Precautionary Landings in the Mountains
Today was an overcast and blustery Autumn morning with the westerly winds at 15kts gusting 25kts.
The aerodrome was busy with aircraft, but I managed to sneak down and do a quick line up on RWY34@NZPP for a straight out take off, followed by a climbing turn towards Otaki training area as the Otaki forks was too socked in to be safe.
On arrival at Otaki, my FI ask me where the wind was coming from and to what side of the valley I should fly. A no brainer as we had a very stiff westerly around 30kts at 1500ft.
Once in the training area I set up to fly overhead the southern threshold (well that’s what I thought) but was actually about 3 fields south of where I should have been. Once my FI advised me I decided to carry on on my easterly track then join at 1000ft AGL for the initial check of the strip.
My old desire to be fly too close to the air field made the track much harder than it needed to be and I actually flew a curve onto final rather than a square. I did manage to fly over at 70kts and 20degrees of flap at 500ft, so not a total wipe out. I powered up, cleaned up and then climbed back to 1000ft AGL for a proper circuit and descend to land.
This time was much better but still not at the accuracy I wanted but again the track on final was good and I went over the centreline at the correct speed and altitude.
A third time I made the track wider and much more square. Funny haw much easier it is when you do it properly huh?
My FI demonstrated the precautionary landing again and showed me the error of my ways. They make it look so easy….
So more practice needed in this procedure, as I am rather rusty.
More details can be found at https://www.aviation.govt.nz/licensing-and-certification/pilots/flight-training/flight-instructor-guide/precautionary-landing/
Mountain Flying Training Standards Guide https://www.aviation.govt.nz/assets/publications/flight-test-standards-guides/mountain-flying-training-standards-guide.pdf
Once again the time flashed by and before I knew it, it was time to fly out of the valley and back into the wide training area, descend to 1000ft, and head back down the coast to NZPP. But before we did that my FI added in two reversal turns at the coast.
These I did rather well I thought , with turns into the wind so that I had minimal ground track. All good stuff.
The approach to 34 today was quite rough and we hit a good updraft around Waikanae river mouth that shot us up 100ft within a blink of an eye. On downwind it just got worse so my FI decided to take control and come in on a flapless landing and really do some fully cross controlled landing. A great demonstration of how you can control the aircraft in wind.
was one of my better ones: right on the numbers!. However I drifted slightly in the crosswind and landed just to the left of the centreline. Drat, and double drat! A tiny bit more rudder and i would have buttered the landing!
A nice taxi back to the Aero club down RWY34@NZPP exit then shutdown.
Another fun training flight. I’m so lucky doing this!
Happy days!
Aircraft: ZK-KAK (Cessna 172SP Skyhawk)
Total Time: 1.0
Landings: 1
Go-arounds: 0
Visual Approaches: 1
Terrain Awareness: 0.8
Until next time….
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Blog – Terrain Awareness (5) 14/05/2022