BFR - SORTED!!

As a bit of an insurance policy I had made two bookings to try to get my BFR, one today and one a week hence.  From the recent weather forecasts it looked 50:50 to get up today but, surprise, surprise it wasn't too bad this morning with cloud base of 2500', good visibility away from showers, so good to go.

I fronted up to the club to find Roger on the phone and obviously busy so I "unwrapped" WAM and preflighted, etc.  Full fuel tanks, no problems with the plane so back into the clubhouse for a "nervous leak". Roger was ready to go by then and mentioned we would do some terrain awareness stuff as well as the BFR syllabus.

The wind was 250º at 12 knots (duty runway 18L) so we should get the x-wind take off and landing part done if nothing else.  We were cleared for an East departure and headed over to Karapiro, which wasn't the original intention but there looked to be a heavy shower with poor vis to the S of Maungatautari where we had hoped to do the low flying part.  Once out of the zone we climbed up to 2000' and over the lake it was a steep turn each way - aced those - big smile inside (all the Stearman/Cub experience?).

Then it was basic, power & flap and wing-drop stalls.  The first two were fine.  Roger got me to keep going with the basic stall until I felt the plane start to stall and the recover - did that, judging the stall from the buffet on the column leading to the very start of a nose drop and Rog said that was very good (more smiling).  I had a bit of trouble with the wing drop first time but got it right after a demo from Rog.  I was far too fast with the triad of full reverse rudder, full power and wings level.  Roger got me to apply enough rudder to stop the yaw first and then do the rest of the recovery sequence and, hey, it worked - thanks Rog :)

Then we went into a valley between Maungatautari village and the mountain, descending to 1200' (about 6-700' agl) for a bit of low flying/terrain awareness stuff.  Very interesting and great fun.  We did a bit of low flying, some valley turns - a 172 turns so tight!!, and a saddle cross to finish off.  Roger picked me up on not leading with power for the valley turn on my first go and I drifted up a bit travelling up the valley.  Definitely not Southern Alps stuff but a good introduction.

Back over to Lake Karapiro and time for a forced landing.  We tracked towards the North-South arm of the lake, crossed to the Eastern shore where, having sorted out the wind direction, recrossed to the West, chose a paddock and Roger pulled the throttle.  We were only at 2000' so having traded height for airspeed and trimmed for 65Kt I decided to skip the 1500' area and head around to the left for my 1000' point - a building on the lake shore my side of the paddock - doing my engine failure checks on the way.  It was a right hand circuit to land, passing over the lake and turning right to approach the field.  A bit high and fast on turning final so, down came full flap and I got the speed and glide about right to make my nominated paddock and Roger said, "Go around".

Back to base for some circuits. On the first downwind the tower instructed me for a short approach which I made a bit of a hash of and ended up going around.  Right hand circuit for a reasonable cross wind landing next, except that I lost a bit too much speed in the flare and stalled it the last few centimetres onto the runway.  Lastly, we did a flapless approach and landing which was all very good and, after remembering to do all the after landing and shutdown checks, it was into the clubhouse to sort the paperwork out.  Great!- BFR nailed and, as always with Roger, I learned some stuff, too!