Four weeks ago...

Four weeks ago I took the PPL skills test. The big day. Forty-five hours in the book preparing for this event. This can be described as two and a half hours of getting ragged about by an examiner, covering all the topics covered on the course. The weather was acceptable. The winds were not too strong, but it was a bit hazy with some light cloud at lower altitudes.

                After a quick brief in the clubhouse we set off, got airborne and got straight on with the navigation phase. I had a route planned heading south to the Isle of Wight, then a left turn towards Brighton. Pretty quickly we were above the cloud base, but it was thin enough to see through - see through clouds don’t count! Track keeping was going pretty well at this point. No dramas transiting the Shoreham ATZ, although quite a lot of mid-week traffic going on. At Brighton the “unplanned diversion” phase kicked in and I routed ad-hoc from Lewes to Petworth – a bit of long ‘un. To add to the atmosphere the vis dropped right off at this point, probably less than 5k but sometimes you just have to fly by the seat of your pants. The leg was not as precise as I would’ve preferred but the theory was sound.

Heading back west the weather cleared up in time for the skills section. I demonstrated some slow flight, stalls and steep turns, then a simulated engine failure. A couple of the manoeuvres I had not encountered but I just winged it. No dramas on any of those. After that lot we bombed back at a rate of knots and got stuck in with my favourite bit – some circuits. I bashed out a decent enough standard approach.  Then we did low level circuit at 650’, buzzing all the locals. Next on the list was a flapless. Now this instructor was keen to do it totally different to what I had been taught. Normally I would zoom in at 80kts, but this chap insisted that 60kts was plenty in the clean configuration. Stall horn a-twitchin’, we banged on the deck bouncy style. I think the tower counted it as one landing. Finally, we finished off with an elegant glide approach. Power off at 1000’ and swooping in silently and gracefully, like a soaring…. erm…. plane.

So why have I waited four and a half weeks to post this? Because I haven’t received my shagging licence back from the CAA, that’s why!!! That is until today when the FedEx man delivered me a package containing one shiny new EASA PPL. It thought it would never arrive. It comes clad in an oh so nice blue vinyl sleeve. What will they say down at the club?

A lot of excitement over a piece of paper

So there you have it blog fans. I have the liberty to fly pilot-in-command of single engine piston powered light aircraft. As long as it weighs less than 5,700kg. And I don’t receive financial reward for duration of the flight. And it is not rainy. Or too cloudy, or windy or if there is snow or killer bees. Or if the plane goes technical. Other than that I am free as a bird. I’d like to thank my Instructor Rich, for taking time out of his schedule and putting up with me for many hours in a confined space, and all the other people who have supported me.

King of the skies! Licensed to thrill! Sign up below for scenic flights.

Catch up

Catch up

 

Hello fellow Sky watchers!

Looking back over the blog page it appears my last post was in March. And at that stage I was at the point of beginning the navigation phase of training. Gosh, I am pleased to say a lot has happened since then. Study - I have now completed all the theory exams. Great to have that in the bag. I started taking them in pairs to expedite the process. The most challenging one to me was Meteorology. A bit like taking GCSE geography all over again. Having that lot sewn up meant I could focus all my attention to the fun part- up in the sky. After an evening navigation theory class I was set to go with Flight planning. My whizzy –wheel skills are now slick as! 

Navigation

So it is pretty simple in theory: Just a case of flying between two points in a straight line and bob’s your uncle. If you fly a heading for a set time period you will end up at a definite location. You do need to adjust for the wind which can blow you off course, but the calculations are done in advance on the ground in slow time. The end results are impressive - the accuracy of the flight path comes out rather well, in short – it works. photo of Nav route with straight legs.

Portsmouth

 This phase of the course was particularly enjoyable because it took me to different areas I had not flown over before. I even got in a couple of solo nav flights and became well acquainted with the south coast.  There’s plenty to see and lots of obvious features to keep you orientated. Getting lost is always a risk, which sounds silly, but is a very real possibility. There is always the option to get help from atc to confirm your location because they have you on radar.

Cross country qualifier

Lydd Airport

 One of the PPL licence requirements is to complete a cross country flight over 150 miles and landing at two different airports. This is really exciting because until this point I had onlytaken off or landed at Fairoaks. Back in July I went with Rich to do a dummy run of the flight first, leaving Fairoaks and flying south of Gatwick to Lydd airport. It is right next to Dungeness power station. This airport has a truly eerie atmosphere to it.  The airport has a massive runway. It is long enough to take a 747. After a can of coke we then jumped back into the plane and flew along the south coast, past Bognor and Brighton and then landed at Goodwood. This place is a world apart from the concrete paradise of Lydd. Goodwood was a Spitfire base during WW2 with the classic RAF X layout and grass runways.

What’s next?

Spiffing

So all the theory side is complete. I only have two more hurdles before I can submit my licence application. There is a radio practical test which I am currently preparing for. It involves a simulated flight and making the necessary radio calls to the examiner. I don’t mind this hurdle because it is always helpful to have accurate RT skills. You are more likely to get taken seriously by ATC and they will not oblige your requests if you sound like an amateur. “Negative ghost rider, the pattern is full”.

The other obstacle to overcome is – you guessed it – the general flight test. The biggie! The first part of this covers handling skills – demonstrating you can safely recover from a stall and are able to handle an engine failure or two. Then there will be a navigation section; this should take up the bulk of the assessment. Finally, a few circuits around the airport to demonstrate the landing skills are up to scratch. If that goes well then I can send all the paperwork to the CAA and have it wrapped up. It all sounds simple on paper. Let’s see how we go.

Btw it is now a whole year since I started-time flies!!!

Hello blogfans!

Hope 2013 is going well for everyone out there. So I’ve been up to some more flying and also took the first of seven ground exams. Alongside all the practical training there is a lot of theory to cover in ground school.

January. Oh dear. Snow, then rain, then wind, then windy rain. Can anyone remember how poor the weather was throughout January? Very little was going on in the air. So I focused on getting more study done. It’s been a while since my Uni days and I realised I’ve not actually studied anything in a long while. It really took the old brain some cranking to get into gear and I found it hard to retain simple facts. Anyway, after much learning I had a bash at the first PPL theory exam – Air law. It is a bit like the highway code of the skies. Lots of rules and regulations to pigeon learn. I passed the exam and feel quite relieved. The subject matter is very dry and honestly I’m glad to see the back of it. The remaining six exams are more enjoyable (I hope) to study for. Now I’m reading for the next one and am mugging up on wing designs and aerodynamics features of airframe construction.

In February the weather cleared up a bit and I got many hours ‘in the circuit’. I must have scored well over 70 take offs and landings now. Sometimes they go smoothly, others are a bit heavy. Keeping the nose up is important. The nose wheel is weak and the back wheels must take the majority of the impact. One day I turned up for a ‘lesson’ and my instructor, Rich, just sent me up on my own for an hour. The plane was still intact by the end so top marks!

Last week I had an interesting lesson where Rich insisted on putting the aircraft into a spiralling dive and then hand over the controls. The aim is to recover from the corkscrew safely. It’s really cool how quickly the plane gets fast in a dive. We also practiced an engine failure and then did some more stall recoveries. Quite a varied lesson.

So what’s next?

The next chapter in this story covers cross country navigation. The whole point of flying is to travel from A to B safely without getting lost. I think there’s going to be a whole lot more theory coming up for this section. I’ve bought myself a shiny VFR map so that’s the first step covered.

CRP-5 Flight Computer

Also, I’ve acquired some other nick- nacks and aviation goodies including this rather nifty flight computer or ‘whizzy wheel’ as it is officially named. Hands up who’s seen a computer that doesn’t use electricity, or have a screen. Or keyboard. No, me neither. I think they’ve stretched use of the term computer.  It’s anyone’s guess how it to use it.

Stalling Practice, another student takes a ‘crash course’ and Solo Flight.

Hello plane spotters! Lots more flying has been happening over the last couple of months. I have just been poor at writing it up. Throughout December I got into a good rhythm going and got plenty more hours in.

I’ve had a couple of lessons on Stalling. Stalling an aircraft is something that can happen if you point the nose upwards without enough speed causing loss of lift. It’s worth practicing different stall scenarios and learning how to recover efficiently without losing too much height. The nose goes up, the wings buffet and the warning alarm goes off. Then the plane plummets like a stone! Recovery is achieved by pushing forwards on the controls and adding full power. Woosh!

  

Circuit training

Sorry- no burpees, squat thrusts or crunches. After getting stalls under wraps I was introduced to the traffic circuit. This is the pattern in which landing aircraft fly in order to safely navigate about the airport without crashing into each other. From a training perspective it is an opportunity to practice lots and lots of take offs and landings. Rather than coming to a halt after touch down you simply roll along, go full power and takeoff again for another lap. In an hour you can do 9 laps of the airport.

                

The traffic pattern

We practiced different types of approaches. With and without flaps, long ones, close in ones and also simulated engine failure approaches (the glide approach). The glide approach was particularly fun.

Crash Course

Going back to Friday before Christmas, I was having a routine lesson. Practicing the circuit as normal. After several laps we came in to land and then pulled up on the taxy way. My instructor was going through the usual debrief and then we heard a panicky voice on the radio. We turned around and saw this on the Runway!!

Stacked it

Another student pilot (different club) was doing some solo work and was a bit heavy handed with his landing. ‘Oops’ doesn’t quite cut it! He walked away uninjured which is more than can be said for his plane. Bit embarrassing. Bit of a crap thing to happen just before Christmas, poor guy. No one got hurt but the runway was shut for ages.

One Person on Board 

Two days ago I had another circuits session and also did some more back seating with another student. It’s always beneficial to watch someone else’s style and listen to their patter, how they handle the controls and the radios. 

The control tower invited me to come up and collect the progress strip of my flight. 

When I had my turn, I did a couple of circuits, and then my instructor bailed out (on the ground) and sent me off to do my first solo!!! I can remember my first ever ‘solo drive’ when I was seventeen. It is eerie to be flying in a plane all by yourself. The flight only lasted six minutes but it was quite a thrill. An awesome way to start 2013.

Watch the vid!!! Hope you enjoy. Apologies for the cheesy soundtrack.