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Blog – Terrain Awareness 05/03/2022
T0day was a mild northerly of around 8kts. We took off from RWY16@NZPP climbed to 1500ft, and set course for Otaki training area to do my first session of terrain awareness.
On arrival at the training area, my FI selected a field, advised me that this was our area of operations and to fly at 800ft around it, and as close as possible to the edges. I was at manoeuvring speed of 95kts, in the clean configuration, so I managing to stay fairly close to the edges.
Once I had done a circuit in both directions, my FI then made the area smaller and said. “ok do the same again in this area”. This time was much more difficult as the corners of this new area came up very quickly and I had to made the turns much steeper.
completing that task in both directions, my FI closed the area again. This time I just couldn’t manage it at 95kts so I told my FI that I was going to slow down, and use the bad weather configuration of 70kts and 20 degrees of flap. At the same time, he suggested that I think about knowing my limits so he was happy we came to the same thing.
At bad weather configuration, I could circuit the area and stay in control of the aircraft. This was achieved in both directions, so we powered up, climbed to 1500ft and headed towards the start of Otaki Gorge.
Descending to 600ft my FI asked my where the wind was coming from and what side of the gorge I should fly. Today the wind was from the NW so I knew that the upward wind conditions would be on the right hand side going in. I flew around the edge of the gorge and noted that it was narrow and we had limited view of the area. When that was completed, we climbed to 800ft and repeated the route. This time I noted that the circuit was wider, and we could see much more of the area.
We then climbed to 1000ft and repeated the route. This time we could circuit using much more of the Gorge and could see the surrounding valleys and ridges.
This demonstrated the same phenomena as we did on the field, except that the area is now vertically narrowing, therefore you have a more limited area to operate in a valley. mission accomplished, it was time to climb up to 1000ft and make tracks down the coast for a good landing on RWY16@NZPP.
I was very pleased with my flying today. I new my limits and flew within those limits, configuring the aircraft to suit.
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 05/03/2022