First up was a Singapore Airlines 777-300er flight SQ286 from Auckland to Singapore, Changi. This was a lovely machine to fly in and the first time I’d been in a 777 of any sort. SIA have these kitted out with plenty of leg room, the full gammut of in-flight entertainment, and a nice meal on the way out of NZ. Flight time was 10:12hrs with a 5-hr stopover which we filled in with a trip into town and a meal and look about. So far so good…

Next up was a Lufthansa 747-400 flight LH779 from Changi to Frankfurt. The machine was a dusty old crate with no leg room, was totally full (ok, there may have been one seat free near the back) the meal was average, the staff were a bit cranky, and the inflight entertainment was a single CRT monitor playing tragic Euro-vision style music from German artists we had never heard of. This leg was largely unforgettable, so unforgettable I didnt even take any snaps of it.

Our next leg was from Frankfurt to Oslo in Norway on Lufthansa 737-500 flight LH3130. This was a refreshingly pleasant contrast to the previous Lufthansa experience. The 735 was roomier, the staff were friendly, the timing was great and in no time we were descending into a snow-covered Oslo airport our final outbound destination.

We had a week in Norway, a few days work in our local office, and a couple of days of conference, then it was time to brave up to the return trip. First sign of impending doom was the fact that our departure from Oslo was delayed, and ultimately cancelled which meant we had to squeeze onto a SAS 737-600 flight back to Frankfurt. This was actually a nice flight, the crew were great, altho you did have to pay for your booze, but we were starting to worry if there would be any more delays arriving in Frankfurt as it was teeming with snow there and our connection back to Shanghai was gonna be tight.

After arriving in Frankfurt and urgently trying to catch our outbound leg to China we came across the following horrifying sight of hundreds of MASH style stretcher beds layed out for stranded passengers…

Fortunately the beds weren’t for us as we got to the gate and realised crew were on the desk, most of the punters were waiting in the departute lounge and everyone seemed remarkably calm. Looks can be deceiving though, it was still bucketing down with snow outside and the 747-400 we were going to take to China ended up being taken out of service (for technical reaons). Eventually Lufthansa sourced a replacement 744 and we were unceremoniously bussed out to the tarmac to climb stairs into the beast and wait for it to be de-iced (another first for me). We made it off the tarmac without incident and spent another ditto-flight in the cramped and minimalist environment of the Lufthansa 744 experience.

By now we were over 3-hours late so knew we had no show of catching our flight from Shanghai home to Auckland. When we finally did make it to Shanghai we were lead by a wee chinese man holding an AirNZ banner to the Lufthansa counter where they (very helpfully and patiently I must say) spent about an hour sorting out a route for us to get home. Turns out the only feasible option without spending the night in China was a China Eastern A330 flight to Sydney followed up with a AirNZ A320 to Auckland.

The China Eastern prospect was alarming at first, and the old crate we were on looked very crusty on the outside, but it turned out it was clean, tidy, surprisingly roomy and staffed with nice crew who plied us with drinks and food we couldnt recognise all the way to Sydney. And of course the A320 flight was relatively excellent, heaps of room, awesome seats and entertainment, and they are just such a great machine for legs of that length to be a PAX in.

So after 48-hours of stressy travel, waiting for connections, on 5 different carriers and 6 different aircraft, we finally made it home to NZ. Phew… hope I dont have to repeat that in a hurry.

A quick chat with the staff on duty, fessed up to being a simmer, then we got a plan together for how to spend the 90-mins. Up into the sim, strap into the left seat, check Dennis into the jump-seat, then do a nervous scan over the panels to make sure I could spot where the elements were I figured we’d be fiddling with. Just sitting in the cockpit is fantastic experience on its own. I don’t know whether its an early or later build, and I don’t think it matters coz the guys assembling these things really do an awesome job. Every knob, switch, dial, screen and slider seemed to be present and active. I may never get to sit in the pointy-end of a real Baby Boeing so I figure this is about as close as I’ll get.

I knew in advance that the visual imagery seen out the window was driven through FS2004 and like most regular simmers I’ve seen the big NZ aerodromes through Microsoft’s eyes so many times that to be honest my main attraction to the sim experience was less to do with looking over the bonnet and more to immerse myself in the truly 3D equivalent of the 2D and virtual panels we’re used to. To soak up its spatial glory, touch, rotate, slide, flick, press and toggle all those things that usually we only get to clumsily click with the mouse.

We managed to sneak in a surprising amount of action in the 90-mins. Here’s how it went down.

I wanted to do an approach into Queenstown (NZQN) for a bit of fun so first up was a leg there from Christchurch (NZCH). I also wanted to do a cold-n-dark start-up so that’s what we began with on the ground in NZCH. Actually the battery was already on, IRS aligned and APU running so it was kind of a warm-but-quiet start-up really, but I got to work through much of the remaining check-lists to start-up, taxi to RWY02 and take-off and climb out of NZCH to cruise where we went to 4xRate to get us down to approach NZQN in quick order.

The main panel in the FE sim is based on an NG-737 so there are some differences compared to our current ANZ classic-737 which has a few more steam-gauges where the NG has a couple of meaty CRTs, but if like me you’ve been blasting about in the Wilco 737 you’ll be pretty comfortable when you drop into one of these FE sim seats. Pretty much everything is where you expect it to be, and once you get over handling and feedback of the yoke, using pedals and the brakes mounted on them, and actually moving the gear handle, parking brake etc, instead of hitting some keyboard
combination, you’ll be away laughing.

The approach into NZQN went well. My co-pilot (ok, he was in charge really lets face it) configured the FMC for a custom approach over the SH VOR, out past down-town NZQN and towards western arm of the lake. I made a slow left hand turn at AFTON and round Kelvin Heights while descending quietly to pass back over the aerodrome at 7000′. Then down to a final approach via another slow turn to the right over Arrowtown and Lake Hayes to land RWY23. Although I was following the FD and the way-points configured on the FMC the whole approach was hand-flown with airspeed/auto-throttle support.

Having the wrap-around visual display out the window, and having to manage the yoke and air-speed, and really paying attention to bank-angle (apparently my co-pilot wasn’t as tolerant to “BANK ANGLE” warnings blaring out of the panel as I am) meant the whole approach was way more intense than I’m used to in the PC based sim. It really was quite a thrill.

Next up was a circuit around Wellington, taking off RWY34 heading to the north, out over Paraparaumu, a couple of right hand turns to come back to the Cook St and a final right to intercept the ILS as a guide and manually land back at RWY34. This time I tried to focus on managing the throttle quadrant a little better at take-off as I’d made a mess of it leaving NZCH. One thing I’m not used to with the Wilco-733 was advancing throttles to let N1 build up then hit the TOGA switch to allow the auto-throttle to advance to take-off power.

This was pretty cool to watch seeing the levers advance on their own and meant I could focus a bit more on steering the beast down the centre line which I also had trouble with at NZCH. As you can imagine using pedals, and especially braking on them with your toes is TOTALLY different to hitting F11/F12 or ‘.’ on the keyboard at home. By now I was thinkin we must be running out of time but apparently not. Greg (I think it was, damn I’m terrible with names) reconfigured the sim to place us at the new Hong Kong airport for a short hop over the island to land at infamous Kai Tak, and to make things more interesting, if it needed to be any more challenging, it was gonna be a night flight.

Lights dimmed, dash elements spring to life in the darkness like a Christmas tree, parking brake off, throttles advance.. 60% N1 stabilised… hit TO/GA… we’re off charging down the runway… 80kts …. V1 … rotate…. positive rate of climb… gear up… I level off at 3,000 for the short level flight towards Kai Tak. I was pretty apprehensive about this one having screwed it up so many times at home and this time I’m in a full-on sim and in the dark to boot and only a couple of minutes flying time to get the heart-rate under control. Quickly the strobe lights appear in the distance, we’re over Kowloon and descending now. The city starts to swallow up the horizon either side, my co-pilot’s calmly providing hints as to how to align for approach, we’re over the strobes now.. more flaps.. gear down.. there’s the runway, a firm right turn drop the nose a little more… throttles back and touch down not far past the thresh-hold as the PAX in the back breath a sigh of relief. Pretty happy with that one, only I was on the right of the centre-line, but hey cant complain really.

By now I’m thinking about just how much action there really is in the cockpit, and appreciating how AWESOME it is to have another head beside you making calls, working the check-list, prompting and supporting, and operating the radios. It really is a hell of a task for one operator. For that HKK flight I managed to improve a couple of things a little, getting throttles off and flaring was a bit better, and by now I’m starting to get a handle on watching the bank-angle queues on the EFIS (thanx to Greg for pointing out where the hell they were). The night flight was so cool, sure you can dim the lights in the Wilco but the physical impression the back-lit panel and components make in the commercial sim are a joy to behold.

But that’s not all folks.. you also get this free set of steak knives… Or in my case an approach into the even more infamous Paro Airport in Bhutan, supposedly rated by pilots who’ve flown there as the “scariest runway in the world”.

The set-up this time was about 10 miles out, in the middle of a wide, steep-walled valley at about 16,000ft with our target runway at the end of a s-bend through the valley ahead. Seemed all very convivial at first, the sim was resumed immediately so not too much time for briefing. This turned out to be a good thing coz as my instructor leaked out tid-bits of info about what lay ahead I actually started to feel kinda nervous. This place is a total death-trap. The runway lies in the bottom of a basin at 6,000′ AGL. You approach through the s-bend, turn right out of the last turn when you first catch sight of the runway, continue descending at a healthy rate until you cross what can only be described as a cliff-face at the near end at which point you must nose down at full pitch, you lose a couple of hundred feet in a few brief seconds at which point you have to pull full-back on the yoke so you don’t smash into terra-firma, then actually level off and slightly nose-down so you contact the runway rather than float and miss the threshold at which point you’re screwed coz the runway is so short and another earthen wall of death greets you at the other end.

The instructor had a slightly different tone to his usually calm voice this time. I think he was secretly hoping I would grease it coz it sounds like most punters end with a disaster of one form or another. It actually ended up going reasonably well, and there were no PAX fatalities that I was aware of. I did float a little before touching down though at which point Greg cried out in anguish! (well it was more like a Homer Simpson Doh!) and to make contact I had to hit the tarmac pretty hard, but we ended up coming to a halt a 100yds or so before the end of the runway on full-reverse thrust and max auto-brakes. I think this was the first time I managed to get the reversers deployed anything like smoothly despite my desperate yoke action leading up to that point. It sounds terrifying and it is. Go on, try it at home, you know you want to.

There’s an excellent real-world video on YouTube of the approach into Paro, as you watch it consider that 737s and BAe146s regularly fly into this place.

And that was all the time we had left for.

Thinking about the experience afterwards I’m picking that many of the FE punters are not necessarily hard-core simmers, and that loads are attending out of interest, out of the blue and/or through the generosity of their family/friends. But I also now know that it was worthwhile for me and would be for most simmers. Sure you hear cynics claim “you can do this at home with FS9” but clearly the accuracy and complexity of the physical interface/hardware components really aren’t achievable without a huge budget, lots of skill, loads of time and a VERY understanding partner.

As a regular PC-based sim user of 737s the things that stood out for me as value from the FE were a much greater understanding of cockpit layout and general spatial awareness, better appreciation of the team work and sequencing, getting a good handle on realistic feedback and aircraft responsiveness from the yoke and pedals, and a better idea about use of VNAV and other MCP and FMC features from talking with the instructor during the low-workload moments. The instructor gave me almost enough rope to hang myself but would calmly but firmly point me back in the right direction when things were going awry. This was subtle enough to not be condescending which is important, you don’t want to be treated like you’re in a lecture you are trying to get a real experience of your own.

Knowing what I do now I’d definitely shell the money out of my own pocket to go again. One thing I would say if you are considering it is to really add value to the experience make sure you are real familiar with all the panel layouts in the 737, and by all means ask the instructor to give you the time to locate controls or switches rather than prompt you too much. Its so much fun having them read out the check-list and you actually knowing where the required control is to actuate it yourself rather than have them direct you to it.

If you’ve got an FE in your city pop in and take a squiz. I reckon you’ll be tempted, or at least motivated to start dropping hints for your next birthday or xmas pressie. Its not the cheapest hour or so of entertainment you’ll ever spend but it definitely hit the sweet spot of education and fun for me.

Chocks away!!!

I’m also not sure why its taken so long to get around to posting something about our wee baby (Princess-Two as I call her, Kym demands to be called Princess-One of course), coz despite expecting to effectively be ending life as we knew it, its not like we haven’t had any spare time to write something.

So anyway. We’ve had our baby. Her name is Paige. Kym had some complications after the birth and ended up spending a few days in HDU, but all is well now and wee Paige hasnt looked back from that crazy instant she popped out into the big bad world.

Of course, Kym may have other ideas about just how much time I will have available to spend at the laptop writing blog posts, but I’m picking she’ll be tired enough at the odd time when I’ll be able to sneak down to the lounge. My flight-simming days though are seriously numbered. In fact I’d say their number is approximately one-half of a day (I’ve got a desperate last minute flight underway right now from Tokyo Narita to Auckland which should touch down with a couple of hours to spare

Kym is being induced at 7pm tonite, which is a bummer in one respect coz we were both hoping things would pan out naturally, but in another way its actually kinda good that there is a plan now, we have an idea of what the procedure will be, its almost like Kym has a little more control. Of course that’s not quite the way she looks at it. Like most mothers she worries about the extra added complications of what is basically an intervention into something that should be happening on its own accord.

Anyway back to the previously child-less and blissfully ignorant view of what’s in store for the two of us, if you are a parent you’ll be laughing now just like every other couple we know has done as we near the big day.. “You just dont know what your in for” … followed by an evil cackle pretty much sums up the common reaction, and no doubt that’s true. My strategy has pretty much been to ignore the feedback and more or less pretend its not happening. Whats the point in worrying about things that are unavoidable until they actually hit you, especially if you’ve done pretty much all you can do to prepare. Ok so “prepare” is probably a stretch, we did go to ante-natal classes though (or anti-natal as I called it)

So here we are. Bags packed, snacks and comfort foods ready, a good stiff brandy learing at me from the shelf in the kitchen, us waiting patiently and keeping nerves at bay as 7pm approaches. I promise I wont be posting any gorey pics here later, but I will try and post something as a post-birth-father-traumatic-stress syndrome sufferer.

Wish me luck !!!

Jesus, that’d do it all right. I was in almost the exact same position when we were traveling through Africa. I was on a jeep going across a big game park (the Mara I think), I had been suffering from the African two-step so got the truck to stop in some trees, ducked out, pulled me strides down and got on with the job. Next thing there’s this screeching and wailing ruckus coming roaring thru the grass towards me, stopped me efforts short and leaped on the truck just as a troop of interested Baboons came bounding out of the undergrowth. No doubt they had fun picking thru what I’d left behind.

Ok, so he didn’t actually say it was ending but he covered some pretty gloomy topics and delivered some alarming stats at his talk at Waikato University tonight that might lead you to believe that it was. When I got home Kym asked me for a summary of the talk at the end of which she said “So was it all Doom and Gloom?“, but I guess that is the role of a journalist like Gwynne and the topics he covers. He’s in the business of informing people about broad reaching global influences and encouraging people to think about how they might themselves do something to make a change.

Dyer gave us a round-up of issues he thought weren’t a big problem, some others he thought were a problem, and a few more that were problems he was really worried about. If you’re a regular reader of his newspaper columns (which are widely syndicated, including by our local Waikato Times) you’ll know that he is a reporter who focuses on problems, so when he says he’s particularly worried about any of them then you can be sure they are issues to be taken seriously.

Some of the issues that made it into the less serious camp included American withdrawl from Iraq and Afghanistan (they will bounce back in their own natural way and time), Oil supply issues (the vendors will always need to sell their oil, to buy food and comodities), the conflict between Georgia/the West and Russia (storm in a teacup).

The issue that he really reinforced as more serious centred around Global warming, its likely affect on traditional food growing regions of the planet, potential conflict between nations over food supply, and the very real potential for catastrophic global thermal runaway that will be beyond our control if temperatures rise by more than the two or three degrees that is expected to result in this.

So was it really all Doom and Gloom? Dyer did discuss some Geo-Engineering options that are being considered to help defer the onset and initial impact of global warming but these are stop gaps which dont offer a solution to the problem of escalating warming. The scientific consensus is apparently that we are unlikely to be able to react in time to stop the process, and that global industrialisation in nations whose “turn it is” now clearly isnt helping.

So where do we go from here? I dont know that there really was any clear message from the speaker regarding this, other than looking at technology for energy generation options with less impact, doing what we can to reduce our input into warming, considering Geo-Engineering options and such like. I get the sense that there’s a big helping of good luck and timing required, but one relatively comforting outcome from the talk came right at the end when Dyer said…

“I’m not quite ready to cut my throat… yet”

It has to be said that we are pretty stoked to have ended up at Turoa for a couple of days skiing on what is their biggest EVER recorded snow-base, currently 4.5m…. or to put a little more emphasis on the statistic…

FOUR POINT FIVE BLOODY METERS OF SNOW!!!

Christ it was good fun these last couple of days, a clear blue sky day mostly on Tuesday, a bit cloudy since then but how the hell can you complain about visibility when you’ve got this friggin awesome snow base underneath the skis. For most north-island skiers its a bloody struggle to get through fresh powder, especially when the entire bloody field is covered in the stuff. Funny tho, it never seems to be a chore to have to get back on your feet and dust off a covering of dry powder. Never ceases to bring a smile to your face, and its a crack-up seeing someone else wipe-out in it and do a disappearing act.

Actually had the day off today, thats what comes with approaching your 5th decade I guess. No more getting up there at 9am every day and skiiing till you drop at 4pm. Christ its great fun, I just love the winter trip rolling around each year. Such a buzz, almost everyone on the mountain is fizzing with excitement, you hear people whooping it up, not coz they’re trying to annoy or impress you, its coz they’re so stoked to be in this amazing alpine environment.

As you can probably pickup, I’m basically having a great break.

This is mostly how I ended up looking seriously at a bike over these last few weeks.

Kym is used to me day-dreaming and flicking endlessly through mags but this time she could see I was a little more serious than usual. We went through the accounting-dance to negotiate just how much moolah I was authorised to spend and I promptly hit the streets.

After testing 8 bikes over the last few weeks and finally settling on two I fancied I visited the two stores in question at lunchtime yesterday to get the best trade deal and ended up riding out of Hamilton Motorcycles on a near-new Triumph Daytona 675. (here’s a wee video of the bike if your interested)

Got insurance sorted out this morning and went out for a lunchtime strop out of town, round a few back-roads near Hamilton Airport and back in through Peacocks rd. It was raining of course, we’ve hardly seen a dry day in the last couple of months, but the bike handled beautifully in the wet. The torque is gorgeous, it loves to rev, brakes are great, engine braking surprisingly good, the engine note is fantastic, I could (and will) listen to all day.

Its fair to say… I’m stoked !!!

EDIT: - took the long way home from work tonight, still raining, also dark, but had some more fun and picked up on some more details. I know its very shallow and cosmetic but am totally loving the tone of the Triple, especially in the low-to-mid-range area, the sound is to die for, has a slightly edgyier-than-twin but less coarse than 4-cyl sort of tone to it. A real nice grumble, not quite as distinctive at the top-end but pleasing none the less.

Handling wise am loving the way it tips in to corners. Not too urgently so it catches you out, just very easy to initiate the roll and very stable and linear as it tips in. The clutch is REAL nice too, requires very little input but still obvious as far as required input goes. Gearbox is a wee bit clunky though, could be the new-ness of the machine I spose. Oh yeah, and on the new-ness front, it still smells new when it warms up. About as close to a new bike as I’ll probably get so I intend to savour it

The season has been shaping up wickedly, the wins have been shared across a number of front runners, and now that we’re half way through its still a close thing between the top three bikes (Rossi, Stoner and Pedrosa)

So its not like we’ve got anything to complain about, the races have been entertaining, lots of thrills and spills, but it’s started to look suspiciously like team Ducati and their top rider Australian Casey Stoner might be getting their act together to the point where they would dominate the rest of the season just the way they did last year.

I’ve got nothing against Ducati winning, Honda and Yamaha have had their fair share of dominance, but noone wants to see a total walk-away season win, and Stoner being 20secs out the front just doesnt make for entertaining watching.

And to be honest I just can’t warm to Stoner, he doesnt have that crazy, cavalier, accessible persona other riders have, and he definately doesnt posses the charisma of the likes of Valentino Rossi.

Which brings me back to last nights race.

Stoner had qualified well and seemed a shoe-in to win if he got out in front early. Rossi was having none of that, he totally put it out there fully commiting to getting in front of the Ducati and staying there. He and Stoner duked it out for the first 10 laps, some awesome passing manouvers, we were roaring with vicariously adrenalised delight in Paul’s lounge as one crazy pass followed another.

Rossi the more aggressive passing and more defensive once he got in front, Stoner decided he’d sit in and watch from behind and bide his time, ran wide a few laps from the end and dumped the bike in the gravel, but remounted and amazingly still took 2nd place on the podium.

Rossi and Stoner were just in a different league out front, not to take anything away from the awesome performances from the likes of Vermuelen, Dovizioso and Spies, but the leading pair may as well have been in their own race. It was the greatest battle of this season, or last, and its been on my mind all day as a totally awesome racing hilight. Here’s hoping we get more of it.

Back home with the box, Kym unpacked it carefully, I kept a safe distance as I was on no uncertain terms banned from any contact with said device. The machine was fired up, and I watched with trepidation as Vista appeared on the screen and began to engrain itself on the silicon and liquid crystal. Some casual input from me over Kym’s shoulder eventually got HER laptop onto our home network and out onto the Internet.

The Lappy was mostly provisioned with the tools Kym is going to need out of the box, and the only thing I dared suggest I might install was a copy of Skype. This was agreed to with a look of suspicion, but I was not to install anything else, and not until the new owner had taken some time to play with the new toy.

So it was a couple of days later I thought I’d take advantage of her Ladyships absence to install Skype. Plugged in my USB stick, copied the installer over, setup a profile for her, and made a test call to the automated Skype service. I wanted to check out the built-in web camera and although I could make a call to the upstairs desktop but there’d be no one on the other end and only other living creature in the house was the Cat so how would that work……. unless…. I called the Cat…

Yes that was it, tilt the laptop screen down so the web cam was aimed at the cat on the sofa, place a call to my account logged in on the desktop upstairs, run upstairs and answer it and see if the cat appears. Which of course he did. So much for the visual image but how about some actual communication???

Our cat Kola is anti-social at the best of times but he does respond to a mouse-like squeak sound that I make by drawing air in between pursed lips, so I let rip with this squeeky sound over the Skype connection. He immediately sat bolt up-right on the sofa with a startled look on his face, glanced nervously around the room, looked suspiciously at the laptop, then settled back down on the sofa.

I figured its gotta be worth repeating the “squeak” just to make sure it wasn’t a one-off. Sure enough Kola responded instantly, but this time looked straight at the laptop, he knew it was coming from the machine, and he didn’t like it. By this stage I’m laughing to myself in the office upstairs, delighted that I had achieved a crude form of inter-species Skype communication. Now all I have to do is train him to place a call.