Blog – Cross Country NZMS NZDV NZMS 4/11/2024
Today was a different experience. My FI and I completed a cross-country flight between Masterton and Dannevirke.
Initially, we were planning on traveling from Masterton to Paraparaumu, on to Fielding, and then returning to Masterton via Wairarapa, but due to weather, we could not traverse the Tararua Ranges, so Dannevirke was chosen.
We spent a few hours planning our weight and balance, fuel requirements and route. All good stuff and a good refresher on using the E6B “whizz-wheel”. We also confirmed the weather on-route and at each location so we could be confident of reaching Dannevirke and returning to Masterton without the weather closing in.
Once we has our waypoints sorted and calculated each leg I then calculated the correct track we had to take. This is something I have not done since doing my flight exams so again good to get back into this.
Once we had all the planning and fuel sorted I went thru my standard pre-flight checks. Once completed we were all set to do this cross country flight.
We had done good planning so our tracks were quite accurate and our ETA’s for each leg were within about 1-2mins of our estimates.
The flying itself was rather nice and smooth. I had expected to be bumped around as it was a good Westerly but that never eventuated.
I had some issues juggling flying with navigation as I had to simultaneously fly the aircraft, read the map, stay straight and level, and not fly into clouds. Challenging but fun at the same time.
We chose really easy waypoints of settlements along the way. Eketahuna and Pahiatua look very different from 3500ft but I managed to fly directly to them so that was pleasing.
Dannevirke Aerodrome is a really nice long grass runway and I had no problem doing an overhead join to land on runway 20.
I taxied up to the “departure lounge” but as there was nobody around and the plane had to be back in Masterton in about 1.5 hrs we decided to just keep on rolling and taxied back onto 20 for the ride home.
The return flight was just as accurate as the outgoing so we were pleaded that our prep work was still accurate,
I still felt like a one armed paper hanger, juggling all my tasks so that we remained on track, on time and at the correct height.
Returning back to Masterton, we decided on a straight in approach to 24 grass which made my workload so much easier. I joined onto long final and did a good landing to finish off the trip. taxing back to the Aero club, I was stoked that this was so successful. I had had a ball and was fizzing. This is why we fly!
Until next time.
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Blog – Cross Country NZMS NZDV NZMS 4/11/2024