NZFF

I missed my usual Saturday morning lie in today, to meet up with fellow NZFF'er 'tomohawk46' down at Ardmore for a flight in ZK-XAT around Auckland with my Dad. We took off just after 7.30 as the sun was still rising, and headed up past Music Point, down the Waitemata Harbour, around the city centre, up to to the Whangaparaoa Peninsula, then back down the coast towards Managre for a fly-by over NZAA. Here are some photos that we took between us during the flight:

Climbing out over Whitford- loving the Garmin avionics


Downtown-


The Harbour Bridge-


Long Bay-


Lake Pupuke-


Busy International Apron at NZAA-


Runway 05 was active this morning, perhaps you could copy these grass stripes into your sim ground texture Charl:


Heading back to Ardmore via Karaka-


Downwind in the circuit after a T&G on the grass-


On finals for 03 sealed behind Tango Alpha Sierra, with ZK-CIT lined up waiting to take off for banner towing-


Parked up on the ground-


Thanks to the Auckland tower controller who gave us clearance into the zone!

Nice pics. Yeah those digital instuments look good!

Andrew , I really do like airport shots its amazing to see the tiling between concrete and asphalt, and the weathered age between recent worked areas.

Trolly wrote:

QUOTE (Trolly @ Jun 14 2008, 12:30 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Runway 05 was active this morning, perhaps you could copy these grass stripes into your sim ground texture Charl

Great series Andrew!
I did this loop with HeliTranz the other day, amazing how Lake Pupuke can be freshwater, so close to the ocean!
As to the grassy stripes at NZAA, well this is the NZ Scenery Kid's** hi-res territory.
We'll have to come up with a suitable bribe to get him moving.
I'll toss in free use of wheels for the field trip, how's that for an opener?

** Aka Robin Corn, RealNZ scenery designer of note.

Very nice pics, Trolly, it's good to see that you can get such great shots at this time of the year. I'd sure like to get hold of the tarmac shots, if they are bigger. Are they your pics, Trolly?

That's the main thing which is holding me up at the moment -- at this time of the year the weather can be a bit of a lottery, I actually did the main Wellington photoshoot a week after the shortest day, which was a real nuisance -- the low sun makes things very tricky, and the tarmac was covered in puddles.

But Trolly's pics have the sort of lighting I'd want, nice and flat. However to guarantee good lighting I'd really need to visit for a while -- taking ground level pics most of the time, as this doesn't depend so much on the weather, and doing the aerial flight when the conditions are good.

Funny, I remember the weather always being great when I lived in Auckland years ago -- it would rain every day around 4pm just to clean the streets and add a sparkle to the air, but the rest of the time it would be beautiful. No good for taking aerial photos mid-winter though:)

However, I do have some photos from previous Auckland trips, and I am making progress with NZAA, albeit slowly. At the moment though I'm working on the FSX version, and I'll need to convert the aerial image to old-style ground polys for fS2004.

One timely arrival was the recent Aces tutorial on jetways, so I'm building NZAA jetways at the moment.

I've very excited about NZAA, I want it to be a masterpiece, but cash-flow will continue to be an issue -- next month I become a full-time solo dad, with plenty of added expenses, so I can't really see me getting back to the good old days when I could just fly off somewhere to take pictures. It's a bit of a catch-22 -- I'm hoping that NZAA will put me back to financial viability, but first I need to finish it...

Awesome shots Trolly! I missed my lie-in too to clean -VAB

Robin just a suggestion, maybe see if the AES people will get it to work with AKL and/or WLG? That would be awesome!