The Start of The Aviation Dream: Second First Solo!

The past few weeks have been pretty busy! I have been quite lucky with the weather for my flying lessons as I have not had any cancellations due to bad weather. This has allowed me to get quite far ahead of my course mates.

I have completed my first NZ solo. It is a great feeling being let loose once again. The circuits are normally quite busy with traffic at Hamilton but thankfully when I went up it was quite quiet and I completed my single circuit with no issues.

The next day I had 20mins in the circuits with my instructor and then he jumped out to let me do an hour of circuits by myself. This was a little trickier as the circuits were a little bit busier. I felt more confident using the radio for those lessons which made my workload a bit easier to manage. During the solo circuits my objective was to practice the different approaches which I had been practising with the instructor. These approaches included flapless which means if your flaps fail to operate you can still land safely. Glide approach is an approach which is done to simulate an engine failure when you are parallel with the runway. At the last part of your parallel leg of the circuit, you put the power to idle and set your best glide speed and aim for 1/3rd of the way down the runway. It is quite fun practising these approaches.

The lesson after was more solo circuits but this time for an hour and 20mins. This lesson was probably the most mentally demanding session I have had yet because I was trying to do all of my different approaches while trying to keep the traffic in sight which is no easy task. To make it more demanding, the Air Traffic Control was asking me to make non-standard manoeuvres and extend certain legs of the circuit due to traffic. I even had to land and stop on the runway at one point because of wake turbulence from the large plane that took off before my final approach. You have to wait a few minutes before you can take off after a large plane. Despite of all of the traffic, I managed to get a few landings of each approach completed which I was pleased about.

Travelling wise I haven't done an awful lot because either the weather or I have been flying. The places I have been include going back to Raglan but taking a road around the mountain there which is gravel which was quite fun. I also went to Rotorua which a town that is next to a large lake and has a lot of geothermal activity which the locals use to their advantage. They use the hot water for steam cooking, boiling corn and for bathing in. The water has natural oily minerals in it so they do not need to use shampoo or soap for washing.

I also went for an afternoon to Taupo which is another geothermal town like Rotorua. I visited a honey shop first where we could see inside the bee hives and try all different types of honey. I then went to Huka falls which is famous for its fast moving blue water rapids. I made my way further upstream to a spa park which has natural hot water going into a natural pool on the side of the main river body. I had to climb through the cold water first but it was worth it as the water was really warm. I didn't enjoy getting back out as it was raining and a little windy. From there I went into Taupo to a spa where they had a few different pools which are at different temperatures and are all filled with natural hot water. The hottest pool was hot at a toasty 41C.

Another trip we did was to trek up to the top of Mt Te Aroha which took 2.5hrs to get to the summit of 952m. Although when we got to the top it was very white due to cloud, it was a great walk and one I will do again when the weather clears as it has 360degree views of the NZ landscape.

Here are some more pictures: