Moving to New Zealand!!🇳🇿
- Connor Raven
- Nov 17, 2017
- 3 min read
With only just over a week off after finishing ground school to meet family and friends it was time to pack my bags and jet off to the other side of the world. Destination: New Zealand... literally as far away as you can go! The last six of months of stress, sleepless nights and hard work had paid off with my exam results and now it was time to fly.
I was initially a little nervous about moving. Firstly, as I had been looking forward to it for so long and I didn’t want to be disappointed and secondly because I was moving so far away. The current thirteen hour time difference is quite substantial; and I knew it would be challenging keeping in contact with family and friends back in the UK. However, so far it seems to be working alright. When we arrived in New Zealand on Friday 3rd November we were picked up by mini van and taken to the motel where we are staying temporarily. The motel is lovely, the service is fantastic and the location is perfect but there’s just no communal area for socialising and the cooking in your room situation isn’t something I’m used to. For those reasons I’m very much looking forward to moving into Clearways next week!
The weekend after we arrived we had off to rest and get over the jet lag, which surprisingly I managed to get over very quickly, as well as explore the local region and Hamilton. On the Sunday afternoon a few of us went to explore Rotorua, about a 45 minute to 1 hour drive South East of Hamilton. The best part of the day was the downhill luge tracks costing $50 for three runs and the amazing view from at the top... which was free! One thing I have noticed in the two weeks since arriving in New Zealand is just how expensive things are out here. The local ‘Pack n save’ supermarket, the cheapest around I’m told, is still not particularly cheap; it’s definitely wise to create a budget plan before you come or you could quite easily run out of money with all the activities on offer too.
The first week at school in New Zealand started with the usual safety briefings and introductions before we had a tour of the training centre, which is fantastic. It was also great to finally see some L3 planes and it really made all the hard work at ground school feel worth while. After the introductions we started on the ‘differences’ course which quite simply details the differences between the UK and NZ. We spent about a day going through the syllabus and had the exam on the Wednesday morning which got it out of the way nice and quickly. We then commenced the New Zealand PPL air Law syllabus which took about two days to cover; after a few mock exams on the Friday and the weekend to revise we had the exam the following Monday morning and I’m pleased to say I passed both exams with some decent scores. The following two days was spent finishing off our last few briefs about the operating procedures at Hamilton as well as a few type specific briefs for the individual aircraft that we are going to be flying, which for me is the Cessna 172S. As of yesterday we were finally ‘on the line’ and available to fly which was a great feeling for us all. A few of my course mates have flown a couple of times already and I'm very much looking forward to getting up myself in the coming week.
After six very intense months of constant studying and revision, today I finally started my flying... in a simulator. As I am completing an MPL course my first two flights are flown in the simulator before we move onto to practice what we've learnt in the aircraft. Through out my training here in New Zealand I will be popping back into the simulator every now and then to cover certain lessons before it’s flown in the aircraft for real. Today’s simulator session was great fun and although we only covered the basics of straight & level and holding given altitudes or headings, when you haven’t flown for a while it’s surprising just how rusty you become. The instructors out here are great and the standard of teaching is very professional; even one hour in the simulator today covering the very basics of visual flight was tiring and I certainly learnt a lot!
Now it’s just a case of waiting and checking the daily schedule to see when I’m next due in for the second simulator session and from then on after I’ll be flying for real... I cannot wait! In the meantime there’s plenty of activities for me to be doing and lots of amazing scenery to be checking out.
Until next time 🛫
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