West Auckland Airport Parakai is available for General Aviation, drop-in visitors welcome. Radio 123.5 in MBZ.  Due to frequent skydiving, please join downwind, base or final (not overhead).  Visitor parking by the hangars down taxiway

Aircraft Maintenance 2020:  Being handy with a spanner is still necessary... but in 2020 not enough.    There is a lot of computer gear in aircraft now, with many having moving maps with the AIP information built in, and an expanded view of the runways before you arrive.   These let you spend more time looking outside rather than folding maps, looking up pages in the AIP etc.    Plus Electronic Flight Information Systems (EFIS) that watch the flight parameters and speak into your ear:   "Airspeed high" to avoid busting VNE;   "Coolant hot" to tell you immediately if something is not right.   These also provide maintenance information, seen below is the DynAero ZK-WIK having its black box examined to see what its been doing since the last service, and update the maps.

Bryn Lockie (Aircraft Engineer), and Simon Lockie (Computer Technican in a previous life) examine the electronic entrails.

Keep hydrated when flying:  In summer especially, take along a bottle of water if you're going cross country.  It can get hot in an aircraft cockpit, and being dehydrated is not ideal when landing at an unfamiliar airport for the first time, where you need your top game.   Plain water is best... soft drinks and anything fizzy can go through you very fast at altitude, and the toilet facilities in light aircraft tend to be very basic (or non existent) :(

From the U.S.A. Pilot Tips page:

Hydration, (frequent small sips, not fizzy).

“I make it a point about 40 minutes before the end of the flight, when I’m going to have to shoot an approach, to drink a bottle of water and eat some kind of energy food.

I’m not a medical expert. But I do know that one of the symptoms of dehydration is irritability. Another is the inability to make decisions and to become disoriented.

If we’re flying high—and a lot of people think IFR flying just means slogging along in the clouds. Quite often it isn’t. It’s flying along in bright blue sky, bright sun. You’re above the tops. So you’ve been sitting up there in this bright sunshine up at altitude, which certainly contributes to dehydrating.

If it’s a long flight, perhaps your last meal wasn’t even a meal, but something that you grabbed out of the snack machine at the airport. So you’ve had your pack of sugar-loaded crackers or cookies, you’ve been dehydrated by your environment, and now you’re no longer able to make those good decisions, hard decisions, that need to be made.

I always recommend for everyone and it’s because I do it myself, about 40 minutes prior to having to shoot the approach, I drink some water and eat some kind of energy food—not sugar—but some kind of an energy bar, something like that. It will really have you much better prepared for flying an approach at the end of a long, hard flight.”

New Year:   Best wishes for 2020 from the Airport management to all users of West Auckland Airport.

Gingerbread Plane for Christmas 2019, made by Emma, a student pilot learning to fly in the Tecnam ZK-CDL

Looking after the Airport's Environment:

Weed Control:   The Airport has been researching and experimenting with non-chemical control of the Alligator weed that has long invaded the ditches on the Kaipara and choked the drains.   Letting in controlled amounts of seawater has proven effective, and is much kinder to the Inanga and juveniles of other fish species that breed in the harbour, compared to spraying weedkiller or using diggers to clear the ditches.    Further work is being done in conjunction with the Council waterways biologists and the method developed is likely to be rolled out by the Council to other properties on the Kaipara Harbour and its rivers.

Bird Control:  Work on this has also been quite effective, and by studying the habits of the birds and making the airport less attractive to them, its been possible to make the birds spend more time elsewhere.   Skydive Auckland runs a bird scaring device on their swooping pond for the same reason... that's what causes the loud 'shotgun' type booms at regular intervals.   The birds are not keen to settle if they think there are shooters in the area.  With our 'Aimm' Movement Monitoring service now used by nearly half the active NZ airports, we use our client newsletters to spread the suggestions for non-lethal bird control to many other airports in NZ and Australia.

Low-emission Aircraft: The Airport's flight training aircraft have been low-emission for a long time, and produce less than half the emissions of a Cessna or Piper training aircraft.    Partly this is due to the lighter weight of the Tecnam aircraft used at West Auckland, but mainly because their 1990s designed Rotax engines are considerably more efficient than the 1950s designed Lycoming and Continental engines traditionally used for training.  The Rotaxes also use unleaded road vehicle fuel ('MoGas') getting a similar Km/Litre to an efficient car,  rather than leaded aviation fuel ('Avgas') so there is a worthwhile benefit there too...   more airports might move to Mogas aircraft if they were exempt from road taxes like those using Avgas :(.    As soon as practical the airport would like to move to zero-emission electric training aircraft and ground vehicles, and is actively investigating these.

West Auckland Airport NZPI from the SW, non traffic side.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Coming Events:

COROMANDEL NZCX:  Second Sunday of each month from 12:30. Clubhouse Ph 07 866 2055. Click here for airfield details.

WHANGAREI NZWR: Last Saturday of each month at hangar 10, the Western end of the row of hangars.  Whangarei Flying Club meeting at 10:30 with lunch to follow.  Clubhouse phone 09 436 4053.  Click here for airfield details.

MATAMATA NZMA:   Last Sunday of every month from 12 noon. BBQ flyin.  BYO meat for BBQ + gold coin.  Click here for airfield details.

-----------------------------------------------

Tower and Engineering