The End Of New Zealand Simulators

This week has been quite slow for CP106, only 2 flights for me. With a sick instructor, low pressure weather systems and the Easter bank holidays, there have not been many chances to get much done.

The first flight was my final New Zealand simulator flight. This flight recapped on what we’ve learnt over the last couple of weeks in the simulator, and also introduces en-route navigation and workload management for the Twinstar. The route was from Hamilton to Auckland and back, which seemed fairly straightforward when I planned for it the night before with a 20-25kts wind at 7000ft; however it was elected that I should use the actual weather conditions on the day which were 65-70kts wind – it’s fair to say that it definitely increased my workload!!!

The second flight was back in the actual Twinstar (DA42) where I practised DME Arcs and approaches. It seemed such a long time since I was last flying the DA42, but it felt much more easier to control than the simulator and it was a great feeling to be back in actual cloud (not that I was able to look outside and see - the IFR hood was on)

Unfortunately, as I mentioned above, the weather has been deteriorating this week. The 25°C blue sky days seem to have disappeared, and we are now having very cloudy and wet days – not ideal now that we have finished in the simulator. Thunder and lightning has become more common as well, so there have been many flight cancellations.

The view every morning this week

Some big news this week is that we have been informed on when to expect our CPL Skills Tests. The majority of the course should have them on the week commencing 5^th May, with a few expected to have it the week before – only 8 days away!!!!!!! We really need the weather to improve especially for the CPL profiles and tests as these are conducted in Visual Flight Rules where the weather needs to be good.

The one good thing with all this wet weather, is that the golf courses are no longer brown with grass reappearing. With the time off this week, I have managed to play a couple of rounds, and had my best ever round on Wednesday – gross 81 for those of you who play.

Evening sunset - the best time of the day for cloud

That’s it for this week – I've got a bit of CPL reading to do today, in between stuffing myself on chocolate. Hopefully I'll have some flying pictures to show next week. 

Happy Easter