The CFS had some trips out to Christchurch tower organised so I put my name down, four of us headed out there this morning just after 10am.
After the long climb up the many stairs we were up there, awsome view, three controlers all in order, Delivery, Ground and Tower. Many computer screens with radar scopes and lots of interestings stuff.
They were all real friendly, I got talking to one old chap doing Clearance, we talked for a while, about not alot really, he talked about all sorts of things, comm failures, flightplans, airspace, seperation. Proably thought I was a bit of a smart arse.
We were up there for over an hour, I spent most of my time talking to this one guy, also spoke the ground controler for a bit, didn't talk to the tower thow. As we were there the traffic flows picked up a bit, the 772 departed along with some 73s and turbo props and lots of lighties. I got a couple of pictures..
The flight plan of the departing singapore 772! And the sad thing is I reconise alot of that route.
Flightstrips. Automatly printed with sqwark codes and all.
Theres the old fella I chated too (poor guy, proably didn't want to talk to me all that time
)One of the neatest things is the databases they have accses too, such as the aircraft information, enter a rego and it can show you everything about it. And flightplans, and their radars aren't limited to the Canturbury area!
I really enjoyed our and hour and a half or so, was great too see it for real.
We got back to Wigram and I got to work cleaning, around one o'clock a woman asked if I wanted to come in the DC3 with em, it was being taken for a run as tomrow they are doing some special flight so just wanted to take it for a short run. There were quite alot of us in there, I sat just behind the wing.
Heres a couple of photos I took..
I then, with a smile on my face, went back to cleaning CUW one of the CFSs two Cherokee 140s. Cleaned that till it was very clean untill it was dark, I was amazed with the moon tonight, it was absolutly massive, the photots don't show it well but you can still see the nice sunset...
I hadn't eaten since my one muesli bar when I got up at 930am so I was rather hungry and went home once it was dark.
James
Cool pics 
