Anyway, I since my last update I have actually flown a real CTC plane 4/5 times. I'll give a brief summary of each lesson as to talk about everything would take forever to write!
The first lesson we went towards Matamata while checking that I can flight straight and level and a few other basic manoeuvres. When we arrived at Matamata I did my first landing on grass and it went better than my first landing on tarmac! So smooth that a sleeping passenger wouldn't of even stirred. We remained in the racetrack circuit pattern around the airfield practising the landings with different approaches before heading back to Hamilton.
2nd lesson was more of the same but at Rotorua initially but everyone decided they wanted to play in the circuit at the same time as me making my circuits larger and larger. So we decided to head back to Matamata where it was a bit quieter but I was landing next to gliders being winched up into the air. Quite a different experience to what I am used to.
The next lesson we practised stalling which is basically making the plane go into situations where it is producing no lift and falling through the air until you recover. The first one we did, the plane was unbalanced as I had two large passengers sitting on the right side of the aircraft and the right fuel tank had more fuel, this caused the left wing to drop which was quite exciting.
We then moved onto 2 lessons of practising racetrack circuits around Hamilton airport which is a busy national airport that Air New Zealand use a fair bit. The radio calls at Hamilton are quite tricky as you are given different instructions and you have to repeat most of what they tell you to make sure you have the correct instructions. You have to do this while trying to keep the plane flying at the correct heading and height and look out for traffic. This was very difficult in the first lesson but by the second lesson I was getting more comfortable with the radio calls.
I haven't done an awful lot of travelling since the last update. I went to Auckland for my birthday weekend and stayed with one of my oldest karting friends who bought me loads of presents and gave me a lovely bed to stay in. We spend the whole weekend catching up, exploring Auckland and going out to watch the All Blacks V Australia. I had a great time in Auckland and there is still plenty for me to see there.
The only other trip I have been on was today where we went on a gorge walk which also went through some old gold mines. Luckily I took a torch and we navigated the pitch black tunnels. We also seen some glow worms up close which was really cool.
I'll now let more of my pictures do the talking. Enjoy!
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| View of the Sky tower from Mt Eden |
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| Mt Eden Crater |
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| Mt Eden Sunset |
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| 32Kt Headwind |
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| Practising Steep turns |
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| Quite a bit of a cross wind |
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| Clearways from 700ft |
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| Lovely frosty morning. |
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| Nipple Mountain |
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| Karagahake Gorge walk with the old gold mines |
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| The only light we had was from my head torch in the mines. |
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| A Glow worm which was cool |
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| The gorge |
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| Me and Alex exploring the water bypass tunnel |
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| A tight tunnel along the gorge walk |
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| An old 1.5Km rail tunnel which we thought wouldn't take long took ages even though we we running! |
