Mudgee with a diversion

Last week I planned to take my Fiance and her younger sister to Mudgee for lunch. The weather had been clear but with turbulence low level. I checked the weather and planned via Warragamba Dam, Katoomba, Orange then to Mudgee. Checked the NOTAM's and there wasn't going to be any military jets bothering us which is always a good thing!

For this flight I thought I'd book one of our club's Archer's which recently had an autopilot installed at a cost of a mere $20,000! It's not a big step up from the Warrior that I usually fly, but I did notice the extra performance in the climb.

After giving my PAX a quick brief enroute to Bankstown and arriving at the club, a quick check of the WX had me re think my plan. Severe turbulence below 5000, hmm maybe it's not such a good idea to take at light aircraft across the tree filled hills!

So I re planned for the lane of entry, hopefully giving my PAX a nice view of the city and coast as we fly north, then scoot across to McQuoid and settle in to a nice little straight leg of around 80nm to Mudgee.

After mandatory photo shoots and checking out the aircraft, we all pile in, check the headsets and I'm the only one who can communicate, a quick shuffle around and we managed to have constant communication between myself and the right hand seat but not to the rear, legally ok, but there goes my commentary!

Off we taxi, do our run ups, clearance received, out on to 29R throttle up, got my speed T's & P's all good, airspeed alive, 60kts rotate and lift off, but not for long, the stall warning goes off and I push the controls forward and we are back on the ground. I very quickly retarded the power applied the brakes, called ATC and exited the runway.
Off the the run up bay to figure out what the hell happened! I re did my runs ups and all normal, same as before, hmm ok. What did I do?
I figure I pulled to hard on the controls and increased the angle of attack and then over corrected.
So after giving the pax a little debrief on the situation and regaining their trust in my ability to get an aircraft off the ground, off we go again.
There was quite a bit of mechanical turbulence up the lane of entry out of Bankstown at low level, and checking on the pax they all returned thumbs up although looking a little petrified at the same time!

As we turned towards Mount McQuoid NDB the sister in law to be was looking pale and a diversion was needed, I decided to shoot over to Cessnock and get some dry ginger ale to sort out her stomach.

We jumped into a cab and went to Potters, a big pub nearby and all had a non alcoholic ginger beer and hearty food in the sun, not a bad life!

I am pleased to report the ride back was super smooth and much more enjoyable for all on board!

Thanks for reading.