A scenic flight
A bit naughty, I know…I should stick to my lessons schedule.
Alas, in the virtual world nobody is going to reprimand me for commandeering a Skyhawk at Queenstown (NZQN) for just a scenic flight.
PaulRix’s Queenstown screenies reminded me of one of my very favourite areas in the world (my wife and I have been guilty of flying there for a long weekend about once a year when work gets a bit much and you just need to hike up a hill away from it all).
We will fly from Queenstown over Fjordland national park to Milford Sound, a spectacular deep fjord. The trip involves reasonably advanced mountain flying and hence it would be strongly advisable for a pilot of my calibre to not go anywhere near a place like this in an aeroplane. Having said that, I’ve hiked there heaps so chances are if I crash and don’t break any major bones, I know the way out so that’s all good.
The plan is to fly over Lake Wakatipu until I arrive to Matau and Wawahi Waka islands, then turn West and follow the Greenstone River valley up to The Divide and continue on the Te Anau-Milford Sound road all the way to the destination.
The weather was showing 25 knot winds, which seemed a bit extreme - so I’ve taken the liberty of using the current downloaded weather as a base but reducing the surface winds to 5 knots gusting 10.
What I will do to keep the semi-serious learning on track is put a bit of emphasis on going through the preflight inspection in detail with some help from Youtube and my guide books. There seems to be many different ways of doing the checks, even for such a simple plane - so I’m just picking one out of the bunch and going with it this time.
Coming to preflight, she looks tidy enough and appears to have the right number of wings. No obvious damage, visible airframe bending or other concerns.
The aircraft documents are in order and the maintenance checklist looks good. A good 30-40 hours before we need to worry about oil change.
Prop area clear, battery on, fuel selector on both, flaps down. Check lights.
Battery off, moving on to external inspection. Left side cabin ok, left tire looks good, no evidence of hydraulic leaks on breaks. Landing gear struts show no damage. No wrinkles or signs of strain along the fuselage near landing gear, all rivets look good.
Left flap tracks, push rods, rear of left flap.
Left aileron movement, hinges, pushrod, counterweights.
Left wing leading edge, stall warning, remove tiedown and pitot tube cover. Check fuel & air vents and primary static port. Primary static port, left side of cowling.
Nose wheel and the oleo strut inflation.
Propeller blade checks for cracks or nicks, spinner, removal of inlet cover. Check for objects inside cowling. Check air filter condition / obstruction.
Alternator belt tension, right side cowling, engine oil level check.
Right wing leading edge, air vents, remove tiedown. Right aileron movement, hinges, pushrod, counterweights.
Right flap tracks, push rods, rear of right flap.
Right cabin, right tire & brakes, strut and fuselage.
Right rear fuselage and emergency locator antenna.
Left and right horizontal stabiliser, left and right elevator, elevator hinges and trim tab linkage. Left and right rudder cable.
Vertical stabiliser, rudder, hinges, tail antennae, beacon light and tail navigation light.
Left fuselage, secondary static port, baggage door and compartment.
Fuel sumps, left and right fuel tank quantity, top of wings.
Good to go.
Altimeter and directional gyro set while waiting for the oil temperature to rise.
Wind direction is 165 so using RW14.
Leaving Frankton Arm behind.
Matau and Wawahi Waka islands and Home Hill ahead. We will turn left to the West before Home Hill to follow Greenstone river inland.
Now, here is where things are getting a little bit hairy. The flight plan was to take the Greenstone river valley to WSW (226), however I got confused.
The Greenstone river is joined from WNW by the Caples river shortly before it flows into Lake Wakatipu. I knew this - I’ve hiked both trails…but I didn’t think about it, failed to check my actual heading and flew into the much wider and more obvious Caples river valley instead. You can see in the directional gyro - my heading is about 285 rather than the 226 it should be.
As far as I know, I’m supposed to follow the river to the right, up North, to get to Lake Howden and intercept the Te Anau-Milford Sound road. This doesn’t happen the way I expect, of course, since I am following the wrong river.
Things don’t really look right, as instead of a main river flow bending to the right, I only see a tiny feeder stream leading to the right (this is Fraser Creek, as I learned later). Finally the river does lead into a right-hand bend to the North, however what I don’t realise is that I’m already over Lake Howden so I entirely miss the intercept.
It isn’t before I see a large body of water before me that I realise I’m in the wrong place entirely and that ahead of me lies the lake Whakatipu Waita, NNE of Milford Sound.
Ah well. My options are either to go back, fly out to sea and loop back to Milford Sound, or fly over the Darran mountain range to reach Milford Sound. I choose the Darran Mountains option, as that sounds the most fun, if not the safest. Up, up we go.
Finally I see the sea, the magnificent Milford Sound and the pesky road we were meant to follow.
All is well that ends well…but as I suspected, I should leave real life mountain flying to the pro’s for the time being.
The funny thing is, I’m pretty good with a map on the ground and I even know the area but I still got lost (of course the graphics are not that accurate, but still)…the decision-making time can be short when flying, even when you are meandering along at 100 kts.