Piper PA34 Seneca

Here are a couple of pictures of a Massey Aviation Piper PA34-220T Seneca, that visited Wellington on the weekend. It's a nice enough looking plane, although they always seem to sit a little tail-low.

Still, it would be good to get my mits on one of these one day :-)

Piper Archer III - revisited

After my previous post on Canterbury Aero Club's Piper Archer III from early this month, the aircraft came visiting again on the weekend. This time I was able top have a quick chat with the PIC [Pilot in Command] and was given to OK to take a look inside. Unfortunately the screens were not powered up, but I think that this picture gives an good impression of the clean layout.

This aircraft has a 180hp engine, and cruises at about 125 knots, which is pretty much par-for-the-course for this type of aircraft. Still, it looks quite comfortable and I'd love to have a flight in it one day.

Enjoy the pics!

RAF Careers Drop Zone Skill Testing Site

Similar to the helicopter game I posted about a couple of months ago [http://flyinggeek.blogspot.com/2007/08/online-game.html], here's one from the RAF. The idea is to drop the packages on the target - not always easy, but still addictive. Enjoy!

http://www.rafcareers.com/altitude/games/dz_game/dzgame.cfm

A quick visit to Foxpine

I've been out of town for a couple of days, and on the way back home took the opportunity to drive [no aeroplane this time] to Foxpine aerodrome. I've flown into Foxpine about 3 times so far, and despite the fact that there is not too much around, it has to be one of my favourite airstrips.

As you will see from the photos, trees line the length of the airstrip [particularly the right side as you look down runway 27]. The locals at Foxpine are very friendly, and the airfield is used for microlight training in addition to being home for a number of other aircraft.

Top to bottom the photos are:

B22 Bantam
Jabiru J160
Looking down the length of runway 27

Quick visit to Omaka

I made my first visit to Omaka airfield yesterday [Saturday]. Omaka is located in the Woodbourne control zone and in fact is only 2.6nm from Woodbourne, which makes adherence to the assigned arrival and departure procedures especially important. I went over with one passenger and came back with three.

Although it was blowing 20, and up to 30, knots on the ground at Wellington, there was only 6 knots at Woodbourne/Omaka [a 30-40 minute flight across Cook Strait]. It was an awesome flight with far less turbulence than expected around Wellington [probably considerably helped by being cleared through the Karori sector rather than the Sinclair sector].

Next time I pop over there I'll try and have some more time on my hands, so that I can go an visit the aviation museum on site at Omaka airfield.

Massey University PA28-161

Here's a "random" couple of pictures of a Massey University School of Aviation aircraft that was parked at the aero club today. It's a PA28-161, and although that makes it nothing particularly special as an aircraft, the paint job is nice enough :-)

Piper Archer III

There was a PA28 Piper Archer III parked up at Wellington today. From the outside it looks similar to a Piper Arrow [PA28-201R -ZK-EIF is the Wellington Aero Club's Arrow as a comparison]. There are however a few good things about this Archer III.

Firstly, inside are a couple of Garmin 1000 screens, with pretty much just some standby instruments. This makes for a pretty neat cockpit!

Secondly, it's new. It's good to see both Cessna and Piper continuing to build GA single engined aircraft after the well publicised hiatus some years back. It's even better that there is some competition in this space [including competition from a range of other manufacturers, such as Cirrus and Alpha].

The one thing I don't like about it is that for some reason Piper have chosen to reduce the size of all of the windows. I'm not sure how obvious this is from the photos, but have a look at them "for real" and you'll see that the Archer III has considerably smaller windows all round.

Does Piper really think that we're all flying their aircraft IFR, or that we don't want to watch the scenery go by? I don't know. Just a shame, as it starts to take the gloss off what has historically been a very capable, and fun, cross country machine.

Anyway, enjoy the photos. First is ZK-LJC from Canterbury Aero Club, and the second ZK-EIF from Wellington Aero Club as a comparison.

[Many thanks to John Macilree who advised a couple of errors in my original text to this post. Somehow I wrote down ZK-EIF as ZK-FHQ, a similar but not quite the same, aircraft]