IT HAS ARRIVED!!!!

Whoo hoo - a courier man arrived at the doorstep yesterday morning with a 30cm cardboard cube and inside was......

Yep, that's right the helmet I have had on order from Campbell Aero Classics for the past wee while.  OK, OK, that's enough of the "Biggles" jokes and comments, I don't think the shell of his flying hat was Kevlar and there wouldn't have been any fancy electrics inside!!

This is going to make it sooooo much easier flying the Stearman.  I couldn't wait to try it out so I brought it along to the club today to see if and how well it worked.  I had booked JGP for a couple of hours to have a practice before my BFR which is due soon.  So, once seated and ready to start, I put the helmet on, feeling a little ridiculous, and started up.  Noise reduction excellent, I could barely hear the engine.  Avionics on, and I wondered what the odd noises were.  I soon realised that this baby is really sensitive and I was picking up much more radio "clutter" than I normally would in my normal, very good Dave Clark headset.  Still, the ATIS came through loud and clear as did the tower and they had no problems hearing me.
The lid was a good, firm, not too tight fit but did get a little warm.  That shouldn't be a problem in the Stearman's open cockpit, though.  Wearing the mask there was a bit of condensation on my glasses initially but once I had it adjusted properly all was well.
So, into the circuit.  The tower warned me of IFR traffic (an Orion and a Beech 1900 doing IFR approach and circuits) that might interrupt proceedings and that turned out to be true.  I ended up doing two full stops and backtracks on 36L because of wake turbulence (and went around on another because I was too "hot and high" on a glide approach - that's a Cessna for you).  I also ended up orbiting over Rukuhia to allow the IFR folks some space on one circuit.  I didn't mind because the "stop and goes" were a chance to practice maximum performance take-offs.  My precision landing wasn't too bad either.  I did a classic Cessna bounce on one T&G - long time since I have done that and was a bit annoyed with myself.
After about 45 minutes of this I packed it in.  I had really wanted to practice the rest of the BFR stuff but it was rather cloudy all around and didn't think I would get clear and high enough to do stalls and steep turns.  Still, I had fun, anyway.  Have a booking with Roger in two weeks to have a go at the BFR assessment.