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!!
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