A fun time in Masterton

For the first time in many years, Wairarapa and Wellington Aero Clubs held an inter-club competition last Saturday. These used to happen regularly, but haven't for a few years now. There is even a rather large and impressive cup, the Liverton Cup, on offer.

The competitions

The day consisted of three competitions taken from the excellent [I may be biased!] set of competitions run by Flying NZ for their regional and national competition events. We also used the relevant safety standards promulgated by Flying NZ, especially for the landing grid set-up and operations.

The three competitions were:

• Precision circuits [based on the Wigram Cup Senior Landing comp]
• Non-instrument circuits [based on the Wigram Cup non-instrument circuit comp]
  
• Forced landings without power [based on the GM Spence competition rules]

To give different people a fair go, there were three categories, Junior [student pilots], Senior [licenced pilots] and Special [CPL, instructors and other "special" people 😆]. It was a friendly get-together, with an emphasis on having fun and learning something and serving as an introduction to pilots from both clubs who had not experienced competitions before.

I had planned to spend most of my day running the landing grid... but I found out partway through the day that someone had entered me into the precision circuits and forced landing competitions. They also decided that I would also use the Nanchang CJ6A, ZK-MAO. Funny people.

Nanchang CJ6A, ZK-MAO, operated by Wellington Aero Club

As it turned out, I only had time for the forced landing competition. I flew it fairly well and had a lot of fun doing it. Rumour has it, I may have landed on the grid also, which was very helpful for the end result.

That might be the last time anyone enters me in a competition without asking first 😁.

Kiwi Coffee and Kai Catering

Kiwi Coffee and Kai Catering provided delicious food in the afternoon and evening. Yum! Apparently they cater all over the place, and I'm sure Wairarapa Aero Club will be happy to have them back another day. The owners of the food truck came along for a ride in Wellington's Cessna 172N, ZK-EKE - a nice little 20 minute trip. Check out their FB page for some photos and video of the flight.

Cessna 172N, ZK-EKE, operated by Wellington Aero Club

Flying Tigers

The Wairarapa Flying Tigers were out in force, providing rides in their two DH82A Tiger Moths. Very impressive machines, and I know everyone enjoyed their rides.

I signed up as a member of Flying Tigers a while ago, but being busy, yet again I managed to fail miserably at going for a ride. Sad. Another day.

The end result?

Everyone had fun and I'm sure most people learnt something [I learnt that I should be more careful about applying sunscreen everywhere exposed... Grrrr!].

I actually had fun gliding the Nanchang onto the ground - that last 500' is always the fun bit. I also flew the Nanchang to/ from Wellington - again, good fun.

Congrats to Wairarapa Aero Club who took out the Liverton Cup this year. We'll be back next year to take it back!

Monday's big adventure

Guess where I got to this time?

Over to Masterton first thing Monday morning [well, a 10:15 arrival is close to first thing, right??] 😀

Piper PA38-112, ZK-JBX, operated by Wairarapa Aero Club

Today's little rocket was Wellington Aero Club's Cessna 172N, ZK-EKE.

Cessna 172N, ZK-EKE, operated by Wellington Aero Club

Following this I headed in the other direction - back south, past Wellington, across Cook Strait to Kaikoura. Home of the best seafood and whale watching available in New Zealand. If you do want to do some whale watching, best to do it with Air Kaikoura. You'll probably see more of these 🐳 and spend less time wondering where they are hiding!

The scenery on the way down is pretty awesome also. 

Just after take-off, on the way home and here is one of the most recognisable photos of Kaikoura - the peninsula. This would have to be a great place to live!

Kaikoura peninsula

What else happened? With two crossings of Cook Strait, I made good use of the radar monitoring service provided by Airways NZ, and I reacquainted myself with the benefits of tuning into Christchurch Information to update my SARTIME [this is the time they start searching for me...] and my flight plan when the route home changed.

Another 3.2 hours of fun in the air and about 7.5 hours for the year so far. It has been an expensive start to the year! I might have to stay on the ground for a couple of days, although it is looking nice on Saturday...

The route... planned vs actual.

Flying NZ Cook Strait Regional competition. Success!

This past weekend has been Flying New Zealand's regional competition, this year hosted by Wellington Aero Club [website / facebook] as Hood Aerodrome [Masterton].

As is usual, it was a very busy weekend, with arrivals day on Friday [although I did get some Nanchang flying in 😀] followed by a very busy competitions day on Saturday. We had a full day of competitions, starting with briefings at 07:30 and finishing up around 16:30 with the last of the bombing and liferaft competitions completed.

In case you're interested in competitions or the results, check out the Flying NZ competitions page [https://flyingnz.co.nz/competitions.html]. Scroll down a little for the results.

I'm pretty enthusiastic about competitions, even if for the last 3 years I've been organising them rather than competing. I think that the practice competitors undertake is great for their own skills, it is a lot of fun and it's great for club hours also. A win-win-win situation! Not only that, but the social side of the competitions is good also. Typically there's a relaxed BBQ on the Friday before the competition, "formal" dinner on Saturday after the competitions and lots of laughs and tall stories in between.

Well done to everyone who competed, thanks to all those who helped in any way and congratulations to Wellington Aero Club who took out the main competitions, the Wigram Cup!

If you want to know more about Flying NZ competitions, send me a message, I'm happy to help!

Unfortunately, I was so busy with organising stuff that I didn't get to fly in the Streamer Cutting competition or get to take many photos, but it was an enjoyable day none the less!

I did get a couple of flights in the Nanchang CJ6A on Friday, one of Sunday morning and my flight home on Monday morning. All in all, a lot of fun there. I think I got close to 2 hours of circuits in total, most of them with a crosswind and one session following a Tecnam P2002JF [ZK-WRA from Wairarapa Aero Club] around the circuit. I flew some wider circuits just because of the relative speeds of our aircraft, so that's great practice also.

The trip home was fairly uneventful. The forecast westerly winds were there with a bit of wave going on, but not too much turbulence, although I suspect the Nanchang handles it better than some other aircraft. Airswitch was only 0.6 hours, including a go-around and circuit at Wellington on arrival [something much bigger and faster than me was behind me].