For those of you following the weather anywhere in New Zealand these past few days, you'll realise that it has been fairly miserable. Not that I've got much to complain with in Wellington: the bottom of the South Island has been bad with snow to sea level, ice all over the place and so forth.
None-the-less, it's not been good for flying around Wellington. Although bearable on the ground, get a few feet above ground level, and the nasty westerly winds makes it difficult for anyone wanting to land on Wellington's [substantially] North-South runway [I saw an A320 going around from low level earlier on].
The wind died down this afternoon. I had a flight booked and so took a couple of work colleagues and the son of another work colleague up for a quick flight. We were cleared for the runway 34 Eastbourne Departure. This involves being 1500' or below until clear of the zone, and that was moderately turbulent. One particularly rude item of SLF [Self Loading Freight :-)] suggested I could not fly very well [almost offered to let him out right away].
After clearing the zone, we climbed to about 2300'. Through about 1800' the air smoothed out completely. It was a slow trip to Mana Island in the 20-30 knot headwind, but a quick trip back.
The flight was finished off with the Eastbourne Arrival procedure. Somehow I managed to come in very very high, but a load of flap and appropriate use of power sorted that out... turned out to be a very nice landing after all.
All in all, a lot of fun. No photos at this time [one of the SLF may have some] because I was too busy flying.
5 comments:
Ha ha! SLF - very good, never heard that one!!!
I experienced Wellington at it's best in April in a 172 with wind of 340 @ 23G38!! I have never flown in turbulence like that, it was quite frightening.. At one point the contents of the seat pockets including the flight manual flew up, hit the ceiling and disintegrated! My pax also hit the ceiling HARD and spent the rest of the flight cursing me :-)
At least it was straight down the runway! You didn't come in from the south (Sinclair sector) did you? That would have been really bad!
Yeah, we did. Also we had to hold at Island Bay, and that was by far the roughest. It was nasty, in fact. There was something on the ATIS about "aircraft under cat b unable to land notify ATC" so it wasn't just me that had trouble!!! I couldn't hold altitude in the end, and just held on for grim death! GPS says on our hold at Island Bay, downwind we had 115 kt g/s, upwind 55kt
Chris,
I'm guessing but the comment about "cat b" aircraft may have been along the lines of "cat b or below aircraft notify tower if unable to join the aerodrome circuit in the event of a go-around" [not the exact wording!]
Apart from that, you're a keen fella entering through the Sinclair sector in those winds :-)
Hi Joe,
Yeah, that'd be it. Thanks.
Wellington wx can be fntastic, but sometimes aweful. Worst situation is a crosswind component greater than about 10 knots... it's always "bouncy", right down to the deck.
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