ERW has been serviced and has flown 4 hours so far this month, with Greg Foster, Dave Burke and myself all having flights. Nick is away to Stewart Island this weekend, which will add a few more hours.
Flying across Foveaux Strait, or Cook Strait can be an interesting experience. Without any land reference, good navigation is required and a secondary reference such as NDB or GPS should be used.
When I did my PPL cross-country at the tender age of 22, my flight was from Paraparaumu, north of Wellington, across Cook Strait to Omaka, through the mountains to Nelson, and back across the Strait to Paraparaumu. All went well until the last leg across Cook Strait. Low cloud had set in and all I could see was a circle of sea below me. Suddenly, the drone of the engine was interrupted by a radio call.
"CXI, Wellington Radar. Do you have enough fuel to make it to Chile"
"Negative" I replied
"Then change heading to 355 and report when you have visual contact with the Kapiti Coast."
A bit checky, but I would have had Student Pilot on my flight plan. I had of course added my variation instead of subtracting it, which lead to a 40 degree error, and flown across the approach path into Wellington Airport.
Todays club trip is to Mandeville, and I will be flying with Dave Mitchell in his PA28-160.
Mandeville
Our plan was to depart Alexandra at 2200hrs (11.00 local) and meet up with two other planes at Mandeville, one from Te Anau and a C180 from Tapanui. From the COFC we had Nigel and Dave Mitchell, as well as Dr. George Giddings and myself. George has just moved to Alexandra and flies his own PA28-140.
(Photo – Nigel Refueling)
Leaving Alexandra right on schedule, we climbed to 2500ft and flew down the valley under a cloud base of around 3000ft. Visibility wasn’t great, but improved during our 35 minute flight, and before long, we were on final for 27 into Mandeville.
(Photos – Dave at the controls of EIC, Landing at Maneville)
To greet us was the Operational Manager, Laurel Officer, who would be our tour guide today. What a fantastic place. There are two workshop areas. In the first one, we were shown several aircraft from the 1930’s being lovingly restored. The second workshop assembles and manufactures parts for new Microlight aircraft. I was simply blown away by the skills and workmanship demonstrated at this outpost in New Zealand.
(Photos – Restoring a 1932 aircraft, Assembly line for Microlights.)
After the tour, we had a chance to socialise with our Southern pilots over lunch at the Café, before returning to Alexandra. What a great day, and a nice way to finish our club flying for 2015. We hope to have many more trips planned for 2016, so if you have places that could be of interest, let Nigel or Dave know and we can add them to our calendar.
Happy flying
Stephen Morton
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