We had eight simulator sessions over the last two weeks. This helped us to avoid the wind and the rain that has plagued most other courses of late. These were a good chance for us to get to grips with the much more involved and procedural techniques of flying under IFR.
It's a strange sense of relief emerging from cloud with the runway straight ahead of you, on descent profile with the ground visible for the first time in two hours. The aircraft we are learning to fly in have some very sophisticated pieces of equipment to aid with navigation during flight and following it's direction by use of the instruments is quite a challenge, especially when you now have no visual reference to fly on. It is quite easy to become disorientated and it happens surprisingly fast. So that said you imagine the sense of satisfaction I also felt when presented with Hamilton's wet runway ahead of me.
In complete contrast, my second IFR flight was full of fantastic views and a very bizarre moment of seeing snow in July. As we (EZMP02) are now quite pushed for time in which to compete our lessons before we go home next week, we are doing multiple flights a day. This means that two cadets and an instructor take an aircraft for the day and get as many lessons done as possible. For the most part of today the sky was clear and smooth. However the trip back from Napier had us flying through and above cloud, awarding us some spectacular shots of an altitude where the temperature was -7 degrees C. It was pretty cold to say the least. Here are a selection of photos from today's jaunt about New Zealand.
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| Departing Napier |
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| Climbing above the mountains between Napier and Taupo |
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| Snow capped mountains of the North Island |
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| The view flying through cloud |
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| Breaking through the top of the cloud |
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| A sunny afternoon after all |
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| Lake Taupo |
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| Afternoon sun between cloud layers |
