New Zealand offers pilots the opportunity to fly over the back country and over soaring snow-topped mountains. Pilots can hit both grass fields and short runways. They can fly to the wineries, watch the whales, and pop in for some friendly hanger talk at just about any location. In about 15 minutes, Kiwi aviators can fly from the west coast to the east or the southern portion of the North Island to the northern portion of the South Island. And, incredibly, you can do all of this on just about each and every flight.

With its Lords of the Rings-type terrain and its easily crossed countryside, New Zealand really is a pilot paradise. Except for the weather. Ah, the weather. We didn’t have one “severe clear” day while I was here. But what the weather takes away, it also gives. Just wait it out. Sometimes minutes. Sometimes hours. For me, a hole always opened, allowing us to fly somewhere. And that’s all I asked for.

We hope our Fly New Zealand archives on 2flytv.com provide a good taste of what Kiwi general aviation is all about. First, it’s alive and well. There are only a few thousand pilots in the country, but it appears the nation is squarely behind GA. In Paraparaumu, there is an effort to turn the airport into a private development (how often have we heard that?). But everywhere you go in town, you see signs in the windows that read “save the airport”. This is a small town that knows the economic and social value of aviation.

Second, there are runways everywhere, often where you least expect them, like on the sides of hills.

And third, the blog entries should demonstrate that for an American pilot, this week was really an outstanding experience.

None of this could have been possible without the wonderful pilots- now my friends- at the Kapiti District Aero Club in Paraparaumu. They started by first teaching me how to pronounce “Paraparaumu” (Para-pa-rem) and then they took me on daily adventures through part of both islands. Special thanks are owed to Matt Dolden and David Hoyer, the two CFIs who flew with me and who put up with me butchering the names of the towns on the radio. In the weeks leading up to my trip, Matt and I emailed each other back and forth. He made sure the planes were available and came up with most of our destinations. I stressed to him the importance of flying to places where we could have lunch. I like to eat. Matt also attempted to explain rugby to me. Dave and I talked American sports and he knew far more about the NHL and NBA playoffs than I did. For some reason, he’s a Green Bay Packers fan.

As with most CFIs, Matt and Dave are preparing for a career in commercial aviation.

If you want to explore New Zealand by air, I really recommend the Aero Club at Paraparaumu. Paraparaumu is just a 50 minute drive from Wellington and if you come in the summer (that’s January), it’s a bustling beach town. If you have a few weeks, you may even be able to get rated and fly solo. However, any limitations on your medical- as I have- could make that impossible, as New Zealand has a more restrictive medical policy than the FAA.

Sometime next week, we’ll post all the pictures on one page with captions. We encourage you to contact us if you want more information on any of the topics.

Some final notes from around New Zealand… I played tourist today and visited the Parliament. I don’t even know if you can tour the U.S. Capitol anymore, but I’m pretty sure it involves going through a metal detector and being held upside down by your ankles to see if you have any deadly Bic pens on you. Here, I just walked in the front door and found someone to show me around. They have a New Zealand flag that was found in the wreckage of the World Trade Center…. New Zealand is still part of the Commonwealth, but it’s now fully independent of Great Britain. Australia keeps raising the possibility of merging with New Zealand to create Australiasia, but New Zealand has repeatedly turned them down…. Kiwis are mild-mannered today, but in the late 1800s, Parliament drew up plans to invade Fiji and Hawaii, in an effort to create a South Pacific empire that I guess would have become the surfing empire of the world. England stopped the plan… and this is really a country run by women. New Zealand claims to have been the first nation to grant women the right to vote and they have had back to back female Prime Ministers.

Back to New York City tomorrow.

-AS

May 26, West of the International Dateline

We headed back to the south island today, with the goal of whale watching. The temperature was quite a bit cooler (remember, south is the new north) and the mountains off the coast were snow-capped. Our flight from Paraparaumu took us south through Wellington Control and this time I handled the radio like I was almost from this hemisphere. The pronunciation of the reporting points, like Mana Island, were easier for me to remember. The usual routine has been for Dave or Matt to say “ok, tell them we’re at Rewarewa Point” or “Wainuiomata” or “Wanganui” and for me to say “Wellington, Oscar Uniform India (our call sign) reporting….” “ah, how do you pronounce it again?”

Many of the town’s names originate from the Maori natives. Europeans have only been in New Zealand for about 200 years. Peter Jackson has seemingly been here just as long.

We flew direct from Mana across Cook Strait (really, the Pacific Ocean) to Cape Koamaru, which is basically the shortest distance over the water. Then we headed to where the whales usually congregate, off of Kaikoura, about 50nm down the east coast of the south island. As noted before, all the different topography is within a 360 degree view. You have ocean, beach, and soaring, snow-capped mountains. At 1500 feet, we circled over the water looking for our mammal friends. Alas, we struck out. No one told the whales I had traveled all the way from New York City to visit their habitat. That, or they just didn’t care. A little disappointed, Dave and I flew into Kaikoura Airport for lunch. The runway at Kaikoura is all of 10 meters wide and 700 meters long. It’s not a case of landing on the center line, the runway is the center line.

It was then on for a big change of pace. Following the serene flight over the beach and ocean, we headed for the hills- the Kaikoua Mountains. The views were as breathtaking as ever, but the flight gave me a bit of the willies. The Cessna 172 was tossed around pretty good as 30 mile per hour winds whipped over the peaks. Dave reassured me that all was well. Still, I decided to point the nose back towards the coast where friendlier conditions prevailed, but not before snapping some cool pictures.

Tomorrow I am staying on the ground, planning a visit to the Classic Car Museum. It is considered to have one of the greatest collections of vintage cars in the world.

-AS

A few New Zealand Notes:
- They measure barometric pressure for altimeter settings in hectopascals, not inches. This is actually the standard for most of the world, since it’s metric. 1013 hectopascals equals 29.92 inches, which is standard pressure. . Still, when you set the number in your altimeter, the altimeter reads in feet, not meters.

-Several big stories top New Zealand news right now. Some country named East Timor is on the brink of civil war and New Zealand and Australia have sent troops over to calm things down… New Zealander Mark Inglis, who became the first double amputee to scale Mount Everest, has been pillared in the media for leaving a dying climber behind on the mountain. He has a weird penchant for doing television interviews while holding his prosthetic legs… and this weekend is the finals in the Super 14 Rugby Tourney, where the Hurricanes take on the Crusaders.

May 25, West of the International Dateline

I learned something about airport planning in New Zealand today.

Build them next to the sheep. Sheep needs lots of land to do what sheep do and an airport needs lots of land too. Many of the airports we’ve been to have the runways right next to sheep or other farm animals. I guess, unlike people, they don’t complain about the noise. I wonder if every time an airplane starts up, the sheep think they’re going to get shaved.

I also figured out today that the avgas here is green. I’ve been sumping the tanks of the Cessna 172 for three days, but wasn’t really sure. It
could have been blue in the right light. The piston planes in New Zealand use 100/30 Avgas, not 100LL. So they color-code it green. The auto
fuel is purple. (In the U.S. auto fuel is green. 100LL is blue. Jet fuel is red.)

The instructor I’m flying with, Matt, had to attend a CFI conference today, so I flew with Dave, a South African who immigrated to
New Zealand about seven years ago. We planned to visit the wineries on the east coast of the north island in a spot called Napier and when we
departed the weather forecast was clear. But, as discussed earlier, that really doesn’t mean much and once in the air, we found the coast
enveloped in the soup.

New Zealand is gaining a lot of attention for its wine and, while I have some bottles back on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, I had hoped to pick up a few while here. So we had to divert to Masterton (NZMS), which is also on the coast, but south of the wineries
we had hoped to hit. It’s only about 50 miles from Paraparaumu on the west coast to the east coast, so it’s possible to fly the entire width of the country in 20 minutes. But you have to navigate some pretty funky terrain on the way.

One of the amazing aspects of flying around New Zealand is how the topography changes every few miles. You can go from beach to farmland to cities to soaring mountains in minutes. It’s everything you could possibly want in flying all at once. We stopped off at a grass field, Dannervike (NZDN), to practice a grass field landing and takeoff Then, I got a chance to tackle gorge flying. The passage
through to the west is one navigated every day by Kiwi pilots, but it was a real first for me. Typically, I like a lot of distance between me
and anything I can hit, so this was quite the adventure. The 172, with Dave confidently showing me the way, handled smoothly as we threaded
the needle with the mountains on either side. Dave remarked it’s like a fighter jet flying in the movies. Masterton is an uncontrolled field,
with a narrow runway. I nailed a perfect landing after two go-arounds. Dave was kind, saying it’s hard to judge the approach to a runway with
unfamiliar landmarks on either side. I’ll accept his analysis, since it puts me in the best possible light.More weather is moving in, so I
may be writing about Paraparaumu’s car museum tomorrow.

-AS

THE SOUTH ISLAND: From Paraparaumu  to Nelson
May 24, West of the International Dateline

We crossed the Pacific Ocean today. More on that in a moment. But first, after two days of flying in New Zealand, I’m declaring myself an expert on forecasting the weather.  You simply cannot, at least not at this time of the year.

Just like in the States, there are many ways to help determine the current and forecasted weather.  You can call a live briefer, check various internet sites, look at live w, and get a little creative.   With blue skies overhead, but low clouds all around the field, Matt and I climbed above some beams at the Aero Club to get a good 360 view.  We determined it best to wait it out a few hours and, as he expected, the weather improved to the south.  New Zealand is basically two giant islands, so the weather moves in and out quickly, often, I’m told, from the south to north.  En route, Matt text messaged Paraparaumu, keeping abreast of the ceiling, in order to make sure we could get back in.  I’m definitely trying the text messaging option back home.

Our flight plan today took us from P across the strait to K, where we captured some excellent shots of low-level clouds.  We then headed southeast, to the northern portion of the south island.  The 30nm trip would be entirely over the ocean, so Matt and I donned life jackets.  We bobbed and weaved around the puffy clouds, climbed to 6,000 feet, and contacted Wellington controllers, since we were flying inside Wellington’s Class C airspace.  As we approached the north island, we dropped below their airspace and began the sightseeing.   The islands  (Capes) that are sprinkled across the north island really do look like Middle Earth.

We headed toward Nelson Airport (NZNS) and contacted Nelson controllers.  Finally, I thought, a name I could pronounce.

N is a popular vacation spot for Kiwis and is the home to several breweries, including Mac Beer, an up and coming New Zealand brew.  During the summer, which is December, a hop across the airport fence puts you right on the beach.

Still to come… a trip to the wineries on the east coast and whale watching along the south island.

-AS

DODGING THE COWS AND THE CHANGEABLE WEATHER

May 23, West of the International Dateline

Matt, an instructor with the Kapiti District Aero Club in Paraparaumu, and I had emailed each other for three months in what was ultimately one long pre-flight conversation. It began when I had sent a blind email to the Club’s in-box, telling whoever might answer that I lived in New York City and was planning a visit to New Zealand. I wanted to fly as much as possible and asked if someone would be interested in serving as co-pilot and guide. Matt answered the call and we finally met today at the Paraparaumu Airport, which is along the west coast, about 40 kilometers north of Wellington, New Zealand’s capital. By the end of the week I hope to be able to spell “Paraparaumu” without looking it up.

New Zealand is below the equator and to the west of the International Dateline. North is the new south (it’s winter and it’s warmer up north) and Monday is the new Tuesday (everything is a day ahead). And your typical aviation math needs to be recalibrated in your head to handle the metric system. (I know — the rest of the world uses the metric system. When I went to buy a pair of jeans, the salesperson was very understanding when I struggled to figure out if I fit into a size 80.)

Our first flight today would be in soggy weather. But most of New Zealand sits in Class G airspace, with the lower minimums for legal vfr flight. The near-by airports were reporting visibility at “30”, which sounds more exciting than it is when you realize “30” means 30 kilometers. Still, that’s a solid 10 miles or so. Though ceilings were low (those are given in feet, so I was more confused then normal), we headed out.

In just the first day we were able to cover a lot of the north island (New Zealand has a north and south island). I had never flown into a grass strip before so Matt made that our first stop. We landed at Foxpine Airpark (I kept calling it Foxton because that’s what I thought its name was) and spent some time speaking with Kiwi pilots John and his wife Jennifer. The two own the airport. Along the way we did some low-level flying, which is a must since a good number of residents are cows and sheep.

Then, Matt and I headed north- dodging some rain- and grabbed lunch at Wanganui Aerodrome. I think my pronunciations wreaked havoc with anyone who bothered to pay attention to me on the radio. We had a couple “toasties” for lunch.

On the return trip we made a quick landing at Otaki Aerodrome, which was an airport because it had a windsock. Matt kept asking me “do you see the runway?” I didn’t realize the runway was the empty field between where the cows were hanging out. I’m not sure which scared the cows more—my landing or the leather jacket I wore.

Tomorrow: The South Island

A note about New Zealand user fees. They might as well put EZ-PASS on the planes because there are so many tolls. Filing a flight plan costs $7NZ. Speaking with air traffic controllers is another expense. Landings fees are everywhere.

A note about commercial flying. I had a lovely 20 hour flight from New Yorkj’s JFK to Auckland. If you say flying commercially is about the halves and the halve-nots then you suggest half the people who fly actually have a good experience. That can’t be true. Flying is more like the one-tenth and the nine-tenths. For this trip, I got to be part of the one-tenth, enjoying first class on Air New Zealand. A picture attached is me in my pod, with a bottle of wine.

-AS