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

End of NZ IFR, start of CPL preparation

So I am coming towards the end of my IFR training in New Zealand. This all gets put on hold for just over a month while we focus on the CPL test, which is a VFR examination. To clarify, the IFR routes we have been doing in the Twinstar for the last few weeks are all based around following signals from radio beacons or GPS signals and can therefore be achieved in weather conditions that have no external references (provided the runway can be sighted prior to landing according to aerodrome specific minima). The weather for the last few weeks has actually been fantastic so we simulate the conditions by putting up screens in the cockpit or wearing a hood. 

The CPL test is different. Oddly, it tests skills that we will never directly use in our entire career as airline pilots. The sections of the test include Visual Navigation (never do that), circuits at an aerodrome (never do that), steep turns (beyond 45 degrees angle of bank - never do that) etc. So why sit the test? 1. We have to. 2. It tests your general ability to handle an aircraft, make assertive, safe decisions and sets a standard of flying that acts as a foundation for the Instrument Rating (which is really what we've been training for in the last few weeks). Some airlines are moving away from this style of training, which you might consider to be the more traditional route, and using the MPL route which focuses on a multi-crew, commercial perspective from day one rather than the single-pilot operation that we are ultimately being trained for. Both routes have their positives and negatives but, while I am nervous about the impending flight test, passing hurdles as significant as this along the way is part of being a pilot and will continue to be so throughout our careers. So I just have to pull myself together and get on with it!

I've got another 3 IFR routes to do but have been lucky enough on the last few to be put in an aircraft with the instructor and two other cadets, offering the chance to go a little further afield. Here are some shots from those trips:

Back at Hamilton after the first trip while Tom flies the 36R VOR holding pattern

Departing Napier via the missed approach for runway 34, heading to Palmerston North

Our own personal Jet A1 refuelling truck at Palmerston North

Departing Palmerston North, heading for Wellington International (NZWN)

 The Cook Strait, being asked to orbit in between commercial flights

Heading in for the ILS from the hold

Tom established on the ILS DME, runway 34 at NZWN

Safely back at Hamilton after a 14hr working day!

First Twinstar flight

There have been far too many words recently so here's a nice selection of pictures from the last few weeks. I've finished the IFR Cessna 172 flights where we practise using VOR/DME procedures and a bit of GPS, then put it into practice on routes, such as Hamilton to New Plymouth. This is in the actual airways used by the commercial traffic, albeit it usually at a lower level.

The interior of the C172 with G1000 cockpit which assists in the transition from SE VFR to ME IFR

To Rotorua and back one day practising the VOR/DME approach

With a chance to stop for lunch at the terminal!

Up above the clouds at 8000' on the way to Gisborne on a beautiful day. 

Then today I had my first flight in a Diamond DA-42 Twinstar. We used the simulator at the beginning of the IFR phase so it's not entirely foreign. However, the power from the two engines, especially at take off and the issues that go with that, mostly the inertia of the aircraft, takes some getting used to. The flight was certainly a challenge but very rewarding and a great aircraft to fly. Good thing too as I'll be taking my CPL in it in around a month's time!

This nonchalant pose soon disappeared once I started flying it

 

Very, very smelly stuff

\

First attempt at parking. This involved either burning about 2 US Gallons of fuel to have another go or shuffling an almost 2 tonne aircraft onto where it should be. We went for the latter.

Plenty more of those to look forward to!

Thanks to Matt for filming my first (rather dodgy) landing! 

In my defence we were only cleared to join the circuit at the last minute

VOR holds and approaches

I have now had six sessions in the DA-42 simulator, three days of groundschool and the first IFR flight in a Cessna 172. It feels like quite a step up from the VFR Katana flying of only a few weeks ago!

CTC's IFR aircraft are all fitted with the Garmin G1000 system which allows consistency across the simulator, single-engine and multi-engine parts of the IFR training. The G1000 screen presents its information in a very similar way to the glass cockpit displays of the average Boeing or Airbus aircraft. Crucial to this is the Artifical Horizon (AH) and its surrounding information - the airspeed, the altitude, the vertical speed, the angle of bank and the heading. All this information is spread across many instruments in a conventional analogue aircraft but is presented in an easy to read display in the G1000 system. A word of caution though: the accuracy of the information can lead to distraction. Chasing 120 knots airspeed from an indicated 118 or 6980 feet that should read 7000 can lead to one's attention being taken away from other important information. In an aircraft with dials/gauges that level of accuracy is so hard to determine that it is unlikely to be distracting. However, with an effective scan being maintained it is possible to avoid the temptation of fixing on one item.

Our simulator sessions have really focused on the use of the Horizontal Situation Indicator (HSI). This is a compass rose that orientates itself with the heading you are following at the time at the top (347 in example below). Within the rose are displayed two pointers usually, one outer one that points itself towards the beacon you are tuned in to (VOR, NDB or GPS waypoint) and the inner one that you point yourself towards a selected course. 

A G1000 screenshot showing the GPS pointer activated in purple on the HSI

So to give an example, the final track to land at Hamilton airport on runway 18L is 176 degrees. So the inner pointer (green for VOR) is set at this. The pilot then makes sure that the outer (blue) pointer aligns with this. Sounds easy enough but there are many situations where the two pointers do not align deliberately and it is the relationship between the two that is relevant. Then we add in wind! Never do you fly an aircraft in completely still wind conditions. There is always some slight disagreement between where you want to go and where the wind is making you go. Therefore compensating for this and heading in a direction that will bring you on to the desired track is crucial in achieving accurate instrument flying.

For example, the above example of a 176 final approach track at Hamilton might be affected by a wind from the west. As winds tend to become less strong and gradually change direction as you descend, the heading required to track 176 (eg. 184) at 4000' could be very different to that at 1000', depending on the strength of the wind. None of it is an exact science as we can only make an educated guess at the wind strength and direction* - consequently there are small tolerances built in to the tracks and altitudes of the published procedures to accommodate the minor inaccuracies in prediction and indeed variability of the wind.

Our next few Cessna flights consolidate these procedures and add in various en route elements gradually to build up to the stage of full IFR route practice. After that we get the first taste of flying the Twinstar back under VFR in order to get used to the handling characteristics of the aircraft before flying it in more IFR procedures. Sorry this is all very wordy but it is all very procedural at the moment, albeit very interesting to do. Lots of flights coming up and ideally some decent weather so I hope to get some good pics for the next update!

*The G1000 is capable of determining this information accurately but that function is usually removed during training to sharpen our skills!

On to IFR

Finally enough interesting things have happened to justify another blog post. August was a pretty grim month, weather-wise. Each low pressure system brought rain, winds and low cloudbases followed by high pressure systems of poor visibility and fog. All in all, not much use for VFR training, especially as almost all the latter flights are solo. Nonetheless, we all soldiered on and yesterday I took, and passed, my PT1 (Progress Test 1). This is the culmination of our single-engine VFR flying and tests the various skills that we have built up over the last few months: navigation, handling, emergencies, circuit flying, general airmanship and decision-making. The aim is to be sure that we are ready to go on to the more complex, faster aircraft and to operate under Instrument Flight Rules (IFR). We will return to this world of VFR towards the end of the time in NZ when we sit our Commercial Pilot's Licence (CPL) test, though this will be in the twin-engine Diamond DA-42 'Twinstar'. 

Sunset over Hamilton Airport after my PT1

Before that we start to build up our experience of flying on instruments and practising the set procedures involved that will be at the heart of our commercial operations. This includes VOR holds, ILS approaches and a significant amount of GPS, more properly known as GNSS, work. So Monday see us start two days of groundschool - we have covered it all in theory back in the UK as part of ATPL groundschool but the practical application of it is all rather different so that will be the focus of those two days.

Standard Instrument Departure (SID) plate

Then it's into the DA-42 simulator to get the basics of IFR operations started. From there we move to Garmin-equipped Cessna 172s. This gives us a chance to get used to the glass-cockpit environment that is found in modern airliners but while only having one engine to worry about. Then we eventually move on to flying the DA-42 for real. This is a landmark moment in any pilot's training: the move to powerful multi-engine aircraft. I've not yet even sat in the back of one of these so am very much looking forward to taking the controls of one in about a month's time. We then move back to VFR, though still in the Twinstar, for our CPL and then back to the UK to gain an Instrument Rating (IR) on the Twinstar. Should take 4-5 months and that will mark the end of basic training. To call all that 'basic' seems a bit of a misnomer but we have the conversion to Jets, type-rating and associated procedures to come before getting in the right-hand seat of an A320 with paying passengers so in the grand scheme of things, it really is only the basic training complete.

DA-42 cockpit

DA-42 Twinstar

VFR training has been great, even with the constant frustrations of bad weather and I know most pilots look back on it very fondly. Here are a few of my favourite shots from training:

 Hamilton City at night

Hobbiton

The Firth of Thames

The other stuff

The weather has once again left us with a week or so of little or no flying. I'm on the third cancellation of one flight now - managed seven cancellations of a flight last week though one of my colleagues holds the record at eleven attempts! 

So in the spare time I thought I'd do a good vs bad run-down of life in NZ to give an idea of what life is like out here away from the airport.

Let's start with the not-so-good things, i.e. things where the UK definitely has the upper hand over NZ. In no particular order:

1. Winter Weather: We all complain about the weather in the UK all the time but it is equally restrictive over here during the winter. I'm sure the Summer is lovely but at the moment we move from high pressure systems that are dominated by morning fog and poor visibility for the rest of the day to heavy rain and winds in the low pressure systems, aggravated by the high terrain that dominates the entire country. All pretty frustrating during a VFR training course.

An all too common sight

2. Shopping: Anything that is out of season or just generally imported is expensive. That's not just due to a poor exchange rate either. Things like deodorant, toothpaste, peppers, salad, pasta etc are all significantly more expensive than the UK. You have to shop carefully!

3. Beer: Being somewhat of a fan of this, I have been fairly disappointed with the local offerings. It's all carbonated and cold so any beer that might have a bit of flavour has that beaten out of it by the way it's served. There are some delicious craft brews around but they are hideously expensive as opposed to very expensive. Expect to pay something in the region of £5 in a normal pub for (nearly) a pint (500ml) of very ordinary beer. This however is excellent: http://www.goodgeorge.co.nz/

4. Driving: Top speed limit anywhere is 100kph. On the twisty country roads (that's most of them) it's fine but the main highway to Auckland seems pretty sluggish.

5. Public transport: Limited. Bus services aren't too bad but pricey. Trains are literally non-existent so realistically you have to drive everywhere (see point 4). Regional flights with Air NZ exist but are generally very expensive. It is usually cheaper for example to fly to Australia than from the North to the South Island.

So that isn't too bad, is it? All sounds a bit negative but it's ok because here are the positives:

1. Summer weather: When we arrived in April it was still fairly glorious and I estimate from news of other people's flight training that we should be in for some great conditions in the not too distant future.

2. Shopping: Shop cleverly and you can land yourself some amazing bargains. Vegetables that are in season are pretty well priced but the real bargain is meat: Beef in particular around this region is unfeasibly cheap. A fillet steak of the highest quality can be purchased for just a couple of pounds. The supermarkets often have excellent offers too so buy it when it's there and freeze it.

3. Wine: Being somewhat of a fan of this, I have been hugely impressed with the local offerings. It's the famous Sauvignon Blanc that excels in terms of value-for-money. Well worth a try are the Riesling and Pinot Gris varieties too. Cloudy Bay is possibly the most famous example of this and is about $30 in the supermarket here. That's roughly half the price of the UK but you can find examples of similar quality for as little as $10. The reds are available too but it's not as easy to get a high quality bargain. As an addendum, there are some stunning local gins too. Lighthouse is particularly good.

 Can't really complain at £15 a bottle

4. Cars: It's not the easiest thing to find a bargain basement car in good order but it's worth the hunt. We have two Mitsubishi Galants which cost less than £2500 in total and run very well indeed. Fuel is pretty cheap and though they're not the most economical cars ever, it all works out relatively inexpensively.

5. The people: You often hear talk of how friendly the Kiwis are and it really is true. The laid-back attitude to life is great and I've invariably felt extremely welcome in any group situation I've encountered. Sure, there are bits of town you don't go to as with anywhere in the world, but as a rule, NZ is safe, friendly and happy.

6. The scenery: You've heard about it, you've seen Lord of the Rings - well it's all true. When the place isn't covered in cloud and you can get up there and see it, it's stunning. Everywhere. I've already posted so many pics of beautiful scenes but here's a few more just to prove it:

And there was one more positive than negative so I guess that wins!

Navigation

So far, July's focus has been on VFR Navigation. As usual, CTC have detailed procedures for approaching this, which are logical and relatively easy to follow. Some of the skills that we picked up during Ground School have come into play, mostly the use of the whizzwheel to complete the Flight Log or FLOG as it's known and how to interpret the weather forecasts accurately and safely.

The kit required to plan a Navigation route

As we know by 4pm what the next day's schedule will be, it is usually possible to plan the route for the flight the night before and draw this on to the chart. Owing to the terrain around Hamilton and the weather that results from this, it usually makes good sense to plan two routes, one in a NE direction and one in a SW for example. This means you can pick the one on the day that most suits the weather and also allows them to be planned on separate charts so it does not look confusing in the air.

This pre-planning can get as far as measuring the true tracks with a protractor and converting them into magnetic tracks (the variation here at Hamilton is 20 degrees East which means you deduct 20 from your true track - to go directly West for example would be heading 250). You can also measure the distances in Nautical Miles and enter all these details in to the FLOG. That is about all for the night before as everything else is dependent on weather.

The next day can be an early start. Several of my flights have been departing at 7.45/8am which means getting to the airport no later than 6am to get the planning done. Even that is a bit tight so once the daylight hours get longer and we are able to fly earlier, there will be times of getting up at unbelievable o'clock in the morning and doing as much planning at home as possible using the morning's forecast on the internet.

Once at the training centre, you can get the wind speed and direction at the altitude you will be flying, generally around the 3000' level around here. We can go higher, and indeed do to avoid terrain sometimes, but unless you've got a completely clear sky, 3000' is usually about the best you can hope for in order to remain clear of cloud. The airspace is arranged a bit like an upside-down wedding cake in NZ with upper limits for uncontrolled airspace being around 2500' in the vicinity of a controlled airfield to 6500' or more on cross country routes. Wind direction is given in degrees true, so again needs to be converted to magnetic in order to be applied to the tracks to calculate a magnetic heading. In simple terms, if you are heading on the 250 track mentioned earlier but have a southerly wind blowing towards you, you will need to direct the aircraft towards the left to accommodate the resulting drift. A relatively strong wind could mean a magnetic heading of 240 in that case for example.

The windspeed will also have an effect. If you are flying straight into a 20 knot headwind, then the 108kt true airspeed of the aircraft will be 88 knots. A crosswind will have less of an effect on speed but a greater effect on heading etc.

So once all this is factored in, you can begin to calculate timings. These are crucial as you use features on the ground (known as Event Cycle Features) and turning points to know where you should be at certain times. If you can see your event cycle feature coming up ahead of you but your stopwatch says you should already be there, then you can be confident that you have a stronger headwind component than you thought and adjust the FLOG's groundspeed for that leg and the subsequent timings accordingly. 

So while most of this planning is done on the ground, weather forecasts are seldom perfect and will need revision in the air en route. This is all very well in calm conditions, but attempting to battle even moderate turbulence while updating the FLOG, calculating new timings and headings etc can be very challenging. The greatest challenge is often to plan an inflight diversion when it becomes clear that the conditions ahead are going to be outside the scope of VFR flight. As this more often than not makes the flying itself more difficult, there are various quick estimates that can be used for headings and speeds based on 'clock codes' to get the diversion done swiftly and safely before conditions get any worse. The new heading can then be refined once established.

We have also incorporated some Instrument Flight, as described in my last post, into this with the instructor confirming the position of the aircraft visually while the cadet flies accurately using only the instruments. This includes flight into the Control Zone of an aerodrome not visited before, in my case Tauranga, which when combined with some horrendous turbulence made for the most challenging flight that I've had out here.

While all this sounds as if I might be quite experienced at it, the reality is that the weather here has been terrible for most of July so we are now well behind schedule on the flights we should have achieved by this point. I have cancelled the same flight five times this week already and don't see any signs of being able to achieve it any time soon. Each low pressure system with its rain and wind is followed by a high pressure system of fog and poor visibility. So we are all looking forward to August when we should start to see the very first signs of Spring and some improvements in the weather! On a more positive note, from a tourist's point of view there have been some fairly wonderful sunsets and sunrises which have made things a little more interesting:

 Early morning at the training centre

 Early morning at Clearways 

(I think the name is supposed to be ironic - Fogways would be better)

In other news, my hobby out here has been playing Tenor Horn in Hamilton City Brass. The band went to the National Championships in New Plymouth this weekend and I am delighted to say that we won our category! The only downside was the weather preventing us from seeing Mount Taranaki in its full glory:

Instrument Flight

June has been a pretty quiet month. The weather has generally been fairly poor with one week lost to torrential rain. This meant that those with important flight tests coming up had to be given priority. As a result I was not even scheduled to fly for ten days. Though that was very frustrating at times, I now find myself wishing for a little more space as it has been pretty full on for a week now. Some more rain is forecast for the next few days so I suspect things will quieten down again.

I have had two main points of focus recently and have just begun on the third. These are Instrument Flight, General Handling and Navigation.

Instrument flight consists of three flights initially with more to follow later in the course. This is not Instrument flight rules (IFR) which we will follow as commerical pilots, but more an introduction to how to use the instruments in the aircraft accurately while still in VFR. The main point at this stage is for recovery from inadvertent IMC (Instrument Meteorological Conditions) i.e. accidentally flying into cloud and losing outside reference. 

The standard six instruments, reading left to right, top to bottom:

ASI, AH, Altimeter, Turn co-ordinator, DI, VSI

The instructor acts as a lookout or safety pilot, while the student is put 'under the hood', which looks something like this:

(not sure who this is but thanks for the photo!)

We are then introduced to each instrument in turn and from there build up the skill of an effective scan to ensure that each instrument is dwelt on for the right amount of time and one isn't tempted to fixate on a particular one. The scan always comes back to the artificial horizon (AH) to make sure the plane is in level flight. By watching the other instruments you can build up a picture of what is going on. For example, if the altimeter is descending, the airspeed is increasing and the AH is showing nose down, you can be pretty sure you are diving to the ground. This might seem pretty obvious but our senses are designed for walking around in normal gravity on the ground, not moving around the sky. Consequently, the parts of the inner ear etc. that give us this information can be incorrect, leading to incorrect assumptions - believe the instruments! 

This leads on to the subject matter of the next two IF lessons. Firstly we work with a reduced panel. In the above example, if the AH failed, we could still ascertain that we were diving from the fact that the altimeter shows a descent and that airspeed is increasing. We can therefore use the appropriate action to recover this: close the throttle and bring up the nose until the altimeter trend stops and then reintroduce power. Again, this might seem obvious - if the altimeter is descending then we are going down. The action to recover from this however requires more information. If the altimeter were descending and the airspeed reducing then we would most likely be in a stall. The reaction would therefore be opposite to that described above, i.e. throttle to full and nose down. It is all about building a picture of what is happening from the information available from the functional instruments. This last bit is the focus of the third lesson - unusual attitudes. The instructor makes you close your eyes (while still under the hood) and throws the aircraft around to disorientate you. You then open your eyes and see what the instruments are saying and recover the aircraft to straight and level flight. It's surprising how much your expectation can differ from reality when opening your eyes. Pretty much everyone has experienced it when you're reading a book on an airliner, look out of the window and realise you're turning at quite a large angle. This is because we detect acceleration more than attitude so if the turn is slow and gentle, we are unlikely to be particularly aware of it.

From IF I went off to do three more out of circuit solos for General Handling. These were pretty much as per my last post though in a different region. The first one was very windy indeed which hindered what I could get done but the second two were ideal weather conditions so I had time to take a few nice shots:

 

 Te Aroha

 In the distance, Mt Ruapehu, which is next to Mt Ngauruhoe (aka Mt Doom!)

 The swamp near Morrinsville

Turning towards Hobbiton

Today I have just got back from my first Navigation flight. These are quite hard work as there's never a time sitting doing nothing during the flight. There are always checks to be done to keep ahead of the aircraft. They say that the planning on the ground is the most important part and I can confirm that it is true. I was pleased with my planning as the various wind calculations etc. that I had to do proved to be accurate to the minute up in the air. That said, it was a fairly consistent wind today with little other significant weather so not too tricky to achieve. In the next few days I will be carrying on with Navigation as dual flights and then it is a mix of all of the three things I have described in the post really until my Progress Test 1 in August. Then on to real instrument flying and multi-engine on the DA-42!

In other news, we have been treated to some magical sunsets:

 

and a trip to Hobbiton, near Matamata which was enormous fun for a LOTR fan:

 

First out of circuit solo

I've had a few weeks of comparatively little progress, thanks to weather and other things, until today where I met a fairly major milestone - the first out of circuit solo. This was a particularly big moment for me as it represents roughly where I had reached in my PPL studies before starting at CTC and was therefore a rather more significant test than the first solo out here. It was certainly a much more daunting prospect as it goes beyond the flying of the aeroplane and adds in a lot more radio work, arrival and departure procedures for a controlled aerodrome and navigating to and from the training area.

The weather was very changeable during the day with showers coming in and out of the area. Add to that an unserviceable aircraft and my morning attempt was a failure. However, a helpful instructor got me onto another aircraft in the afternoon so, after a quick lunch, I was able to depart just after 1.30. The flight is 2 hours long though I ended up coming back a little early thanks to some showers hanging over the airfield that I needed to stay ahead of.

The route was due West to Raglan harbour where I was to practise some steep turns (around 45 degrees angle of bank) and some PFLs (Practice Forced Landing). This was essentially the subject matter of the preceding two lessons with the instructor so was no problem content-wise. The much bigger challenge for me was all the R/T procedures that go with getting in and out of the Hamilton Control Zone while taking care to remain at appropriate altitudes so as not to bust the controlled airspace above on the way out to the coast.

One of the main challenges of PFLs in this area is the lack of open fields in which to land if necessary. The following four photographs show the kind of terrain I mean:

Nonetheless, it is still possible to practise the procedure as we are not allowed to descend below 500'agl which means that the glide descent, engine restart procedures and Mayday calls (not real of course) can all be covered in time. Further out to the coast I was able to dodge the clouds and get a nice bit of sunshine to practise my steep turns. These went much better than in the lesson with very little altitude loss/gain during each one.

Then it was almost time to go back to the airfield with a couple more 'surprise' PFLs along the way. I did one of these but then noticed a fairly hefty cloud sitting over the airfield ahead of me so decided to expedite my return. I got in touch with the tower and was told to wait around for a while outside the zone. This is the most intimidating bit as you can be cleared to join the circuit in lots of different ways, some of which are quite hard to visualise. I had drawn myself a map of the various arrival procedures so was surprised to be given one using the opposite side of the airfield to where I was. I duly set off only to be recleared a new arrival directly in front of me. I was quite high by this point so had to go to idle power and full flap as soon as possible to lose the height. That all worked out quite well and I managed one of my best landings, touching down smootly on the numbers of 18R. All in all a very successful day so next it's on to some basic instrument flying before starting the full Navigation phase in a couple of weeks.

We've had quite a lot of time to get out and about recently too so here are a few snaps from some of the more scenic places:

Autumn in Hamilton Gardens

Hot Springs near Rotorua

The Anglican Church on the side of Lake Rotorua

View over the lake from the church