could see the landing spot clearly. Driving on an airport is a very weird experience indeed, especially when you are constantly looking for aircraft coming at you from any possible angle. We sat back and waited...
Time passed...
The radio crackled into life with the arrival of the first aircraft, from North Shore at about 0830. ATC was herding them towards runway 18R, the wind being 110 degrees at 4 knots, making precision approaches just a little interesting.
Despite this we saw a couple of landings that were so close to the mark they were all but on top of it.
In all 18 aircraft turned up for the yummy cooked breakfast, the "official" photo collection is here.
The weather when I left home for the airport was dreadful, wind and driving rain, temperature down around 4 degrees C, the kind of weather that has you wishing you hadn't bothered getting up, but on the way out as the sun was rising I could see clearer skies in the distance to the east.
It was still relatively dark by the time I arrived at the Aero Club but the sun was rising in the east and the day was definitely improving, at least in the east. Westwards things looked fairly bleak, with low level stratus and embedded Cb's.
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| Looking East at 18/36R & L |
Time passed...
The radio crackled into life with the arrival of the first aircraft, from North Shore at about 0830. ATC was herding them towards runway 18R, the wind being 110 degrees at 4 knots, making precision approaches just a little interesting.
Despite this we saw a couple of landings that were so close to the mark they were all but on top of it.
In all 18 aircraft turned up for the yummy cooked breakfast, the "official" photo collection is here.
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