New Wings

Today I flew MTW out to Bankstown and delivered her to her new owner.
As always she performed flawlessly and even though a quartering tail
wind made my arrival a little more work that it could have been it was
smooth as always. I took the new owner for a circuit and managed a
greaser for the landing, I wish him all the best with MTW and if he
has half the fun and adventures that I did with her he will be a happy
man!

Then for the return trip I got to fly MGZ for the first time, I have
to admit on first seeing her I was a little disheartened. If MTW was a
show pony, then MGZ is a work horse and that is after all what I
wanted, found and acquired. The seats are great, the avionics superb,
the paint OK but I think it will look great with a bit of a clean and
polish and a touch up of the paint in a few places. She has a climb
prop and so has a much better climb rate that MTW, she has longer more
efficient wings and so glides better than MTW, but she loses about
10knots in the cruise as a result. Swings and Roundabouts. She is a
very sweet aircraft to fly and on landing at Bathurst I had another
quartering tail wind and it was easy. On the way back from Bankstown I
was so enthralled with the avionics I got about 10 miles off track.
That is actually quite funny as on the way in I was tracking outbound
on an NDB and using the VTC to navigate and I was within a few hundred
meters of my planned track the whole way, on the way out I had $25,000
worth of Garmin moving map avionics (430W) to distract me and I was
so busy pushing buttons I forgot to navigate. Ha.

The weather is looking OK for the return trip, I plan to leave early
in the morning. I will have occasional thunderstorms to dodge crossing
NSW and SA and then it should be good weather for the return to WA. I
am optimistic about getting decent tail winds in WA, however I am
pretty realistic about the fact that I am going to have headwinds in
NSW and SA. Worst case is 25knots, but I am hoping that by picking the
best altitude I can get them down to 10 or 15 Knots. As long as I can
keep at least 90Knots grounds speed I will be OK, 100knots better, 110
Happy, and 120knots plus as I just love watching the miles count down!

I was spoilt on the way here I had 130knot ground speeds across NSW
and I felt like I was in a much faster aircraft, lets face it,
130Knots is Arrow speed and for 32Lt per hour you have to be happy,
that beats most cars on the road today for litres per 100km and you
are doing almost 250kph

I have a good feeling about MGZ, we don't know each other very well
yet, but I think there might be something in the air!