L145 Flock Hill

L145 Flock Hill

Details

FormatLatitudeLongitude
DegreesS 43.1333291°E 171.7926631°
Degrees, MinutesS 43°07.99975′E 171°47.55979′
Degrees, Minutes, SecondsS 43°07’59.985″E 171°47’33.587″
New Zealand TM Grid52235851501800

Altitude: 2973 feet

Runway heading: 140/320

Description

This landout site derives its name from Flock Hill Station. It lies between two actual hills: Broken Hill to the south and Purple Hill to the north. The ‘official’ landout site lies directly to the Southwest of Purple Hill. There is however an alternative site : directly to the south of Lake Peason, just a little further to the Northwest of the official one. The second site, is 1 large area with some fences (red lines in the top-view below) dividing it into 3 smaller paddocks. The southernmost of these paddocks has a barely visible but nasty undulating part in it, on the map below shown as an orange line, you don’t want to land there. Since the line in practice divides that one paddock into 2 landable areas they will be referred to as separate paddocks (3 and 5).  The yellow numbers correspond with the numbers of the pictures below so you know where they were taken.

In a Northerly wind paddock 1 would be your best bet (740m long), in a Southerly paddock 2 (700m long) could be a good choice as well. Paddocks 3,4 and 5 are possible too.

Top view of Flock Hill, the official landout site is paddock 1, the paddocks 2,3,4 and 5 are landable as well
1. Paddock one, it’s huge and flat, very easy retrieve, either by tow or road retrieve
2. Looking towards the southeast corner of the paddock
3. Northernmost point of the paddock, again looking to the southeast
4. The paddock to the west of paddock 1
This is how you’d see the paddock when on finals
The view from further to the southeast, Lake Pearson clearly visible, Craigieburn Range in the background
10. The entrance to Flock Hill Station
10. Flock Hill Lodge, if you do landout at Flock Hill it will be easy to shout your retrieve crew to something to eat/drink here
5. Paddock number 5, easy road access
6. Between paddock 5 and paddock 3 the ground is quite undulating, you wouldn’t want to land right there, it’s the orange line in the top-view above (they both belong to the same larger paddock though)
7. Looking south towards Broken Hill
7. Paddock number 3, looking north from the southern end of it
8. Southern end of paddock 2, looking north towards Lake Pearson, this paddock is sloping downhill to the lake!
9. Northernmost point of paddock 3, looking south
9. Looking west
9. Looking northeast, this is the fence between paddock 2 and 4
9. The fence between paddock 3 and 4

 

View of the alternative site from the south
Same from higher up
Photo taken from the same position as the photo just above but turned about 90 degrees to the right, here the official paddock can be seen again (the last paddock on the left of the road in the bottom right corner)