CAPITAL FLIGHT PART THREE - A FEW PHOTOS

Firstly - A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all!!

I thought I would post a few photos from the recent flight out of Wellington - taken by Eleanor and AJ - I was too busy flying to take photos!!

The Happy Passengers

"P-in-C" points out the sights!!

They don't call it Windy Wellington for Nothing!!

 

Karori Rock - a reporting point.

Petone and the Hutt River mouth

 

Wellington Harbour - about to join left base for runway 16 - the airport is just out of shot centre left

   

CAPITAL FLIGHT PART TWO – JOSTLING WITH THE JETS

Tuesday 15th December

The weather forecast was for a southerly change and showers clearing during the morning so I didn’t have much hope for flying but, as it turned out the rain fell very early in the morning and I got up at 0700 to blue skies and a few clouds around. The wind change was right, though, a gusty southerly of 15 knots+ and it felt very cold compared with yesterday.

I checked the weather on the net and got the report as; wind 210 true at 21 knots, few cloud at 2500’, scattered at 4000’, 11ºC, dew point 7, QNH1012 and “no significant weather”. Further up the coast at Paraparaumu it was a lot calmer at 180º, 8 knots.

So, a bit blowy but more than likely good to go so I picked up daughter, Eleanor and boyfriend Adrian (“AJ”) and headed to the airport. Karl was the duty instructor and told me I was cleared to go as Pilot-in-Command. So, a good check flight yesterday and it is a nice feeling to have someone from another club give me that positive feedback. I helped Karl drag TDJ out of the hangar and he left me to gas up and preflight. That done, I phoned the tower with my intentions, a Sinclair departure (to the South-West around the Southern tip of the North Island) and then up the coast to the North.

I loaded the passengers in the back (they wanted to sit together…) and gave them the usual briefing. Ella has flown with me a few times before but it was AJ’s first time in a light plane. We were cleared to take off straight away after reporting ready (where are all those jets and turboprops, I thought) so I lined up on runway 16, did the line up checks, advanced the throttles and set off on my assigned departure. Ella told me afterwards that the thrilled look on her man’s face was something to behold!!

It was a smooth climb out and level off at 1500’ to track around the heads Southwest of Wellington. It got a little bumpy once in the lee of the hills as expected but not too bad. I stayed at 1500’ until North of the Porirua transit zone and then got up to 2500’ to be well clear of any circuit or arrival traffic at Paraparam. It smoothed out as expected and we had good views all the way up to just south of Otaki when I decided that time was about up and we should head on back. Also AJ was feeling a bit queasy and I didn’t want to push our luck.

The journey back was a replay of yesterday over the saddle to the Hutt valley and an Eastbourne arrival, only this time for runway 16 which would mean a left base and a steepish descent (well, steeper than I am used to at Hamilton) from the 1500’ circuit height. Helps to keep the speed up though.

The jets and turboprops were very much in evidence now and I was told to hold East of Point Gordon, orbiting over the Northern part of the outer harbour. After two orbits we were cleared to approach after a Dash-8 on final but I had only just started to descend when that was changed back to orbiting – again! (I think I was a bit slower to respond than the tower anticipated). The following flight in was quicker than anticipated from what I could gather from the radio calls and, fair enough, the turbines can’t change things as readily as us little pistons.

I finally got called in after a total of four (was beginning to lose count!!) orbits and made a fairly rapid descent to keep the speed up as I could hear the next one in was a jet. I ended up fairly well set on final, set 25 degrees of flap and more or less glided down to very short final, then pulling back to slow down, a bit of power to slow down the sink rate, a bit of a float down the runway to touch down about right to brake and taxi off to the GA apron with minimal delay. As I turned to park the following 737 touched down so I felt good about that – no hold-up for him.

The passengers got out more than happy with the experience. AJ was quite effusive with his thanks even though he still looked a bit pale. What a great couple of days flying.

POSTSCRIPT: The weather was good for Eleanor’s graduation on Wednesday and for our drive back today. And yes, we are very proud of her!

CAPITAL FLIGHT PART ONE – CHECKING ME OUT

Monday 14th December

What a FABULOUS day here in Wellington! We (that is, myself, wife and youngest daughter) are here in the Capital City for oldest daughter’s graduation ceremony later this week. The opportunity to go flying out of Wellington was too good to miss and I had booked two sessions at Wellington Aero Club in one of their Cherokee Archers.

The weather omens were not too good when we arrived on Saturday – windy (it is called “Windy Wellington” after all!) and a poor weather forecast at least for Sunday and maybe Monday. Sunday’s forecast was about right, 25-40 knot winds, a few drizzly showers and low cloud. However, Monday morning was brilliantly clear, wind from the NNW at about 12 knots so good to go. I had driven over to introduce myself to the aero club the day before when they took photocopies of my licence and type ratings – thought it would save a bit of time on the day.

So I headed over to the club at 0830 and met up with instructor, Karl, who was checking me out. Karl dragged TDJ out of the hangar and fueled up, I did a preflight, and we then had a briefing on the Wellington procedures. I had read up on these but you can only read so much and doing it for real is the best way to learn, I reckon. We planned a flight out of the Wellington zone North up the coast to Paraparaumu for a few circuits and then back to Wellington over the Hutt valley.

The first step was new to me, phoning the tower to advise them of our departure and plan. That done we started up, got our taxi clearance and with only a minute delay for wake turbulence were cleared to line up on 34 for a Karori sector departure to the West.

Immediately after takeoff we were asked to track to the left to make room for a jet about to take off behind us. We kept the climbing turn going to 2500 feet over the hills to Makara beach. We had great views of the South Island, the snow covered Kaikoura ranges South of us and could see the Marlborough Sounds straight ahead. Makes you realise that the tip of the South Island is actually to the West of the bottom of the North.

Having cleared the hills and the control zone we needed a pretty sharp descent down to 1500 feet to track up the coast via the Porirua transit zone. There was a lot of cloud inland and to the North but the coast was clear for the route we were taking. We tuned to the Paraparaumu traffic frequency which wasn’t very busy, just one chopper doing circuits, a bit surprising as it was a pretty nice day.

We joined straight in for runway 34, as published procedure, and I did a pretty acceptable approach and a good, smooth landing in a mild crosswind (about 5 knots or so left-to-right) and straight off into the left-hand circuit. The next landing wasn’t so good, acceptable but not a “greaser”, and we joined the circuit again behind a Cessna 172, which was as expected as we had heard him on the radio. We followed him in, not being sure if he was for landing or touch and go as he hadn’t specified his intentions on his radio call (!!- he knew I was behind him). It turned out he was for a full stop and, in spite of my long and short finals calls while I was behind him hung around on the runway so I went around at 200’, made a steady climbing 180º turn in the circuit and set course to the South back to Wellington.

Karl had briefed on a track back to the capital over the Haywards saddle to track along the Hutt Valley looking for an Eastbourne sector arrival from the North-East. We called up the tower overhead the TV studios at Avalon (tallest building in the Hutt and not easy to miss!) and they duly gave us a clearance into the zone on an Eastbourne arrival. We had to hold at Eastbourne, tracking back North along the East side of the harbour and were then able to track back to the harbour mouth to join behind one of the club’s Tomahawks who was coming in from the South-East.

The new thing for me here was the circuit height of 1500’ and the requirement to keep a 90kt minimum airspeed until 300’ above the ground on short final. I did let the speed decay a bit on base, which Karl picked me up on, but needed to lose height so a bit of nose down soon sped us up and got us about right when turning final. The Tomahawk had just landed by then and was clear by the time we dropped some more flap and slowed down to clear the threshold at about 75 knots. I was told to aim for the 4th set of white runway marker to give us the least taxi distance – there was a jet not too far behind us – so I kept the power on a bit longer and was on the runway just beyond my aiming point (rats – was trying to be as precise as possible) but at least it meant a quick taxi off and back to the club.

A good and very satisfying flight, I felt and Karl confirmed this by saying all was fine. Club “rules” are three hours before being allowed to private hire but he said he would check that out with the CFI to see if I might be able to go P-in-C tomorrow with oldest daughter and her boyfriend as passengers (could also go with an instructor again if that is a no-go), but at least that was a tick against my flying and made me very pleased. Fingers crossed for the weather, then!!

A BEAUTIFUL DAY - THEN IT ALL WENT A BIT WRONG!!

BEFORE THE DRAMA -
DQV IN THE EARLY MORNING SUN

Superb weather in the Waikato for the past few days with glorious sunshine - quite a change from the windy, wet Spring. Having looked at the weather forecast at the beginning of the week I had booked the Arrow, DQV for a few hours and drove to the club in the early morning sun looking forward to a cross-country over to Whakatane and back.
By the time I had filed a flight plan, pushed DQV out of its hangar and preflighted, the early morning mist had gone, the few low clouds were burning off and it looked good to go. I taxied over to the pumps to fill up the tanks, got my departure clearance and went off to run up and do the pre take-off checks. There were no problems with the run-up and after a short wait for the circuit traffic I was cleared to line up behind a twin-star taking off on 18L.
All proceeded smoothly to start with, line up, line up checks, full throttle, nice and straight, rotate at 65 knots, out of runway - gear up, 80 knots and accelerating, flaps up, fuel pump off, landing light off - all good so far. Then it was set power and propeller pitch for climb and things rapidly turned to custard. As soon as I coarsened the pitch the whole front of the aircraft started to shake (quite violently, it seemed to me). Hey, this is not right, I thought, time to abort the flight and get back "home" PDQ!!
As I turned crosswind I keyed the mike and announced I had a vibration problem to the tower and requested a circuit to land. I levelled out at about 700' agl turning downwind, eyeing the paddocks nearby just in case (there was almost no wind so any landing direction would do, I reckoned, if the engine actually stopped). Fuel pump on, back to cruise power and I then attempted to set the power and pitch for cruise (24" manifold pressure and 2400rpm) hoping the shakes would get better but, if anything, it felt worse. Gear down, rest of downwind checks complete and I was cleared to approach.
The tower very kindly asked me (twice, in fact) if I required assistance but by now I was abeam the downwind threshold and within range for a glide approach so I replied in the negative, just asking confirmation I was number one. I was, as other traffic had been held or cleared off the runway which was good, and as soon as the throttle was closed back to about 15" of manifold pressure the vibes stopped and I did a pretty fair approach and smooth landing. PHEW!! A happy end to my first ever real in-flight emergency.
I taxied back to the club where senior instructor, Ash, was waiting for me. After I shut down he hopped up on the wing to ask what the problem was (the tower had told the club I was coming back because of a problem). After hearing my story and checking over the prop, Ash got into the right hand seat and we taxied around a bit throttling up and back and moving the prop. All seemed well on the ground and I was left wondering if it was something I had done. Still, Ash reckoned it was a good call to return and I left to go home.
As it turned out, it wasn't me. The owner of DQV took it out later and the same thing happened. It turned out not to be a prop problem as I thought, but a fouled spark plug which, for some reason, did not show itself on the ground run-up checks! So, even if all checks on the ground are good, things can still go wrong, sooner rather than later, too!! One for the learning curve and a good outcome.

"DED"-RECKONING AND SLIPPERY RUNWAYS!

THURSDAY 26th NOVEMBER
Not a fantastic day weather-wise with a 2000-2500' cloud base and a briskish westerly of 15-20 knots but a good day to try a bit of "Ded" (i.e.; deduced) reckoning with the Archer III, WIT, partly as a test of my navigation skills and also to deduce a working TAS for WIT for future reference.
I had made a flight plan for a short local cross-country; Hamilton to Port Waikato, down the coast to Raglan and back to Hamilton - 91 miles. Familiar territory and no need to rely on anything other than maps and my calculations. I did use the autopilot to keep a constant heading which would test my drift allowance and so the accuracy of the wind forecast.
With the westerly wind I was given 25R to take off from and started the stopwatch just after rotating off the runway. After levelling off at 2000' (I was given the clearance while still below 1000') I set my calculated heading and engaged the autopilot.
Keeping a constant heading I was able to read map to ground and check the landmarks for halfway, right on the line so wind forecast OK, and arrived over the river mouth at Port Waikato. Turned South down the coast, resetting the stopwatch and heading for Raglan. same procedure at Raglan and home to Hamilton.
The radio traffic was busy and I had to hold at Temple View, so the time was taken there and, two orbits at Rukuhia later I landed nice and smoothly on 25R. (It wasn't perfect, Though - Ash had watched me and reckoned I hadn't flared enough and landed a bit on the nosewheel - ooops.)
Back home with my timings I "back-calculated" my groundspeeds into true airspeed (remembering to allow for ending at Temple View on the last leg) and got the following for the three legs: 126kt, 121kt and 110kt (average 119). Given these I will, in future, use 120kt TAS for WIT and should not go too far wrong. Anyone reading this who reckons I am way off beam please feel free to let me know, thanks.

THURSDAY 3rd DECEMBER
A very showery day but I still went over to the club in the hope of getting up in one of the Robins which I hadn't flown for about two months, a case of keeping current. It was raining when I arrived with poor visibility but cleared sufficiently after a cup of tea for instructor Marie to sign me out to go for some circuits.
Back in the little Robin, I found myself back in very familiar territory and did a pretty fair set of four circuits with two glide approaches, one normal and, finally, a flapless approach - the weather looked like closing in again. Coming in flapless I was, of course, a bit faster than usual and just after landing, I touched the brakes to slow down before the taxiway and that is when it got interesting. The seal was still pretty damp from the earlier rain and I found myself skidding towards the terminal!! Off the brakes, straighten up, still sliding a bit, and let her slow down on her own - after all, there is over 2km of runway on the main 36R - plenty of room to stop. A good lesson on (not) braking on wet runways!!!
Other than the skid, I was pleased with my efforts and current again on the little Robins. Might get to fly in some nice weather sometime!!