Valley Flying
Today was a mild southerly of around 5kts. We took off from RWY16@NZPP climbed to 1500ft, and set course for Otaki training area to do my second session of terrain awareness training.
On arrival at the training area, we descended to 600ft and my FI sent me into the Otaki Forks area.
Selecting a fairly wide section of the valley Descending to 600ft my FI asked my where the wind was coming from and what side of the valley I should fly. Today the wind in the area was from the NW so I knew that the upward wind conditions would be on the right hand side going in. I flew deeper into the valley and noted that it was narrow and we had no visible horizon, so a check on the attitude indicator would be essential to confirming we were not gaining or loosing height in the turn.
Once a wide gentle turn was initiated, my FI then sent me up a narrower valley and we repeated the exercise. This time I needed to fly closer to the edge of the valley and do a tighter turn to then start to fly back out.
After successfully flying out of that valley, my FI then sent me into a smaller valley than the last one. This time I had to fly even closer to the valley edge but still well within the legal limit of 150m horizontally. To me it still felt like I could reach out and touch the trees.
I really stomped on the rudder pedals this time but was pleasantly surprised when the aircraft only needed a slightly tighter turn.
After completing this last turn my FI told me that I really didn’t need that much rudder and it was just inexperience that I thought I would need so much. All part of the training so no problem there. He did note that I eased up on the rudder once I realised that the aircraft would turn ok well within the radius of the valley.
All too soon though it was time to fly out of the valley and back into the wide training area, climb back up to 1000ft and head back down the coast to NZPP.
The approach was a little fast today and I floated down the runway a bit as a result. The landing was a little off centre and I was slightly skewed too. I then turned off on A1 exit, cleaned up the flaps and extra lights, and taxied back to the aeroclub.
I was very happy with my flying today. So much fun flying up and down the valleys. A little disappointed in my landing but I am always the most critical person on my flight anyway. Not perfect by any means but getting again the consistency was there and I am flying accurately, which is the overall mission objective.
Happy days!
Aircraft: ZK-KAZ (Cessna 172SP Skyhawk)
Total Time: 1.1
Landings: 1
Go-arounds: 0
Visual Approaches: 1
Terrain Awareness: 0.8
Until next time….
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Blog – Terrain Awareness (2) 26/03/2022