Hometime!

On the 11/12/13, I sat and passed my CPL line skills test! We have only three profiles for this after doing lots of IFR flying so they were a really steep learning curve, getting used to visual flying in the Twinstar. The various elements must have come together well enough though as my examiner was happy with the flight, despite a few points to work on that he gave me in the briefing. My navigation leg was up to a tiny town called Matakino in the NE and then a diversion to Katikati near Tauranga. You can see from my GPS tracker that the nav legs worked out quite well as I was lucky to have pretty calm winds and decent visibility for the whole flight.

The bend at the beginning is just to avoid the Instrument Sector at Hamilton, which is guarded for IFR traffic only. Sometimes VFR flights are cleared through it but in my case I had to track along the edge and visually reintercept the track I needed up to Matakino once clear of the CTR. Then after Tauranga looks like a mess while we pottered around for the last bit (see below).

After the Nav section came the circuits. These were probably my weakest element as I made a fairly catastrophic error joining the circuit pattern that the helpful air traffic controller noticed and corrected before I'd done anything too serious (I need to find out who he is and buy him a beer!). This put me a little on edge during this part but the landings were all safe if lacking the smoothness I'd have hoped for.

Then it was a departure back to Hamilton (cleared straight on track, again, thank you Mr Controller) and the examiner took control of the aircraft in order for me to put on the hood and do the instrument flying. As this is what we are actually most comfortable doing in a Twinstar, I'd say it was the strongest part of the test for me. This included basic manoeuvres on instruments, recovery from unusual attitudes (and he chose some very unusual attitudes!) and compass turns, where you have to roll out on a specific heading using the standby compass and accounting for the various errors that are implicit in this. There was also a position fix using any nearby radio aid (I used the HN VOR/DME) to ascertain your position and mark it on your map. I was a little bit off but pretty accurate.

Then the hood came off and we were into the General Handling part. This included steep turns at more than 45 degrees angle of bank (these were awful - there just wasn't enough time in the training to really get used to how to deliver these consistently in a Twinstar) and stalls in the various configurations. I over-corrected for the base turn and final approach stalls, therefore losing a little altitude, but he said it was within tolerances, if a little sloppy.

After this I was asked to activate the autopilot and demonstrate its operation to get us back to Hamilton. However, he simulated an engine fire during this so the autopilot had to go off and I had to sort that out including what actions would be carried out once the aircraft was back under control. The drill goes through to actually turning off one of the engines and going through the mid-air restart process. As there has been some debate by the aircraft manufacturer recently about how this should be done, I had only ever done it in the simulator before yesterday. Thankfully the real aircraft behaved in the same way so there were no surprises. 

The most significant entry in my logbook so far!

So that's it! NZ flight training is done and I'll be on my way back to the UK this time next week once the final bits of paperwork are sorted out here. I am writing this in a T-shirt with the air-conditioning on so I think I'm in for a bit of a shock back there. There's time for a couple of weeks at home to relax then it's back into training in Bournemouth for the Instrument Rating. NZ has been wonderful but it will be great to see family and friends again after so long. Look forward to updating everyone with details of UK IFR training!

Waiting to take off at Auckland behind an Air New Zealand 747 after flying the ILS approach there