The Home of CP16

Birthday Stunts

What better way is there to spend your birthday than jumping off a bridge. Well, that's what Phil thought anyway. The prospect of the big quarter century was obviously too much for him so he decided to throw himself head-first off the 47 metres high Auckland Harbour Bridge. Fortunately, some bloke had tied a bungy chord round his ankles but it didn't stop him from getting wet!!

We will try and figure out if we can upload the video of his jump onto the site. Rumour has it that some of CP16 are considering doing New Zealand's largest bungy from the Nevis cable car (about 150 metres high) so we may get some interesting photos from that one!

Duck Tales

Here's a story of one man, his aeroplane, a field and 2 farmyard animals.

When Nik set off on this epic journey with Danielle he was unaware of his fate that sunny afternoon. Everything was going swimmingly in the lesson on Precautionary Landings which basically entails picking a field to land in if the weather gets bad.

So, there he was, our hero, bumbling along when Danielle says the weather has deteriorated and Nik, being a fantastic pilot, knew exactly what to do...

HASELLL checks, 75 knots 1 stage of flap etc etc etc zzzzz....

The next thing to do is find a field. Now, in New Zealand there are lots and lots of them. The main problem is that finding a flat one can be a bit tricky. Anyway, Nik sees one that looks ideal except for the dark specs dotted around it.

'What could they be Nik?' Says Danielle.

The reply from our intrepid aviator was not the expected one.

'Ducks' he says, confident that they would fly away when he approached.

Now we would like to know what was going through Danielle's mind at this point, bearing in mind that she could see what they actually were and also that it's difficult to see a person from that height, never mind a flock of water fowl. We assume she thought that he was joking as she decided to allow the descent to continue.

Down to 500ft and Nik gets a bit of a shock. What had seemed like harmless ducks from 900ft had miraculously turned into New Zealand's largest herd of 'Brown Swiss' cows.

We would like to point out that one of these cows probably weighs more than a Katana, our trusty steed and would have made a bit of a mess had Nik actually needed to land there.

For future reference we have decided to post two pictures here just in case Nik ever finds himself in a similar situation and there is no confusion.

COW

DUCK

Latest News

Well Ladies and Gents, it's been a while since our last update so we thought it was about time we let you know about our latest goings on.

We'll start with the big news from today. It seems that we will be leaving Auckland a lot sooner than we thought. We were all called in for an urgent meeting (some of us were in the air at the time and got a 'land now' radio call) so we knew something important was brewing. It seems that there is a problem with the lease renewal on our accomodation so the decision has been made to move to Hamilton sooner rather than later.

'How soon??' We hear you ask....

3 weeks and counting is the answer! The weekend of the 8th and 9th of October has been set in stone as the big move days so we don't have too long to get ourselves organised. Hopefully there won't be too many teething problems although we all reckon there will be some. For starters, there is going to be an instructor shortage as they got as much notice as we did! We are moving into new 'Halls of Residence' type accomodation which will ruin our (in)famous meal times a bit as we will be sharing cooking facilities with another 14 or so people!

On the flying front we are all getting on at a decent rate with the short course Scots just about ready for their New Zealand PPL tests. Hopefully they will be finished in the next week or so. The Long Course Losers...I mean Legends (guess who's writing this!) are not too far behind so hopefully they will get them finished before the big move.

The other business news is that we have finally been given rostered days off. Now we know a month the days we will definately not be flying so hopefully it'll give us the opportunity to organise some sort of road trip. Stayed tuned for details.

On the rumour front, some members of the course have apparently joined 'Ray's Gym'. Now surely that has nothing to do with a newfound love interest and the need to shed those love handles??

Well folks we can't think of anything else to add, 'Friends' is just starting and our own Gordon Ramsey (aka Nik) is preparing another culinary delight so it's time to sign off.

Don't be shy now folks and give us some comments as we get bored of talking to each other all the time.

Andrew's First Solo

At 9:23am the waiting was finally over! Having completed the solo checkride, Andrew was let loose in SFF 'Foxy'. Still coming to terms with the sudden and tragic demise of the fleet's flagship, SFE, our intrepid Warringtonian was able to give a knowing wave to some local spotters that had gathered at the runway threshold.

Full power was applied and flight D12 to Ardmore was underway. Andrew claimed afterwards that the Katana performs much better without the added weight of an instructor...more likely Foxy wanted to get back on the ground ASAP! At 1100ft, and 2 minutes later, Andrew was downwind runway 21 ready to make a quick radio call and perform the pre-landing checks. In no time at all, SFF was established on finals and the tray tables were being retracted in the cheap seats!

Andrew proceeded to adjust pitch a little, a little yaw too, and brought Foxy down for a nice, smooth (relatively!), landing on 21. Better than Neil Armstrong. Way better than Pete Conrad! After the flight, Mr Hart was in a philosophical mood:

"I often catch myself looking up at the circuit, from Ardmore, and from our house in Papakura. I look up there and wonder, when will I be going back, and in what aircraft will that be."

Based on current progress Andrew, expect to fly again in October in SFB!