$300 toasted sandwich

At the start of this month I learned that two fellow pilots from my aero club were going for a short scenic flight, so I managed to get myself an invite. They have both blogged about the flight here and here, so I figured it was my turn.

Before we left Hamilton we decided that since it was a nice day, and they plane was booked for a few hours, instead of just a short flight with Chris at the controls, I offered that if he flew us somewhere for lunch, I would fly the return leg. Since Chris didnt have the budget for any more than 0.7hours flying time, we decided on Rotorua, as it was a nice place to fly to, and had a good cafe right at the airport.

It was the first time I had been a back-seat-passenger in any small aircraft, and I found I actually really enjoyed it! There is less room that the front seats, but I still found it perfectly comfortable. Chris was nervous as it was his first flight in the Arrow with passengers, and I think only about his 4th flight at all in the Arrow.

Chris's flying was perfect, and I just sat back and enjoyed the view! It was only a short flight of 49Nm so didnt take long until we were on finals for Rotorua runway 18. I have flown to Rotorua many times before, but normally I cant look around at the ground as much on finals. I was surprised at the number of large expensive houses that are being built very close to the airport, and right under the approach path to what is destined to be a busy airport? Who approves these houses!

Safely on the ground, we had a pretty good lunch at the airport cafe, but strangely in a phenomena that is getting more common, our meals were served far enough apart that I had finished eating before Chris had even received his meal?

After lunch, we went back to the plane, and I did my pre-flight. We discussed our options, and decided that a flight over Mount Tarawera and on to Whakatane would be good, as I had never flown there before.

Air traffic in Rotorua seemed rather busy, and the controller seemed to be struggling to keep everything organised. We had to ask for taxi clearance twice, and were held on the ramp (with the engine running $$$) for 13 minutes before being cleared to backtrack and lineup. The lack of taxiways for the sealed runway at Rotorua makes every aircraft movement slow. The controller sounded stressed on the radio, so I asked my 2 passengers to be especially vigilant looking for traffic until we cleared the area.

Mt Tarawera was impressive, although as I was not familiar with the local scenic flight operator procedures, I decided to stay high to keep out of their way, and being in a low wing plane, visibility straight down is very limited.

Onwards to Whakatane, quite a short flight, but unusual radio calls from another aircraft kept us on our toes as we couldnt quite figure out where he was.
Chris filmed my landing at Whakatane, which was ... alright but should have been better seeing as there was very little wind (5kts).



After walking around the airport building, talking to some local pilots and the resident cat, we re-fueled to full tanks and departed for Hamilton. I decided that rather than flying low across forest and hills, I would go controlled VFR which is my preference for cross country flight. Neither Chris or Euan had done it before, so they were quite interested in how it was done. Many pilots are scared of area controllers (I know I was at first) but I have always found them to be extremely polite and accomodating.

After being assigned a squawk code and identified on radar, we were cleared direct to Hamilton at 5500 feet. Unfortunatelty, with full tanks and three large people on board, the arrow struggled to get to 5500 feet before the start of the control area, but luckily we made it with about 5 miles to spare :-)

On route we found ourselves between two distinct layers of cloud, broken at about 8000 feet and scattered at 4000 feet. Ahead and to the left of us there was no cloud below us, and I was easily able to maintain reference to the ground, and my own personal rule of always being able to glide to the ground without going near cloud if the worst should happen.

I had a bit of a play with the autopilot, tracking the Hamilton VOR for a short while and then just using heading hold. After clearing controlled airspace, I started a cruise descent into Hamilton so that I could use a published arrival that required me at 1700feet about 10 miles from the airport. With a slight tailwind we were holding a constant 155kts ground speed.

Landing in Hamilton was un-eventful, much better than the one in Whakatane. I think we all enjoyed our afternoon in the sun, with Chris doing 0.6 hours and myself with an additional 1.2 hours.