I can no longer see where I'm going

It has been a busy week here in New Zealand. I have had six events in as many days, passing my first professional flight test, completing the first three IFR simulator sessions and fulfilling the night flying requirements of the MPL course.

At the end of our VFR flying training we have something called a Competency Assurance (CA). This is effectively a flight test equivalent to the first progress test that the guys and girls on the wings course have. The CA encompasses most of what we have been taught to date, including navigation, circuits and emergency procedures. It also means that the next time I get a chance to fly solo will be when I get round to taking it up as a hobby again at some point in the future.

At first night flying felt quite uncomfortable. Not being able to see any definition in the ground and being unable to see any of the mountains that surround Hamilton make it quite nerve racking. Once I got over that initial unease the rest of the night flying I have done has been great. During the first flight the instructor took us off for a bit of navigation towards Auckland to give us a feel for navigation in the dark, with just the urban lights of towns and cities that look exactly the same. This also included a trip to the Sky Tower in Auckland for a couple of orbits around the Southern Hemisphere's tallest building, before transiting Auckland's controlled airspace between a landing 737 and a 777 on approach, it's very bright landing light making it look as if it was bearing down on us.

Sky Tower and Auckland City by night (thanks Dean for the photo)

It's very exciting to move onto the next bit of the training and to start learning something new. As enjoyable as the nav flights were, there were a lot of them and most of us were very much looking forward to moving on. One of the best things about this next phase is that we are now not so restrained by NZ's wintery weather.

In the first three sim sessions we have been looking at flying holding patterns using radio navigation aids. All of this has been done in IMC (Instrument Meteorological Conditions) so I have no visual reference to fly to and have to spend the entire time looking at the instruments. It's suprisingly disorientating flying with no visual cues as the human body is very easily tricked into thinking that it is in a different position to the one it really is. This makes flying in cloud very difficult and dangerous. The flying itself is surprisingly straight forward in IFR, but there is just so much more to consider and so much more mental arithmetic that makes it all the more challenging. I like a challenge so roll on the IFR flights we have coming up before we go home.

North Island from the air

The end of the VFR (visual flight rules) training is drawing to a close and hopefully by the end of the week we will all have completed, and passed, our first flight test. Yesterday was my last solo flight here at CTC and was given the aircraft for the day. This afforded me the time and resource to take an adventure to Napier and Gisborne with one of the other cadets on his qualifying cross country flight.

The last two weeks have been very busy cramming two flights and four hours of flying into each day, most days. It has been very tiring, challenging and very rewarding not just in terms of progress but some of the views and sights I have been able to see. I have been able to see the majority of the North Island from the air, and land at most of the major airports too. I have flown over and between active volcanoes, islands, vineyards, mountains, water, searched for wild donkeys, seen the sunset from the air, flown over and around cloud and enjoyed every minute of it.

As with the last post, I won't bore you telling you what I've done, so here is a selection of photos from my adventures around New Zealand's North Island.

Hauraki Gulf near Auckland

Auckland from the air

Hamilton City

Coromandel Peninsula as the sun starts to set

Taking off from Rotorua

Rotorua town and lake

Raglan it's harbour

Cloud spewing from the volcanoes

Nt Ngaruahoe (Mt Doom) poking out from the cloud

Afternoon sun over Waikato

Looking across to the Coromandel Peninsula

Waiheke Island in the Hauraki Gulf

Waiheke Harbour

The only island in NZ to have wild donkeys

Departing Whangarei

Whangarei Bay

The east coast of Northland

Waiheke, on the way back from Whangarei

Lake Ohakuri

Taupo and it's lake

Approaching Napier

Sharing the apron with Air New Zealand

Dan and I waiting for the Dash 8 to vacate the runway

Departing Napier

Flying along the east coast to Gisborne

A blanket of cloud covering most of my route home (so I went around and above it)

About to land at Hamilton