Flying Report - ERW

ERW has had a busy week with Russell towing on Sunday, Dave Burk, Greg Foster, Aaron Simpson, S.Radford flying during the week, and Nick working with the Air Training Cadets yesterday.

Today I was taking ERW over to the West Coast with any of our Aircraft owners that might be interested. Departure was 2000hrs UTC, ok 9.00am local. The weather forecast was for stable conditions with high cloud. But we are talking about the West Coast.

My first stop was the home strip in Cromwell. I have expended the strip 100m on the south end so that we can divide it in two for grazing. Yes, it does have to pay for itself. No rate payers money here. Anyway, with the options of two 800m strips or one 1600m, there should be something there to land on.

Heading out of Cromwell and climbing to 7500ft, I could hear on the radio that there was plenty of activity in the Wanaka circuit. Flying conditions were perfect, although I noticed a slow decrease in the ground speed as we headed into the mountains. A 30kt head wind was a lot more than the forecast predicted.

The next Waypoint was Makarora. A friend who sat his CPL with me, started his flying on a Beaver based in Makarora. A bit different from the ATR he now flys. This area is also known for deer stalking. There are two main valleys running up the South side, the Wilkin and the Young valley. Changing heading to 315 should take us directly to Haast.


(Photo – Wilkin and Young Valley)

Mt. Victor is the next landmark. There are a number of mountain ranges running in different directions all rising shapely from the valley floor to about 6000ft. Mt. Victor is almost in the middle of them. Clearing the ridge, I could see Lake Douglas nested in a valley, but sitting high up from the other valley floors. This morning it was particularly attractive, as it was surround by a blanket of cloud.


(Photo – Mt. Victor and Lake Douglas)

Finally I arrived at Haast. Well, I could see the Haast bridge through the broken cloud, and the GPS was confirming my position, but today I wasn’t going to waste time looking for a good entry area to get under the 5000ft cloud base. It was time to head home and with a 30kt tail wind and a ground speed indicating 138kts, it wasn’t long before I was back on the ground in Alexandra.

Handing ERW over to Gary for his flight, I headed home.

Happy Flying

Stephen Morton