Got my Arrow rating!

Well folks, after dreaming about it for months, I finally got my Arrow
rating! I have a bit over 200 hours total time, 100 or so hours of
which in Archers, and now have taken the next logical step. Here in
New Zealand we don't have ratings or endorsements specifically for CSU
or Retract, or high performace for that matter (except for turbine
rating, but that's another story), but on the flip side, we have to
get a type rating on every type we fly, which is usually not a big
deal.. P.S. this is an Arrow II

Anyhow, on Sunday I had my first flight with passengers since getting
my rating, and it was awesome! I went with another, more experienced
Arrow pilot, as well as another friend of mine. I did 0.5 and he did
about 1.5.. I flew the first leg from Hamilton to Rotorua, and had a
airspeed of 135 showing most of the time, much nicer than the 120 I am
used to! Had my GPS 96C with me, which made navigating there trivial,
and Rotorua doesn't have any special procedures, so we called up and
were cleared in straight away. Pulled the throttle back a little and
got the speed back to below 130, then dropped the gear, and did a good
approach and a slightly misjudged landing (was a bit lower than I
thought, ended up touching down before I had fully flared, but was
still mains first then nosegear and quite a smooth touchdown, so no
worries). I then parked up and we went off for some lunch, then I
switched seats with my friend, who, after being made to hold on the
ground for ages, took off and flew us to Whakatane via Tarawera for
some nice scenic pictures. We landed at Whakatane and got fuel, then
wandered around for a bit and met some friendly local pilots, plus the
hangar cat.. The terminal building is the most wacky, bizarre terminal
building I have ever seen - I initially thought it was a big
McDonalds(tm) kids play area attached to the terminal, but it turned
out to be the damn terminal building itself!!
Then we were off back to Hamilton, this time my friend obtained
clearance to fly back in controlled airspace at 5500ft, which turned
out to be between cloud layers, and since the layer beneath was broken
but we could still see down, we were still legal VFR, and we also got
a nice smooth ride home.


In preparing for this rating, I spent a lot of time mucking around on
a flight sim (X-Plane), getting used to flying a CSU and retract, and
found that helped a lot when it came to the procedures. I also found
an excellent set of Piper aircraft at air.c74.net, which is a
commercial package, but it's so inexpensive and so amazing you'd be
silly not to get it. It contains a couple of fantastic Arrow models
(I and III) that I've been using and they seem pretty close to the
real thing..

And of course, I have been going through all the previous threads in
this group on this subject, and I just wanted to thank all those who
have contributed in the past, I have tried to read and absorb what's
been written on this subject, and I found reading it has been very
helpful!! Thanks guys!