As only someone who understands my crazy daydreaming mind would understand, I ended up finding a use for Wolfram Alpha.

I wanted to know the amount of time it would take to fly this plane from North Shore Aerodrome to Lake Whakamaru at the cruising speed of 135 knots so that I could work out how much fuel it would use and subsequently how much it would cost….

So I put in 275km at 135 knots into google and failed. I tried the same thing with Wolfram Alpha (thinking I might have finally found something it could do) and bingo!.  Just over an hour.

For those who are interested, the plane burns 40 litres of fuel per hour when cruising.  Assuming slightly more for takeoff, at 66.92 cents per litre (for Jet A1 apparently) then this would be $33.46 one way.  Seems like a bargain if you can afford the $140k (plus GST) pricetag of the plane and the no doubt horrendous costs of storage and maintenance for a piece of airborn machinery built a decade before I was born and just a few years after the moon landing.

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