We are now into the late Autumn weather when if you see a nice day forecast then you go flying somewhere. The air is a little colder and smoother (especially over the sea) which makes for nice flying. So it was that I got a phone call from Neil Wright yesterday suggesting a flight to the Barrier. A quick email around other Northern Aviators Club members and a few more were interested in coming. So we lifted off at 0950 hours from Kaipara Flats airfield and headed East over the 30 nautical miles of ocean. There were quite a few boats down there as I hear the fishing has been pretty good recently.
Neil’s Allegro 2000 ZK-DCU has recently had some heavy maintenance as is now in a pristine white scheme.
We landed on the sealed Runway 28 at Claris with an interesting crosswind and were followed in by a Barrier Air Cessna Grand Caravan, in this case ZK-SDG. It is photo’d here in front of the terminal building. It had a fast turn around time and then flew a load of passengers and 2 dogs to North Shore. I think the dogs must have been flying before as they quite happily trotted up the passenger stairs!
John Crone was the next to arrive is his JMB VL3 ZK-VLT.
Darran Price then arrived with Tim Harrison in his Sling 2 ZK-SLG and the Bruce Stevenson landed a bit later in his Shark 600 ZK-SAS2 and joined us for lunch in the Fat Puku Cafe. Here he is departing before us and he was all tucked up in the hangar at Kaipara Flats before we landed back there.
There are quite a few small islands off the West Cost of Great Barrier as in this view with reflections in the wing.
Thanks very much for the flight Neil.
