Hi All,
Compass Turns
Some days you think its not going to be your day as the weather remains dull and the cloud base gets lower and lower. Today was this kind of day. I was scheduled for a solo flight up to Otaki for some low flying however the weather Gods said “I don’t think so mate”. Plan B was to then do soft field training at Paraparaumu on “34 Grass” but the crosswind picked up and my FI thought that would be a bad idea too. Ok onto option 3: Compass Turns.
The weather stayed dreary but as we backtracked down 34 we both spotted a brighter area just south of Kapiti Island that looked promising. My FI and I both looked at each other and said “Lets head for that eh”?
Climbing out on 34 I commenced a left climbing turn and headed out towards our oasis of blue.
This area was frankly beautiful to fly in. A big bubble of open sky and mild winds that we could play in. We climbed above the outer edge of this hole and could see the tops of the surrounding clouds. Wow! Nothing like feeling you are flying IFR but as we were below 3000 feet, clear of cloud and in sight of the ground we were in VFR heaven!
Compass turns is an awesome and mind blowing exercise. Due to the way a compass works in a magnetic field you need to either “overcook it” or “undercook it” to roll out on the right track. For example if you are heading North and you want to turn to the South you could turn left and then you would have to “undercook it” by 30 degrees. Therefore as you fly around the compass anticlockwise, you stop before south by 30 degrees to a heading of 210 and roll out.
The weird thing is that the compass then flows to South after a few seconds. If you did the same manoeuvre but to the right you would still have to “undercook it” but rollout at 150. The compass then catches up and rotates forward to South. Freaky but awesome!. However at west and east you don’t have to do anything as it just goes to the correct heading. In between each cardinal point you overcook or undercook in relative degrees. If going South to North you “overcook it” and go past North by 30 degrees. Confused? I was!
Here is a picture that kind of explains my rambling:
As this was my first time doing this my FI stuck to cardinal points (N,S,W,E) and just made my the closest turn to the new heading. Sounds easy but I was fried after 40mins of this. But the views outside were breath taking so that made up for everything. All whilst doing the mental maths, I had to keep situational awareness as there were plenty of VFR and a few IFR flights in close proximity.
What an awesome flight considering I thought I might not be flying at all today. It was one out of the box finding that perfect hole in the weather and the way we used it was superb. I had never flown that far south either so that was a bonus.
We had to join on long final from the south to land back on 34. Oh boy was I a happy chappy!
Aircraft: ZK-KAZ (Cessna 172SP Skyhawk)
Total Time: 1.0
Landings: 1
Go-arounds: 0
Visual Approaches: 1
Until next time….
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