A New Zealand Christmas

Well, we didn't get to go to the beach beacuse the weather wasn't playing ball - a dreary, wet, overcast day greated us on Christmas morning.

So a quick change of plans and it was beers, mucking about, watching films and playing console games on the menu... along with a frankly awesome Christmas roast dinner - we even had chocolate log and ice cream for desert. Check us out! Also, just in case you are ever in a pickle; a Ping Pong table makes an excellent and versatile dining platform... For extra comedic effect leave the net in place.

Click here for christmas Ping Pong!

Oh, and because I haven't mentioned it already, a week tomorrow is when I am scheduled to have my first flight (first day back from christmas break) so I'm looking forward to hopping into the bathtub with wings that is the DA-20 Katana for my first whizz around the NZ skies.

Here's a few snaps to add some colour to your day:






Hope you all had a good Christmas!

Boys and their toys part deux...

As promised, here's a quick vid of my now naked heli harassing the ping pong table. In the words of our (ex RNZAF Fast Jet pilot... impressive) ground instructor, Mr Ian Woods: [kiwi accent]"Ain't that just fuckin magic!?!"[/kiwi accent]

Vid:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7odzAQ9wnF0


...and here's Lee hard at work on his new Nintendo Wii (Jezza bought one too...):

I have to say it's actually a suprising cool bit of kit - had a round of Wii golf with danny the other day and it's excellent!

We're going to have christmas on the beach tomorrow, and If we can find some disposable BBQ's I may try and find a shrimp to chuck on it just for the sake of saying i've done it.

Happy Christmas Eve everyone!

Boys and their toys...

The boys get older but the toys just get bigger/faster/more expensive.

As you can see I bought myself a little christmas present.... It's the best £40 I've ever spent in my life! Harrassing people playing ping pong in our block's common room is never, ever, ever, going to get old. Until they swat it down with a bat but, hey, it's a calculated risk...

Click on the video links below to start them playing. I might whack another one up of ping pong harassment later. Once again, you can see the sort of stress I am under at the moment - it's simply devastating.

vid 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEx1lXYeYT8


vid 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-1EBsQAR4k

So true....

Thought that I should share this little important piece of advice with you all:

As for me, I have my first exam tomorrow (we've gone through 19 chapters covering everything from the inner workings of engines to aerodynamics learnt over 4 days! talk about quick learning!) so hopefully that'll go well.... best get back to last minute cramming...

So.. work huh....

Nothing very interesting in this post (way to hype it up eh), but I thought I'd show you some of the work I'm doing at the moment... yes work... I'm actually doing a bit...

Here's the DA-20 Katana checklist that I'm trying to commit to memory, there's about 150+ points... Hopefully I'll have it all in my head by the time I fly - it'll make life that much easier.

...and here's the whiteboard in my room at the moment, covered in information I need to know for my Katana type rating. I don't actually need to know this until we take the EKQ which will be some time inbetween starting flying and first solo, but I figure I may as well start now. You may also have noticed there's the instrument panel picture from a katana which helps practise the checklists. Tomorrow I might pop down to the airfield, find a spare Katana to sit in and run through the checklists... wild...

So as you can see, I' not really doing much. I did however go to a British pub in Cambridge with a few guys from other CPs for some food and a drink. If the weather is good tomorrow we might pop down to the beach and see what's what with that. As of monday we should have a solid week of groundschool with an R/T exam at the end, so let the learning commence!

Hot hot hot....

Today was a scorcher!

Well, due to some incredibly tedious procedures with the CAA over here, despite having good enough vision to fly without glasses (as assessed in our already superfluous medicals the other day) Mark had to go to Rotorua today to get a further eye test in order for him to be able to choose to wear his glasses while flying. So we all decided to hop in the CP44 minibus and explore a bit! First up we went to Kuirau Geyser park which, unsuprisingly perhaps, stunk to high heaven.... who doesn't love the smell of sulphur in the morning!? Great for some photo's though.

After that olfactory experience we went to the skyline park to do some Luge, and decided to buy the combo ticket which came to about £20 for the gondola ride up, 5 Luge runs, a ticket for the shooting gallery and a go on the nutty Sky Swing. The Luges were great fun, only Menno properly stacked his luge over the side of the track, and there was some pretty dirty racing on the way down. The Sky Swing was definately the highlight though, with some pretty amusing videos resulting!

"The sun had it's baton and it was beating us today...." We all came back with some sunburn, except Menno who was wise enough to apply some sunscreen - those canny dutch! Anyway, great day and holy crap; how stressful is this pilot training malarky eh!

So it begins....

After a seriously long flight made longer still by a delay at every available opportunity (even at the end, where one of my esteemed colleagues was callously seperated from his luggage resulting in a long wait to see whether it would finally emerge... it didn't) I finally arrived on the green shores of New Zealand last Thursday. The observant among you may realise that it is now Tuesday; go to the cupboard, get yourself a cookie and pat yourself on the back whilst revelling in your own brilliance. So, I have had some time to settle in and get to know people and what a great bunch of people they are!

Clearways (the accomodation block for us budding young pilots) is fantastic, as I'm sure the pics convey, and all of CP44 (thus far - more will be out on the short course) are in the same corridor of Comet Block, so there's already a great atmosphere.

The first night was obviously lacking in energy somewhat, and I was especially tired having only managed about 2-3 hours sleep since leaving on tuesday evening. We did however manage to hit the town on friday night, and indeed saturday night - those of us who were hardcore macho machines didn't get back until around 4:30am on the latter... The nights out were good, but it's not hard to see that the Hamilton night life will get somewhat repetative - it's not the most happening place on the planet. That said though, it's a nice enough city and there's plenty of shops and various eateries to satiate your non alcohol-fueled needs.

On Monday we had the first early start, and had to drive to Hamilton for some of our blood to be drained by evil cackling witches (albeit very friendly ones) after having fasted for the last 12 hours. Then after stuffing our faces at a nearby cafe it was off up to Rotorua for a full medical which lasted the rest of the afternoon. There weren't many suprises other than "super lungs" danny being exempted from the ridiculous asthma side of things, and poor Menno being stuck with either carrying an inhaler with him at all times while flying or taking the rather daunting sounding "Histimine Challenge". All in all it was a fairly painless experience, although I can't say that having my googlies fondled by a man is high on my "to-do-again" list. I did however find something to amuse myself while waiting at the Medical centre:

Today we had our first real day in the facilities at the Airport, and it's a pretty impressive setup they have here. It was mostly an induction day with a walk around the apron looking at the aircraft and the start of some basics about departures and approaches to the airfield. Tomorrow we'll start type rating on the Katana, although we found out due to some exceptionally poor timing we won't be flying until after the christmas break (around Jan 3rd). A shame, but nevermind!

Now it's time for the first CP44 BBQ, so I bid you adieu, and here is the view from our BBQ!