THE $400 COFFEE SYNDROME

WOW!!  What a fantastic day for flying!!  The temperature at the airport may have been 0ºC at 0700 this morning but the sky was clear with a light variable wind at ground level.  By the time I arrived at the club at 0845 the sun was shining brightly (a bit low but you can't have everything!!!) and it was warming up.

I met up with my work colleague, Hament, who was coming up with me and I had planned a trip down to New Plymouth - never flown into there before and wanted to visit Jim Hickey's cafe there (He's a TVNZ weatherman for those that don't know, a flyer himself and the son of a WWII spitfire pilot).

Did the usual preflight on WIT, had 4 hours of usable gas on board so we got in and without any delay we were cleared on track to New Plymouth leaving via the Pirongia sector (South-West).

I set the "direct to" feature on the GPS to the Ohura VOR as I had decided to go inland over the King Country on the way down and come back via the West Coast.  I had to track a bit further West to avoid the instrument sector but once clear of the control zone I turned back to intercept my course, climbed to 4500' just South of Otorohanga, set the autopilot, leaned the mixture correctly (thinking fuel economy), called Christchurch Information with my intentions and settled back to keep a lookout and admire the view.

And what a view!!  A panorama of the West Coast to the right all the way from Karioi to the North (near Raglan) down to Mount Taranaki to the South and out of the left hand window the central mountains (Ruapehu, Ngarahoe and Tongariro) were laid out in their splendour with very little haze around.

We chugged along (the wind was pretty much dead ahead and ground speed down to 95 knots) for about 30 minutes to nearly the Ohura beacon and then turned West to the coast at the Tongaporutu river with our destination now in view (50km+ visibility is great!)  The weather at New Plymouth was benign, a 5 knot wind at 060 and runway 05 on duty.  I called the tower at 5 miles from the zone and was cleared in 2500' or below and to report at Motunui (large industrial complex and difficult to miss).  I reported as instructed and was cleared to join left hand downwind for 05.  
I descended to the circuit height (1100 feet) and lined up for the approach.  I ended up a bit close to the runway on downwind (new aerodrome to me) so it was a very short base leg and a bit (well, quite a lot, actually) high on early finals.  I closed the throttle, full flap, nose down to get back on the correct glidepath and then raised the nose to bleed off the airspeed.  Hmm!, looks like I am going to land a bit long, so I thought about going around, but a quick assessment of the amount of runway left looked more than ample so I committed myself to land, held off and closed the throttle, nose up and a very smooth landing resulted with only a gentle touch on the brakes needed to slow right down to taxi off and park by the tower.

We made our way to the terminal and the Airpresso Cafe where Hament bought me a coffee and a delicious slice of blueberry and lemon cake.  This is a good cafe for anyone interested in aviation or WWII history as there are photos and models of aircraft, biographies and some memorabilia of wartime pilots from the Taranaki area.

Anyway our "morning tea" was over quite soon and it was time to head for home.  I did a brief preflight and checking the fuel found we had used between 35 and 40 litres for a time of 1.2 hours.  Pretty good and showed my economy efforts had worked.  The wind had changed and we left off runway 23 with right turns to track back seaward of the coast to the North.  With the wind behind us now the ground speed was up to 125 knots even in the climb.  I levelled off at 1500 feet until clear of the control zone and then climbed to 2500' for the coastal cruise back to Hamilton.  The view was still great but noticeably hazy now and the mountain panorama not quite so fabulous.

We were significantly quicker back to base (1 hour for a total of 2.2 hours) and again it was a pretty good landing back home, much more precise than the one at New Plymouth.  After all, it is my home base.  The wind was light but a bit gusty and I landed right wheel first which was correct as there was a bit of right to left cross wind. (When I looked a few minutes later it was left to right at the other end of the runway, so I wasn't imagining the variability!)

So, safely home and another great flight.  Hament thoroughly enjoyed it so that was good.  Must go again sometime......