Sunday was a great day for flying, despite the shroud of smoke covering the Blue Mountains almost in their entirety. This was my first trip outside of my familiar area covering Bankstown - Camden - Wollongong.
Original plan was to head to Katoomba - Oberon - Bathurst, but we had to change that once we got up in the air and saw that the smoke obscured the whole area! The weather report did mention smoke, but I had expected a few plumes here and there - but at least i halfway expected it so wasn't too suprised it was there.
This gave an opportunity to do an unplanned diversion - we picked a prominent spot a bit to the south, Trial Hill and headed towards that and did a nice spiral climb to 7500' where we could see clearly over everything, and put down a positive fix and new time on my map.
As luck would have it, from that point, i was able to parallel my original planned track and ended up in Oberon and Bathurst only about 5 minutes after original plan... well its not luck really... good preparation and CLEAROFFs really work!
Landed in Bathurst after overflying and seeing the wind direction actually favoured the dirt cross strip. That was my first landing on a dirt strip, and it went really well! I expected it to be more difficult or something.
A nice gentleman in the Bathurst Aero Club allowed us to use the facilities and use the space to have a stretch and talk about the plan back. This time, the plan was to forget the plan as we were going to get lost!
by then the wind changed a bit, now favouring the sealed runway 17 so we backtracked and departed to the south. Once at height, Brett took away my maps and covered all of my gauges and compass and picked a heading of 150M and told me to just fly for 10-15 minutes. After that time, he gave me back my maps and instruments and said "OK get us unlost". So knowing where my last positive fix was, and my heading, as well as a quick calculation of ground speed I was able to find a probable area which I circled on the map - then things started popping into view - powerlines here, a river there, and before long a postive fix over Teralga.
He then attempted to get me completely lost, but using the same principle, I was able to DR on some power lines and substations and eventually headed towards a couple of towns and prominent reservoirs which put me between Bowral and Moss Vale.
Since the original plan was to have gone Bathurst - Oberon - Camden - Bankstown, I simply followed the rail line from Bowral to Picton to Camden, then back home! This was one of the best lessons ever, it is always encouraging when you get to take the theory and put it into practice and see that it really works. Does wonders for the confidence as well. Can't wait to go up and try it again and again...
Next lesson is diversions, though we had a nice unplanned preview this time due to the smoke, and low-level navs.
I'll post blog link when I get it posted, thanks for reading!