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.......