March 2, 2011 Dunedin

The Storm; A Girl named Sue; Ridge Flying; The Waterspout; Christchurch Embassy; The Long Flight Home


When we left the main house last night after a delicious lamb chop dinner, with a strawberry shortcake (but not shortcake) type dessert, it was with the understanding that a storm was forecast to blow through the area today and accordingly they would let us sleep in. And we were awoke to the alarm at 6:50, although we had patchy blue skies, the trees and bushes were all swaying back and forth in the heavy winds. We ate our breakfast and then met with Matt who had planned that we would fly to Dunedin today, weather permitting. He printed out the forecast for us and although the winds were strong at the time, they were forecast to diminish through the day.

Just as we were about to go get in the car to run the 400 yards to the runway to await our guide, Sue’s arrival, she appeared breathless, exclaiming that that was about the worse conditions she had ever flown in at Geordie Hill, and perhaps we “could take a bit of coffee.” She asked me for my mountain flying experience, and I said I had little to none, at least none when it was blowing like this. She said then we should definitely have a bit of coffee to talk over what we would do. We spread out around the kitchen table and Jo made us coffee and gave us the fresh scones right out of the oven. Lauren, James, Kim (another part-time helper and another teenager) soon joined us as we discussed what we would do. We were warned that it would be bumpy and if it was too bad, we would just turn back. If we were able to get up to 7000 feet or so, it would be a quick trip because the forecast speed of the westerly winds at that altitude was 60 knots.

Sue is a 43 year old pilot who has been flying in the mountains for 27 years. She is thin, about 5’6” with brown curly hair, and looks like the field hockey coach that she is. She is very good at talking things through. So as we fastened our seatbelts, she explained that the runway was too soaked to use due to irrigation problems, and that we would use the grass surface to the right of runway. It would be a direct crosswind takeoff in heavy wind, with a slight tailwind component. With 10 degrees of flaps, I powered up, let go of the brakes and started down the field with hard right aileron to counteract the right crosswind, and drawing back slightly on the yoke to keep the nosewheel just barely touching the ground. We were off and immediately into a crab heading down the runway fighting for a bit of climb. Once we had our climb airspeed of 73 knots, and a 100 feet beneath us, I raised the flaps and we turned left to the ridgeline.

Sue asked me to just follow the ridge line on the leeward side of the valley so that we could climb faster. As the wind blew across the valley and struck the ridges on the leeward side of the valley, it would need to go up to go over the ridge, and we would go up with it. Sue kept me close to the ridge and we were getting climbs of 500 feet per minute (fpm), then at times 1000 fpm and at one time 1500 fpm. Once we had flown that ridge, she directed me to the next ridge, and then the next . In that manner, we were able to climb in no time to 7,500 feet and we turned easterly over the Rock and Pillar Range toward first, MacRae’s gold mine, a huge hole in the ground from which they are extracting gold, and then turning southeasterly toward Dunedin (pronounced Dun Eden). Crossing the coast line of beautiful, vacant sand beaches (the water temp is about 53 degrees), we passed over the whitecapped bay at 3500 feet and over the leeward side of the wonderful protected harbor with high hills on each side of the harbor, and passing a Royal Albatross refuge at the entrance where the lighthouse is.

As we flew along the ridge line of the hills on the east side of the harbor, we heard a report of another pilot that there was a waterspout near Brighton, further down the shore. Another worried pilot in the vicinity asked how high it was and received the reply, “300 feet but I’ll make sure it’s gone by the time you get here.” Typical NZ humor - “Don’t worry mate.” We flew over the city of 100,000 headed for the grass field at Taieri where our guide was to pick us up. We picked up the weather, agreed that runway 29 would be the appropriate runway, and in a strong wind (28 knots with higher gusts) set up for downwind, base and final to land with a lefthand crosswind. We taxied in and met our guide, Liz, who would be driving us around the city. First we had to tie the plane down with spikes hammered into the ground with a sledge hammer that had a loose head, consequently falling off every 4th whack, and then tying down the tail and each side of the wings.

Dunedin is home to thousands of students and Liz took us to several beautiful universities, including Otago University. That is its main purpose now, although it had been a very rich city in the 19th century due to the discovery of gold in the 1860’s. Everything had to pass through this port, both the supplies for the gold miners and then the gold itself from the mines. We visited Baldwin’s Gut Buster, the steepest road in the world, taking pictures of it from the bottom and from the top where we observed people hiking up the hill - one huffing and puffing girl said it took he 3 minutes and 20 seconds. And then an elderly man came jogging up. Are they crazy? From there Liz took us to the Dunedin Botanic Garden where she dropped Sue, Sugar and me off. The Garden also has an aviary where we saw some birds, some of which were brightly colored and some of which were more African birds. Bay could tell you all about them. :-) Sugar and I went to lunch while Sue and Liz went off to run some errands, meeting us back at the Railroad Station built in 1904.

While we were waiting, we walked to the far end and saw the sign “Christchurch Embassy.” We entered and were immediately and kindly escorted out of the room. The gentleman explained that this “embassy” was manned by volunteers who had been trained to assist those coming in from Christchurch, to find their kids a school, to find lodging and generally to provide a resource for the refugees - just another example of Kiwis taking care of Kiwis.

We returned to the Taieri airport, such as it is, and picked up the weather on the ATIS, winds 18 gusting to 29. A little better. We took off on runway 23 and turned to the west fearing that the forecast headwind would really slow us down. And it did at times, from the normal 105 knots back to the low of 52 knots. But then there were other times when we could make 80 knots. We climbed up to 7000 feet, just under the broken cloud layer, and avoiding spot showers to the left and to the right, this time crossing the southern end of Rock and Pillar Range, across the valley to Rough Range, then across an even broader valley to the Dunstan Mountains which we crossed at Thompson Gorge turning right into the Lindis River valley, through one more gorge and popping out the other side at Geordie Hill Station. We landed in the windy and gusty conditions and bade farewell to Sue who said she would see us later in the week. Tomorrow we will have Megan flying with us if we fly because, once again, poor weather is forecast.

We had another wonderful dinner with a swelling population at the main house. Jo and Matt’s daughter Heather returned home today with her horse to join James, Lauren and houseguest, Bill Charney, who is a retired United pilot and is flying a Beech staggerwing around the world.

Another late night so I’ll call it quits for now.

Love, Nat, Dad, Matt and DB

PS The picture is of Tango Romeo Sierra, our plane tied down at Taieri Airport. Note the windsock.