Hi all,
Since I got my licence I haven’t been posting on this thread as much as some have – but I thought I would share a flight I made yesterday.
I had a bunch of people from uni who wanted to go flying… so I booked a Cherokee and for once the weather cooperated. We awoke to blue skies and virtually no wind. Out to the airport, submit a flight plan and preflight the aircraft. All looked good so we boarded the trusty steed and I fired up the engine and away we went. Once airborne it became obvious that perhaps it wasn’t as clear in the air as the blue sky would have led me to believe… it was very very hazy. Talking later to another pilot who had been up a little higher than I was (we stayed at 1500’) I found out that there was an inversion layer at about 3000’, which would explain why I couldn’t see much at all… it was still ok for VFR flight though, just that landmarks a ways ahead were a bit tough to see at first. I left my landing light on for most of the flight just for an added safety margin in the haze… We were wanting to get clearance to conduct some orbits near the Sydney Harbour Bridg – because it was a fairly nice weekend there were a lot of other aircraft wanting the same thing so when I initially called for the clearance I was ‘number four for the harbour zone and expect a delay of 10-30 minutes’ – bugger! Discussed it with my passengers, decided that we’d give it a go anyway and if the delay turned too long we’d just continue up the coast instead – still fairly scenic but not entirely what we were planning to do. As it happened, by the time we actually got to the coast we held for about five minutes and the clearance became available so we managed to get to the bridge anyway. My passengers were most impressed! Orbited just near the bridge for a bit… we even managed to get clearance to track back to Bankstown via the Parramatta River rather than having to go all the way out the way we came. Back into Bankstown for a somewhat firm landing (doh! Ahh well can’t win ‘em all).
Two of my passengers had never been in a light aeroplane before and they were most enthusiastic about going up again sometime – I guess that means job well done!
And the best bit is, we were cost sharing – so I got an hour’s flying for about AU$40… too good!
So… the things you can do once you get your licence… considering this was, actually, only the second flight I had ever done with passengers on my full PPL I was pretty damn happy with what happened. It wasn’t perfect by any means (there were a few small problems along the way – at one stage I had QNH of 1007 set instead of 1017 OOPS!!!
– the controller picked it up and let me know) but it was a fairly simple flight to start building some experience with.
Just thought someone might be interested… that’s all!
Adam