Jack and Katrina's Place

Last Sunday Katrina agreed to spare me for one day which was what I needed to keep my pilots licence reasonably current. I had been planning for a month or so to fly right across the North Island at it's widest point, from Gisborne to New Plymouth. Getting the right weather for VFR flying in NZ is always a bit tricky, to get it fine on both east and west coasts in the same day proved just a bit trickier. Nonetheless, with my friend (and commercial pilot) Anna, on board for company, I flew up the Manawatu coast past Mt Taranaki to land at New Plymouth. In the stong South-easterly, the Northern Taranaki hill country was beautiful and clear in the autumn sunshine and we had a fabulous flight via the Whanganui river gorges, over Taumaranui and then across a serene Lake Taupo. The South Easterly was still throwing bad weather up against the central ranges, so we stayed west of them, threading our way across the desert road, beneath a layer of cloud a few hundred feet above us. Around Taihape the clouds lifted and we flew down over the canyons of the Rangitikei, got cleared through the military airspace around Ohakea to follow the Rangitikei out to the coast. As we came home down the coast, Paraparaumu was in it's own patch of sunshine. Welllington had rain all day so we were really lucky to have seen as much opf the country as we did in a little over 4 hrs flying time. Maybe next year I'll get the true coast to coast flight done.