First (and second) IFR flight

I would love to be able to show you some photos of my first IFR flight. Something along the lines of clear blue skies above, surfing a layer of white fluffy cloud below. Unfortunately I can't do that. My first IFR flight was mostly spent at six thousand feet in the cloud and rain of New Zealand's winter.

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.

Departing Napier

Climbing above the mountains between Napier and Taupo

Snow capped mountains of the North Island

The view flying through cloud

Breaking through the top of the cloud

A sunny afternoon after all

Lake Taupo

Afternoon sun between cloud layers

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

Volcano tour of New Zealand's North Island

The weather on Tuesday was epic! Blue Skies, sunny, smooth flying and fantastic visibility. It made a very welcome change to having my flights cancelled for a fourth day in a row, and enabled a couple of us to plan a nav trip encompassing the four main volcanoes on the North Island, Tongariro, Ngaruahoe (Mt Doom in Lord of the Ring's), Ruapehu and Taranaki, as well as landing at some further afield airports. I won't bore you any longer and as I will dedicate the rest of this post to pictures from this incredible trip.

The spidertracks GPS log of our adventure

Tongariro National Park in the distance

Approaching Taupo town

Lake Taupo and Mt Ruapehu

The view across Lake Taupo

Helicopter leaving Taupo over the lake

On final for Taupo Airport

Laving Taupo with the Volcanoes in front of us

Lake Taupo

The volcanoes

The Volcanoes

Tongariro steaming away

Mt Ngaruahoe (Mt Doom) and Mt Ruapehu to the right

Looking back at Mt Ngaruahoe

Passing Mt Ruapehu

Mt Taranaki poking out of the clouds 100 miles away

Mt Ruapehu

Descending through a large gap in the cloud

The desolate Sanson Region

Circuits over the sea for approach into Wanganui airport

Wanganui Airport

Mt Taranaki

Final for New Plymouth Airport

Departure from New Plymouth

Sunset from 7500ft

The very last rays of sunshine

Just make out Mt Ruapehu in the distance, taken at 7500ft off the west coast

The west coast at dusk

Hamilton City at night

Landing at Hamilton in the dark