Archives for June 2005
Queenstown welcomed the Lions
Dunedin is not only my nemesis, it’s also unpopular with touring rugby players. With sub-zero temperatures and icy hard ground, playing conditions are unwelcoming and the local crowd vocal. Although many Lions fans are expected through the South Island over the next week as the games move from Dunedin down to Invercargill and back up to Christchurch, none of the team themselves are due to visit. Perhaps this is due to earlier events reported in the local Mountain Scene newspaper.
Irish legend Willio-John McBride “fondly” remembers the part Queenstown plyed in the buildup to the first Test in Dunedin in 1966 – a match the tourists were lucky to lose only 20-3.
“The NZ Rugby Union were generous souls, so they sent us to Queenstown to train for the first test. A lovely place, to be sure, but there was snow on the ground and it was too hard to do anything on. They eventually gave us the local airfield, but we had to sprint every time a plane came in to land.
“Looking back, it was hilarious, but it wasn’t much use to us – as the first Test result showed.”
Instead the players tried skiing on Coronet Peak, where I’m working today. Doubtless they also spent time trying the local beers, like many of their modern day fans.
Those cheeky Kiwis.
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Failure and disappointment
It was -6 degrees this morning when I swept the frost off the wings of WAK in preparation for my flight test. The big day had come, and Blair and I were about to fly to Dunedin for my PPL flight test. “Did your mother have cold hands when she dressed you this morning?”, he asked, “you look bloody awful.”. As it turned out, that may be the best excuse for me still not being a qualified pilot.
How to explain where it went wrong? Ultimately, I think if I’d taken the test in Queenstown I’d probably have passed. But I had to go ninety miles away to a different airfield at Dunedin, which is probably the main cause of my problems.
Learning to fly a plane as a PPL is just about refining different skills – landings, circuits, radio work, forced landings etc. This all tends to take place in the same location, so we’d use the same field for a forced landing, low flying etc. However, since my plan was to go back to the UK at the end of June, plus it’s taken longer to do my cross-country training than expected, I couldn’t wait for an examiner to come through Queenstown. We opted to go to the coast and work with the examiner available there. If the explanations get a little technical, forgive me and just empathise!
The peculiar thing about Dunedin airspace, at least for me, is the presence of an uncontrolled aerodrome within the confines of the control zone. Looking at the map below, you can see Dunedin airport to the bottom left and Taieri (don’t ask me how to pronounce it) towards the centre. To join the Taieri circuit one must gain permission from Dunedin tower and then switch the the 119.1 frequency.
Add into this a very small low flying zone, plus other unfamiliar features, and it’s the foundation of a complicated flight test. Although we took the time to fly around the area and make an approach to Taieri, I was still a novice when starting the test. Here was a different layout of places to do the skills, increasing the challenge and workload on what was already (probably) one of the hardest days of flying I’ll ever do.
I’d already flown for an hour and a half before the test began; it was so cold that the trim did not work until we descended at the end of the flight. After working on questions about the aircraft, its performance, the weather and so on we went outside for a blustery pre-flight check. Here was where I made a big clanger. Pointing at the mass balance on the aileron, he asked, ‘would you fly if this bit was missing before take off?’. ‘Yes’, I said, although in reality I’d have called the club and asked them. ‘Wrong. You’d have died if you flew without it’. He could have failed me for that right there.
The wind was doing odd things, unlike during my cross-country on Monday, with windshear near the ground and a wind at 16 to 20 knots that varied by twenty degrees. Whilst no excuse, it did make the landings more complicated. Engine failure after take off was okay, compass turns reasonable, steeps turns good after the first attempt, alleged use of the aileron on the advanced stall although if it happened, it wasn’t deliberate.
I even managed a reasonable forced landing amongst the fields (although I secretly changed my field a couple of times). Problems arose when moving from here to the low flying area. Due to a misunderstanding with the instructor, I thought I didn’t have to gain clearance to enter the low flying zone. My fault: but in fact I did, and also clearance to reenter the control zone, plus there was already an aircraft in the low flying zone. Instead we opted to make a standard overhead rejoin at Taieri using a local procedure which I was not familar with.
Add in with that entering the rejoin too low, failing to find my aerodrome plate as it had slipped behind the seat, four aircraft in the uncontrolled circuit and windshear on the final approach which slowed my down unacceptably (why, for once, had the over-eager stall warning not gone off?), and I’d failed right there.
My only complaint is that I could perhaps have had a better briefing beforehand from the instructor about how to navigate the airspace and what order the test was likely to involve – but then, he’d never had a pupil sit a test there before either. As a result, I ended up busting controlled areas and getting into potential conflict with other aircraft, and perhaps the examiner should have understood more about my situation. As it was, instead of performing the same skills in my usual comfortable spaces, I had to do them in somewhere completely new and with aircraft patterns I haven’t encountered before. Strangest of all, there were no mountains which was quite disorientating.
Of course, in real life this will happen at any new airfield; but in real life, I’d not be doing the same things in the same order. I’d be flying, instead. When the examiner had to make a radio call for me, I knew I was done for.
Was I too complacent before the test? No, I knew there were several potential points I’d get wrong and it was not a guaranteed pass. Will I try harder next time? You bet. Can I afford to fail again? No way!
The worst part was having to fly back with the instructor for an hour, when all I wanted to do was go to a quiet room and kick the wall a few times. The good thing was that Blair had failed his CPL the first time, and was empathetic, i.e. didn’t try and say to much. For a kiwi bloke that’s quite impressive.
Very, very frustrating. I’m not yet sure what will happen next, but for the retest I’d much rather sit it in Queenstown than go back to Dunedin, even if it means waiting for a couple of months.
Sick as a parrot, as you can guess. Still, just one of those days. At least I made it back in one piece (and seriously, that’s something to celebrate any day).
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Gore and Invercargill
Despite sitting on the sofa for almost a month, the weather has been so unwelcoming that I still haven’t completed my three solo cross-country flights. For example the airport was closed due to fog for four days, the longest period for many years; then three weather fronts moved across in slow succession whilst a high sat teasingly over the Tasman Sea.
Beyond frustrating, I’d given up hope of completing the cross-country qualification before my flight test on Thursday. Instead I planned to sit the test, get a limited qualification restricting me to flying within 25 miles of Queenstown (not much use in Kent), and then getting the final flight completed as soon as possible.
I’d accepted a job working behind the bar up the Coronet Peak skifield, expecting that my flight training would be complete by mid-June. Now, on my first day off I headed down to the club for a mock flight test with the CFI. Having completed the paperwork we opted for me to try and complete the solo rather than run through revisions again.
Generally the club flies students with an instructor on a specific route, and then the student flies solo in the opposite direction. However, a call round showed that Te Anau was fogged in so instead I was sent to Gore, an airfield I’d never been to before. Here was a challenge. I planned the flight, checked the plane and went on my way.
The view was stunning. Across the snow on the mountain tops I could see for miles down to the sea, and beyond that, Stewart Island. Heading in what I hoped was the right direction I tracked towards Gore and looked in vain for the airfield. Gore has a reputation for being a bogan/pikey/redneck town – “I can see a Ford Faclon passing a Holden Commodore, I must be overheard Gore” etc. – but where was the airfield? And would the local aircraft have lowered chassis with spinning hubs?
I checked the aerodrome plate and map and assumed the strip was by the river. A glance to the right and – oh! that must be the airfield there with the three grass runways! An attractice overhead rejoin and I was in the circuit, spotting an aircraft on the runway that had not made any calls. At least he was going in the same runway direction was me, which I took as a good sign.
A smooth landing and strong drag to the left, and I was back in the air. Once clear I called Invercargill and was asked to report at Woodlands. Down here the land is flat and relatively featureless, criss-crossed with roads and one railway line. I worked out the railway line passed through Woodlands where two roads came close together, and eventually managed to find the spot. Cleared straight in to land, I had the pleasure of flying across a big town onto a wide runway, and readily accepted a weak tailwind rather than recircuit. Straight out again and I had to work hard to find the road (yes, road) back to Queenstown but was soon on the right track. Apart from calling my departure from controlled airspace a little early, it was a lovely trip back.
With that, the cross-countries were complete and I was ready for the flight test. It was a month well spent despite the growing bed sores from too much time down the club reading old aviation magazines, waiting for the weather to clear!
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Chavs and chips
Looking at the rudeboy cartoon reminded me of the lows of spending an evening in a strange town.
After two hours in the gym last night I popped into the chip shop to pick up a take-away sausage supper. (Yin, meet Yang – clearly you won’t spot the new me when I get home). PJ’s claims to be a ‘traditional English fish and chip shop with a hint of Kiwi spice’, that spice coming from the ‘dry and tasteless’ jar. Queenstown is very quiet at the moment, even the late night bars are closing early, and the dine-in area of the chippie was no exception.
Eight formica tables, each with salt and sauce bottles plus a plastic flower – maybe that’s the Kiwi spice – cover the space between the door and the counter. Just two customers sat eating their tea on opposite sides of the room, one reading a local free rag, the other staring at the table. Both were drawn from England’s stock of fine young working-class men: plenty of gold, baseball caps, branded leisure wear and the ‘just scalped’ hairstyle. Neither acknowledged the other’s existience.
Whilst my sausage was being battered I had time to wonder what they were thinking.
Here they were, sitting alone in a strange town a long way from home. Back in the hostel they’ve tried to strike up a conversation with the Scandanvian sex goddess on the bunk below, the dumpy thighed German lass on the other side of the room and the penny-pinching Israeli in the TV room but each flatered after a few stock phrases for reasons of clothes sense, money or World War 2. Disorientated by the strange dark beers of New Zealand and the unseasonal summer weather (”it’s June, it’s summer, so why isn’t my Kappa rainjacket warm enough?”) each has retreated to the comforts of something they know and love: fish and chips. Then back to their hostel and a night sitting alone watching the Jackass movie for the seventh time this week before heading to their single, bed-bug infested mattress.
Yet look at the opportunity. Here were two lads with loads in common, who could talk about football, girls, chips and how crap New Zealand is: but they’d never talk to each other, nor acknowledge each other’s existence. Why?
Because they’re English.
It’s heartbreaking, yet repeated the world over every day. Why can’t things be different for the young British male abroad? Maybe we need fish and chip speed not-dating, or drinking, or having a regularly scheduled series of fights and pissing in the street competitions. Indeed, I met one Geordie lad who was fined NZD300 for ‘taking a break’ in the rubbish bin outside the Night and Day convenience store. He should have been given a medal, not a court order.
For a brief moment I was tempted to act my age, a good ten years older than theirs, and involve them both in a conversation. Then I remembered I was a sweaty bloke wearing shorts, a fleece and a woolly hat, plus what would we have in common?
We never found out.
[Note: I am not, in this post, taking the piss out of chavs. Nor is it a metaphor for my own experiences. I'm just seeking some global harmony and interaction, what Mr Blair might call The Big Conversation, which should start at home. In reality, these two probably went out and got pissed with their new mates, or at least that fat German bird who's dead easy after a couple of Jagermeister and coke.]
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Backpacker stereotypes
Backpackers, yawn, whatever. Links to other websites, shuddup. But please allow me this reference via excellent travel writer Peter Moore.
It’s funny how backpackers – like nationalities – always fall into a particular stereotype. There’s the know-it-all who has been there and done that for a fraction of the cost you did. The lads who have simply transferred their drinking and fighting activities to a more exotic locale. And the sex-bomb Swede who seems to be having meaningless sex with everyone else except you.
English cartoonist Martin Peers seems to have come across them all on a recent round-the-world trip and has created a series of cartoons about the different backpacker species.
Can’t quite place myself yet. Of course, with the turnover of people in Queenstown, I now consider myself a local and look down on those smelly transient types. Local bars for local people, etc.
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Painting the world red
Narcissistic post. Thanks to Chris I can now show where I’ve been over the years. I didn’t have a choice of colour, it just defaults to British Empire Red. Marvellous!
Red sky in the morning
Just because I can’t fly cross-country doesn’t mean the sky is always ugly. This was the view a couple of days ago on the way to an early morning lesson.
It seems there is practical truth in that old yarn about ‘Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight, red sky in morning, shepherd’s warning’. I’ve heard various explanations about ions and stuff, but this one (shamelessly stolen from Wikipedia) makes sense:
Weather systems typically move from west to east, and red clouds result when the sun shines on their undersides at either sunrise or sunset. At these two times of day, the sun’s light is passing at a very low angle through a great thickness of atmosphere, the result of which is the absorption of most of the shorter wavelengths — the greens, blues, and violets — of the spectrum, and so sunlight is heavy at the red end of the spectrum. If the morning skies are red, it is likely that clear skies to the east permit the sun to light the undersides of moisture-bearing clouds coming in from the west. Conversely, in order to see red clouds in the evening, sunlight must have a clear path from the west in order to illuminate moisture-bearing clouds moving off to the east.
The forecast for Invercargill today included ‘SHRAGS’. Yikes. A small prize if anyone can work out what that means.
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Why no fly
When I first arrived in Queenstown it was forecast that it’d take at least four months to get my PPL, even studying full-time. Since it should take only 60 hours to get there, I decided to ignore this dire prediction and see how things panned out. The first six or seven weeks went well with stable weather and more than forty five hours of flying.
Then Autumn bit back.
If I’m to fly more than 25 miles from Queenstown once I have my licence – a necessity in Kent – I need to complete three cross-country routes, both with and without an instructor. The first of these flights was on the 9th May; more than three weeks later, I’m still waiting to fly that final flight. Wind and rain are my enemy.
My route will take me from Queenstown across to Te Anau on the edge of the Fiordland National Park. There’s no weather forecast for this uncontrolled airfield, but the road to Milford Sound is closed tonight due to snow so you can imagine the big clouds hanging overhead.
From Te Anau it’s on to Invercargill, New Zealand’s southernmost city and consistent holder of ‘wettest town’ records. You might remember I had to turn back when the cloud reached the ground on my first attempt to get there. This is today’s forecast for ‘Vegas’ as the locals (sarcastically) know it:
None of it is good, in particular the 5000m visibility in showers and rain plus the wind at 2000′ increasing to 45kt this evening. Indeed, none of the winds across the South Island are looking friendly:
This tells us that winds are more than thirty knots in most places and at most altitudes I want to fly. Since I’ll be passing over mountains in a very light aircraft, anything over twenty knots is going to be uncomfortable, especially if it’s coming straight over the rocks rather than up the valleys.
All of this is to be expected since New Zealand is, after all, a rock in the middle of a very big ocean. This ain’t Florida. But the weather has been like this for a couple of weeks now, not even one ridge of high pressure squeezing down to offer half a day of comfortable flying. It’s finally getting frustrating. Look at the forecast rain this evening:
In the meantime, revisions for the flight test – they’re going okay, but I could be ‘tighter’ in the different exercises – and building up five hours of instrument flying. I’m at the stage where I want to be well prepared for the test, but don’t want to spend heaps of money on lessons when I could wait until I’ve (hopefully) got my licence and spend it on a rating in Cessna 172. The budget is finally getting tight!
And so we wait.
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