Introducing Wellington Aero Club's latest arrival, a Piper PA38-112 Tomahawk, ZK-EQX!
Online now, and pictured resting in the hanger at our Wellington International Airport base. It has a magnificent paint scheme and looks very tidy all round. It's going to be a very popular addition to our fleet.
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| Piper PA38-112 Tomahawk, ZK-EQX, operated by Wellington Aero Club |
Stay tuned for more photos soon! 👍
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??] 😀
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| Piper PA38-112, ZK-JBX, operated by Wairarapa Aero Club |
Today's little rocket was Wellington Aero Club's Cessna 172N, ZK-EKE.
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| 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.
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| 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.
Sunday's big adventure was a half day of flying in the Nanchang, from Wellington to Nelson, to Westport, to Greymouth, to Hokitika, to Kaikoura and back to Wellington. I left around 11:30 and landed back in Wellington around 17:15.
Unfortunately I was a bit busy for photos [and enjoying to scenery to much anyway...!], so all I have is this screen shot from Avplan 😆
I have another flight on Monday, so hopefully some better photos from there!
Here is an interesting video from AvWeb. A big part of it is a particular company's desire to create a network of eVTOL aircraft undertaking air taxi operations, but there are also some good comments on where electric aircraft are at right now.
tldr; They are not there yet.
Enjoy!
Having hardly flown the Nanchang CJ6A for the last four months, it was time for a dual check. Today's flights consisted of a flight from Wellington to Masterton and some circuits, followed by a refuel and solo circuits, followed by a dual ride back to Wellington.
Fun times, but stinking hot in Masterton! Almost 28 deg celsius when we were there this arvo. Thankfully Wellington was a nice 20 deg with a cooling breeze when we got back.
Fun times, now for Christmas, then some more flying before I head back to work in a couple of weeks.
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| Nanchang CJ6A, ZK-MAO, operated by Wellington Aero Club |
I hope you have a safe, restful and fun Christmas. See you all in the new year!
This is an interesting video from 3-4 weeks ago. The Royal Air Force trialling a 100% synthetic fuel in a light aircraft, made with 100% renewable energy.
Clearly it will be a way off yet - the cost of the fuel and the ability to scale up production [which are related of course] mean it's not coming to a fuel pump any time soon. Still, a 100% synthetic drop in replacement for avgas would be good.
Also, with something so bleeding edge, there's bound to be more than a little hype in the video, but the ability to provide the Royal Air Force with 100% synthetic fuel for ALL its aircraft is certainly worth aiming for. Of course if that happens, I'd expect the fuel would be widely available by then. Exciting times!
Anyway, here is the video. Enjoy!
Here is an interesting video I found on spinning parachutes, auto-rotating rotor blades and more.
Basically, it's a comparison between descent rates of simple parachutes, ones that rotate during descent and rotating blades as a replacement for parachutes.
It's interesting enough as a video, but there are also brief mentions of lift and drag for those that get excited but that 👍
Enjoy!
It's almost Christmas, so it is time for a present of some Bob Hoover aerobatics!
Please don't try this at home... or the local aero club.... or other flight school... 😬
I am hoping to have some more of my own flying adventures to comment on soon - just need the weather to improve so I can get my BFR done.
Yes, I know, what a name! Pronounced differently of course, but yeah, still comes across as odd 😁
I was watching a video from Mojogrip [included below], who does a bit of an introduction to the aircraft, but the short version for the 100hp fuel injected version is around 147 knots at 15.5 litres per hour. Some say [social media commentary, so maybe unreliable] that real-world performance may actually be about 130knots at 19 litres per hour.
With those more conservative figures, it would be an impressive 643nm before it goes very quiet.😬 That would be around 12 litres per 100km. When you consider that aircraft can often maintain straight lines more easily than cars and don't have to slow down for road works, it is probably as efficient as most cars out there, excluding battery only models like the Teslas. Very impressive.
I'm still not sure how it would handle the turbulence we get in much of NZ around the mountains [probably not great], and an approach speed of around 55 knots will not be ideal in some situations, but the performance is still very impressive!
Anyway, click here for the specs on the official Pipistrel site if you are interested and here is the video from Mojogrip.
The video is from 2019, but it appears to match the Pipistrel website's specs.
Wellington Aero Club has recently put a new website online. Included is a blog of recent news.
It's well worth looking into if you want to keep up with the Club news. Click on the image to go direct to the blog.
Last night was the annual Wellington Aero Club dinner and prize giving. Like last year, it was held at The Pines, a function centre on Wellington's south coast. A fantastic location and highly recommended!
Here are a couple of pictures looking south from the deck of The Pines. The hills in the distance [behind the setting sun in the first picture] are from the South Island.
There was also the matter of the prize giving. A lot of worthy recipients, plus me 😁 For the second year in a row, I received the Instrument Flying Partial Panel trophy. Will it be three in a row? We will have to wait until next year and see.
