Twinstar backseating and an open day

Yesterday a friend of mine was kind enough to let me backseat his second ever DA42 flight, which involved circuits under VFR conditions. We were in ZK-CTH, which is the first Twinstar to have received the new CTC livery. He practised both normal and flapless circuits, with a go around thrown in for good measure! Some non-standard right hand circuits were also practised, as was a rejected takeoff. During the stop and go, the instructor asked for short a field landing and take off which really gave a sense of the power the aircraft has. I just cannot wait to get to fly one myself!

Can you spot Clearways?

Today was also the CTC Hamilon training centre's open day, meaning about 150 people visited the airport to have tours of the building as well as listen to a talk from both CTC and the guest airline, who today was Jetstar. Hopefully a useful day to all the guests! 

Oh and me being me, of course I snapped some photos in the hangar as I passed through it. 

New colours on a Cessna

Leeds Flyer Show

This weekend I was lucky enough to have gone along to help CTC with their stand at the Leeds Professional Flight Training Exhibition. This took place at the Hilton in the city centre of Leeds on Saturday from 10am until 5pm and was open to all those considering a career as a commercial pilot.

As well as other flight schools, there were also some airlines, such as Jet2 and British Airways there and so it was nice to have a chat to some of the guys on these stands as well. The day was particularly busy - a lot busier than I had expected which is always a good thing! We had lots of questions - primarily revolving around employment opportunities, finance, CTC's fleet of aircraft and of course New Zealand!

I hope that we managed to answer all the questions we were asked well - I know for a fact I was chatting to various people from before opening to gone half past five, so needless to say I didn't have a quiet moment all day!

Would just like to thank CTC for letting me come along and sorting out the various arrangements and hope that the day was considered a success by all!

✈✈✈I now have a 'Contact Me' section on the right hand side of this page - if you have any questions at all please free to get in touch; I'd love to hear from you! 

March Open Day

Rubbish Blackberry quality, but still pretty cool nonetheless!

I helped out at the CTC Nursling open day today. It was great to finally be one of the cadets that I remember seeing when I visited the training centre! All of us volunteers were put into small teams and rotated around the building so that everyone 'had a go' of everything. I really enjoyed helping in the selection room, as it was nice to try and help people who were exactly where I was not even a year ago! I managed to get myself helping on a fixed base Boeing 737 300 sim, which was amazing. I started off by controlling the computer to reset the sim/position it, but after a short while I was soon put into the left hand seat helping the pilots-to-be land this 737 Classic into Gatwick, which isn't really something I get to do too often. Luckily when everyone had left, the sim wasn't booked for any training so a few of us cadets were allowed to have a play around on it ourselves, which turned out to be my first (if unofficial) sim session. Basically I had a great day, met lots of people and had a lot of fun. Cannot wait until Wednesday when I have another sim session booked!