Sunday, May 15, 2011

Flight lesson

Ardmore airport is a small but very busy airport about an hour south of Auckland. I had a flying lesson at Ardmore a few weeks ago which was a birthday present for the 50th and it was a lovely hot fine day.


The plane is a Grumman American, 2-seater. It has the look of an old fighter plane about it. First there is some checking to do. There are so many checklists for pilots. One of them is to check various things outside the plane, like taking some fuel from each tank into a glass vial and looking for any water or contaminants.



I was invited to check for stone chips on the propeller. The cost to replace one propeller is around $30,000 to $60,000!




The hot sunny weather creates updraughts from the warm air rising from the land. This makes for plenty of movement (turbulence). Great fun.

Perhaps foolishly the instructor, Tim gave me control of the aircraft for take-off, most of the flight and landing except when taking a couple of photos. Landing can be tricky! Awesome.