A Day In Wanaka 17/10/2011

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A Day In Wanaka

The day started off pretty early and was busy trying to make the decision whether we'll be able to make it home or not due to bad weather approaching from the south. After studying Metflight and discussing with local pilots useful knowledge of the area, the decision was made that we would wait out the weather. We possibly could have made it out of Wanaka in the morning, however we felt the weather would have caught up with us and we didn't want to risk being stuck at a not so populated aerodrome! We used this time in Wanaka to our advantage and got to experience the local training areas, being much different to the ones back home. Ben managed to finished off his mountain flying in some "real" snow covered mountains which sounded like a real buzz! Nick also finished off his low flying with Dave in a low flying zone which had its own landing strip. We learnt later that the local pilots get their students to actually land the planes there on their precautionary landings! How cool is that? It was an awesome for us all to experience different training areas and we all benefited from it. However the front soon came in earlier and faster than expected with the mountain tops being covered in a sea of grey, so we unfortunately couldn't do anymore flying. It was also a shock to hear about a C172 that had just crashed in Arrowtown, which we had flown over the day before. Making us realise the importance of the training we are currently doing. The photos below were taken from James' flight in TDL.

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