PT1 Passed !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry for the slight delay in this post but I have my family visiting me at the moment, so I have finally started to explore more of New Zealand. The big news though for this week is that I have passed my PT1 - the first progress test with CTC.

After waking up to poor weather on Friday morning, I wasn't expecting the test to go ahead as the poor cloud base meant there wasn't much height for my navigation legs or stall recoveries. However, we went ahead and after 1.9 hours of me trying to hold my nerves as much as possible, I was informed of me passing as I taxied in after landing. I was quite happy with the actual hands-on flying of the aircraft during the flight, I now just need to work on expanding my checklists, ensure I always complete thorough lookouts and I make sure that I use my feet!!!! It means I now only have 3 more night flights on the Katana, but apart from that I should be ready to start my next stage of training on the 20th January - hopefully with a lot of time off in-between.

With my parents arriving during Friday afternoon, I have spent the weekend visiting 'Bridal Veil Falls', Raglan, 'HellsGate' and Rotorua. Saturday we visited the coastal resort of Raglan and Bridal Veil Falls, which is a 55m high waterfall around an hours drive from Hamilton - I didn't quite realise the drop until I was stood over it!!! 

HellsGate is a geothermal park near Rotorua which features boiling mud spots, hot springs and a mini mud-volcano. The downside of visiting this place is the amount of sulphur released - producing a rotten-eggy type of smell, now lingering on me and my clothes.

Anyway, some of the pictures of my exploring are below. I hope to be visiting Auckland for New Years so hopefully there will be a few firework photos next week.

55m Drop @ the top of Bridal Veil Falls

Bridal Veil Falls from the Bottom

Kakahi Falls @ Hellsgate

Mini Mud Volcano

Boiling Mud

I Hope You Had A Great Christmas & Have A Happy New Year

Our Christmas Table ready for food!!!!!

Last Few VFR Flights............

When I ended my blog with “I just hope next week will be as eventful as the last.......” last week, I didn’t quite expect the amount of flying I have done this week; this week has been the busiest yet with me completing another 9 flights and it means I should have only 3 more day flights on the Katana Aircraft (+3 night flights) before moving onto the next stage of training.

Early start this week

With 17.6 hours of flying completed this week, I now only have two more solo-flights before my PT1. PT1 is the first progress test here at CTC. It is an in-house test which is run in a similar format to the final Commercial Pilot’s Licence skills test. I will be examined on my planning, departure, steep turns, stalling, navigation, instrument flying, emergencies, circuits, arrivals, cockpit management, aircraft knowledge and radio work; in essence everything I have been practising over the last 49 flights. Today I had a mock-PT1 which went well so hopefully the same will be said for the real thing.

This week has been my opportunity for many navigation flights. So here are just a few pictures from the last weeks worth of flying.

Geysers Close To Rotorua - shame they produce a eggy-sulphur smell when overhead

East Coast

East Coast Cliffs

The "White Cliffs Of New Zealand"

I hope that over the next week (excluding Christmas Day & Boxing Day), I will have completed and passed my PT1. This means that I will have finished the VFR (Visual Flight Rules) stage of my training and I will then be on the IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) stage. It means I will only be flying the Katana aircraft 3 more times at night and I will only have 1 more solo-flight for the rest of my training, before flying the Cessna 172 and then eventually the twin-engined 'Twinstar'. The VFR stage involves around 80-90% of your time looking out of the aircraft, while having quick glances at the instruments. The IFR stage is completely different where you spend nearly all of your time focusing on the glass-cockpit displays and instruments.The glass cockpits are very much airline-orientated and with these flights it means I will be able to finally enter cloud and use a lot of the navigational aids at the airports.

Anyway, I will finish this post by wishing you a Merry Christmas from a sunny & warm NZ

Qualifying Cross-Country

One thing that I wasn't expecting this week was to be completing my CPL Qualifying Cross-Country. Essentially, everyone who trains for a CPL has to complete a solo flight which is at least 300 nautical miles long which includes two full stop landings at two different airports to your home base. 

On Monday and Tuesday I completed two normal navigation flights. On Monday I eventually completed FK032 after cancelling it 6 or 7 times. I managed to get over the Kamai Mountain Range and land at both Tauranga airport and Rotorua airport. These 2 airports are the 2 nearest controlled airfields to Hamilton and are quite fun and scenic to land at. On Tuesday I got to venture further up north and flew around the Coromandel Peninsula which is the red area on the map below. There is some great scenery in that area of NZ with a fair few islands to fly to. I managed to go overhead 'Slipper Island' on my way down to Tauranga for another touch & go.

After these two flights, Wednesday was my day off, but Thursday soon came around and my 300nm qualifying XC began. I headed Easterly out of Hamilton just after midday to intercept and then track down the east coast. After tracking down there and revisiting Whakatane overhead, I then tracked south-easterly for my first arrival at Gisborne. I managed to get Runway 14, which meant I flew straight-in without having to join the circuits. After a quick refuel, both food and for the aircraft, I visited the control tower for them to sign-off my paperwork to prove that I had landed there. I then jumped back in the aircraft for a short-leg down the coast to the next airport - Napier. Again I refuelled and visited the tower, and made a quick escape out of Napier due to poor weather beginning to build between me and Hamilton. I was lucky enough to get some scattered (which means 3-4 8ths of the sky is covered) cloud, which meant I was able to fly above and away from the pouring rain and get back into Hamilton just after 5 o'clock. It was a long day which went very quick, but I was glad to get it over and done with on my first attempt. Many cadets have to cancel this flight due to the weather so I was very fortunate.

Below is a snapshot of my track and a few snaps along the way:

My Clockwise Track

Moutohora Island

Whakatane Township

My Flying Machine @ Gisborne

Cloud departing Gisborne

Departing Napier

The Cloud Building On My Way Back To Hamilton. Flying @ 5500ft

Friday was another eventful day, with another dual flight in the morning, then a trip in the afternoon & evening to Rotorua for a bit of luging. The luging was brillant, with much more fun than I had expected. The competitive edge did get to a couple of us as we hurtled down the hillside track and the last race did cause me to crash a few times and get a few grazes along the way. If you don't know quite what luging is, this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0aNryXYwj4 shows us going down. I'm the person directly ahead in the first video with the green helmet. 

I just hope next week will be as eventful as the last.......

The Bad Weather Continues......

This week started off to be nice, weather-wise, however it has since deteriorated with rain and low cloud being dominant. I have therefore only managed to complete 2 flights since last week. My first flight was my 7th Navigation flight and I made a trip from Hamilton towards Port Waikato, then to Thames enroute to Tauranga, where I made a touch and go before returning to Hamilton.

You can see the track that I took for this flight below, with each point taken every 2 minutes. There was only 1 leg where I ended up a bit off track (the one at the top) but it was easily fixable and I was therefore happy with the resulting flight. My second flight of the week was IF4 which meant I was back under the hood for a southerly trip, before a couple of diversions and then a recap on what I had done so far in all the IF flights.

Nav 7 Track

After Tuesday, the weather then got worse and I have therefore had to cancel the same flight (#032) 3 times. Baring in mind that I have already cancelled it 3 times before, its a total of 6 cancellations for the same flight.

Thames Estuary

Away from flying, a few of us from our course went 'Drift Karting' a few nights ago. Apparently the track we went to was the world's first drift-karting track and it is a must-do for anyone visiting New Zealand. With not much grip and slippery surfaces, it allows for some great drifting around corners and is such great fun. We will be definitely returning some time soon.

High Ground Approaching Tauranga from Thames

On Friday night, we had our first CTC 'Cadet Function'. These functions are held quarterly throughout the year at the training centre, and their purpose is to congratulate everyone who has achieved at CTC within the last 3 months; first solos, PT1 Passes (the first progress test) and Licence issues are the 3 things that we get certificates for. We were also treated to speeches from senior management at CTC and Airways NZ (the people who run Air Traffic Control). After this, we were then offered a hog roast which I had 3 servings of, before having 2 servings of Mr Whippy from an on-site 'Ice Cream Van'.

Thats it for this week, hopefully this awful weather will get better soon....