THAT WEATHER!!

Tuesday 13th December

Warm sector depressions - don't you love them!  Low cloud, poor visibility in rain or drizzle, uncomfortably humid, etc, etc.  Yesterday it was much like that here in the Waikato and similar this morning, although the overnight rain had stopped.

However, as the morning wore on the cloud lifted and my chances of getting up at 1300 looked more hopeful.  I checked the ATIS online before driving off to the airport and cloud base was 3500' - quite flyable conditions but only locally.  Tauranga had a cloud base of around 1500' with poor visibility in drizzle.

I arrived at the club to fly Cessna 172, WAM, which has just had a full engine overhaul (i.e.; new engine cylinders and internals in original crankcase), and got a quick briefing from Roger on engine management: 2500rpm at all times in cruise, don't spend too long on engine run-ups, no glide approaches, cross country only - no circuits.

So, after preflight I got going without undue delay.  It was fairly light traffic-wise given the weather and I took off from 36R in a slight crosswind turning right to leave the zone to the NE via Scotsman Valley.  I flew just below the clouds at 2200' as far as Morrinsville where the weather was a bit clearer and was able to get up to 2500'.  I flew a big circle to the North of the airport turning to the West at Lake Waikare to return via Huntly.  I kept a careful eye on the RPM gauge and was pretty consistent throughout the cross-country part.  It got a little more challenging when planning the approach.

I was cleared for a Rukuhia arrival and descended to 1700' prior to entering the zone.  With throttle setting for 2500rpm the airspeed crept up into the yellow zone, 140-145Kt on descent.  Hmm, could be interesting getting the approach speeds low enough.  It was!  At Rukuhia I was advised the surface wind was 060º at 12 knots and I took the option of landing on 07.  This proved a real problem as I was still at 1700' and I ended up on a short final way too high and at about 95 knots - time to throttle up and go around.  I did a fairly wide left hand circuit to give myself time to get the speed and height down on final with minimal low rpm time for the engine and it worked out OK.  The wind was more like 030º now so it was a crosswind landing with just 20º flap getting into a sideslip attitude at about a quarter mile out and a pretty smooth landing resulted with the upwind (left) wheel down first - always pleasing, that.  Another 0.8 hours running-in time for WAM's "new" engine and in my logbook.

A couple of photos to show the conditions:

Looking NE from Morrinsville - cloud base just above me and the Kaimai range completely shrouded in white, fluffy stuff

Looking a little clearer towards the Firth of Thames

THREE GREENS - GOOD: TWO GREENS, UH-OH!!

 Tuesday 6th December

Summer is here and, after a thunderstorm yesterday evening and a dodgy weather forecast, I wasn't too optimistic about getting over to Tauranga in DQV to fly the Stearman.  So it turned out.  The cloud base over Hamilton airport was around 1200' and much of the surrounding area was cloudy.  I phoned Pete at Classic Flyers and to my question about the weather he replied, "C**p, low cloud all around" (so, not much change from the weather report a couple of hours previously).

That was much as expected so, as the Hamilton circuit was flyable, I decided to take DQV up for a few laps.  All started off well and I made an early downwind call for a touch and go, checked the airspeed was below 125Kt and lowered the gear.  There was the usual clunking and trim change as the mains came down and the two main green lights came on.  The nose gear light flashed briefly and then went out.  A glance up the panel showed that the yellow "gear in transit" light was still illuminated.  Oh, dear!  (A bit of retrospective: this had happened to me on 22nd November coming back from a local flight except the nose light didn't flash and recycling the gear fixed the problem).

So, I raised the gear, waited a few seconds, and lowered it again, and..... the same thing happened except the nose gear light didn't light at all!!  OK, no panic, it's probably electrical, but in a fairly busy circuit I thought it best to make an urgency (Pan, Pan) call to the tower and told them I would extend downwind to try to sort it.  A third gear lowering was successful: after a bit of a pause, all three greens glowed and stayed glowing.  Sigh of relief, quick check I had all the downwind checks done and I turned base about 3 miles or so South of the 36R threshold.  I called the tower to say I was turning base and would be for a full stop.  I made a lower than usual, very shallow approach, and got full flap down about half a mile out aiming to stay at 70KT til over the threshold and then try to keep the flare going to touch down on the mains at as slowly as I dared (about 60Kt) keeping the nosewheel up as long as possible - just in case.  This worked fine, I rolled the mains onto the tarmac (one of my best landings ever!!) and kept pulling back on the column to keep the nose up.  The speed bled off quite quickly and once down to below 40Kt I gently released the back-pressure on the column and the nosewheel touched down and held - hooray!!!

So, I taxied back to the club and reported the problem to Roger (CFI) who knew about my previous DQV undercarriage problem.  He reckoned it was probably electrical, a relay or something similar, and agreed it needed sorting out.  So, I left it in his capable hands and went off to attempt some Christmas shopping!!