Couple of airside pics

Ric remembered to take his camera with him today and as such managed to get a few snaps... I shall have to remember to do some myself at some point! Anyway, for now here are a few choice pics to give you a flavour for what it's like:

Danny looking too cool for school in one of our lovely Katanas:

Ric looking not at all cool (but happy... awwww):

And last but not least, an actual shot from the office... The mountain you can see there is Pirongia, a few miles South-West of the aerodrome.

Anyway, that's it for now. I'll try and get some more pics of my own at some point... The CP44 website is under construction by Mr Mahoney, and I'll be sure to post a link up once it hits t'internet.

Just a quicky...

Just a quick update, mainly on account of having received the results for the two exams I took on friday. In Meteorology I got 90% and in FRTO I managed 92%.... both okay results, although could have been better!

I noticed I haven't posted a picture for ages, so here's a couple of pictures of the type of plane i'm flying at the moment:


Here's the "office" view:



And here is the plane (type) itself, although ours are obviously done up in CTC livery... but I don't have a good photo of ours yet so you'll take what you're damn well given:

Not a bad Aircraft, although not quite as sexy as the Alpha 160's that will be replacing them... They lose marks for not having a steerable nose wheel which means all taxiing turns are done mostly by differential braking (think how a tank turns, similar idea). Nice to fly though, and they glide forever which is good news if you get an engine failure!

And the first results are in....

So, took the two exams I mentioned in the previous post - nothing too tragic but there were some really ambiguous questions which means I have no idea how well I really did... I'll find out in about 7 working days...

A nice suprise though was that the results for the first exam (Air Technology) were finally up today, after a long christmas break, and I managed to get 95%.... which is okay. Also checked my online lesson reports (they have finally sorted the online reporting system out for our new integrated syllabus) which are marked on a scale of 1(worst) through 4(best) for a number of criteria and then given an overall score again 1-4. I've only had the first two lessons, but for each I got the top overall mark of 4 which has been a massive confidence boost - 4's are few and far between in this neck of the woods so far! It'll be interesting to see how long I can keep that up for with the lessons becoming ever more complex and the opportunities for screwing up more frequent.... ladies and gentlemen place your bets...

So, it's all off to a pretty good start although we'll wait and see how the exams today came out - especially meteorology which was a really tough subject to learn in such a short time! We also got handed the workbook for Air Law today as well, and you could literally use it to beat a large and ravenous Polar Bear to death.... slightly disconcerting.

The weather is still a bit pants, although it lifted yesterday which allowed me to get a flight in. Hopefully it'll pass before too long and we can get on with regular flying.

Anyway, that's it for now - Have a good weekend!

Loooong day...

Kicked off today with a 0900 start to a 7 hour meterology learning extravaganza in a frenzied attempt to fit all the remaining syllabus in before we take the exam on Friday - It's going to be a tough one! To make things even more fun (if it were even possible) we are taking the RTFO (radio communications) exam as well. I also had a flight today, which again got pushed back, and I finally walked back in to home at 2030... Now I need to try to cram in as much info as possible before our two exams tomorrow, and then still have enough attention left over for a mass brief in the afternoon covering the concepts and content of the next few lessons.... crikey!

well, it certainly makes a change to the quiet life that we have been enjoying in the previous weeks!

Holy Cow!

Finally got my first flight here today - albeit much delayed for various reasons (was scheduled for 13:45 originally, and slowly slipped until I finally got brakes off at about 17:00) but all my annoyance at the delay melted away the moment we got up.

Today's lesson, obviously being the first one, was fairly basic and there wasn't much to it. Basically we headed out west towards Ragland and just start playing around outside the control zone - things like selecting and holding a datum attitude, correcting from an upset attitude, holding level flight at various speeds and power, setting a specific engine RPM by sound alone (with the rpm guage covered) and so on. It all went perfectly however and the debrief from Jason was a great confidence boost with only positive things to say!

I'm scheduled to fly tomorrow as well, but the weather is looking far from good so that may well get scrubbed - for now though I'm just happy to have finally got up in the air!

Happy New Year!

Here's hoping 2007 is a good'un.

All of CP44 (and two defectors off CP42) went up to Auckland for Gatecrasher's New Year's Eve. After having arrived in Auckland we rocked up to Queens Street Backpackers youth hostel, put our bags away and then went off to have a quck look around. We ended up at the sky tower fairly soon after, with a few of the guys bothering to hand over the requisite $22 to go up it - the rest of us went to the pub and put the $22 towards a more tangible liquid cause. Here is the result of their efforts however:

Lovely... More interesting however is the fact that you can jump off the edge of the tower attached to a cable. Basically you jump off a platform, if the operator is feeling sadistic they dangle you briefly infront of the viewing area, and then plummet towards your rapidly approaching doom only to be saved by the grace of a steel wire that slows your descent before you become nothing more than a jam splat on the target. Alas none of the intrepid few who ventured up the tower had a go at it, and the next day no one was in any state to have a go. Maybe next time.....

Beers continued through dinner until we popped back to the hostel to get ready for the night out- A few bottles of beer in the hostel later and we were off to gate crasher. In short; crazy night, lots of fun, paid for in hangovers the next day. As an aside, New Zealand roads are bumpy as hell and do not bode well for a 2 hour trip when you are feeling a little delicate.

CTC life starts again tomorrow (wednesday) with FRTO (Flight Radio-Telephone Operator) groundschooling and all being well most of us should finally get our first lesson in the long course syllabus - who would have thought we were here to learn to fly eh.

Anyway happy new year, and good luck sticking with those resolutions!