Finally the weather is suitable again and the CFI is available, so we're a go for the 170A!
Arrived at the airport and was given a route up to Stanhope with circuits at Teeside (the same as before) which I duely planned, along with the mass & balance and performance calculations. He left it to me to decide which VRP to enter by which I'd not decided on before the preflight briefing (more on that later). I felt a little rushed on this aspect of things and figured I'd decide when the time came because that's what a diversion would be like. After the preflight briefing in which the CFI outlined how the test would be conducted (which items & in what order, and what he was expecting of me) I went out and checked out and started he aircraft, shortly after which the CFI joined me.
I gave him the required passenger briefing though it was poor, shaky and incomplete (and I knew it - nerves clammed me up and I wasn't confident about it anyway). Completed the starting checks and taxied to the hold and did my power up checks. Then lined back up at the hold and started my captains brief. ATC interupted asking if I was ready for departure and I told them to sod off (figuratively of course - ie. "standby"), and completed the brief which went much better than in the previous flight which was faltering and lacking in confidence.
NB. some of the critiques of the flight in the following are as a result of the postflight briefing and some my own personal views on my performance.
Got my clearance, lined up and took off. Did all my after takeoff checks ok and headed for Harrogate and requested further climb to 4500 feet which was my planned altitude. On leaving the zone I made unnecessary work for myself by requesting flight information service but not requestion a change to Leeming Zone. They gave me a next frequency of Linton Zone and I had to come back to them to say I was going to Leeming. On setting the initial heading at altitude everything worked out ok, though initially I didn't get it in trim properly and my height ballooned to 4700 feet before I got settled down. The nav went pretty well, noted that I was 2nm left of track before arriving at my half way point of Catterick and made a heading correction and noted it down on the plog. The rest of the leg went fine and I was on track and on time. I got handed over to Teeside and requested the Tyne pressure from them and asked them if they could clear me with Newcastle which they duely did and handed me over. Arrived at Stanhope on time with no ETA revisions required.
Decided to enter via Sedgefield as I'd not done too well on my entry previously via the A1M Junction VRP. In hindsight this was a poor decision as we'll see. I requested descent to 2000 feet with Newcastle and was cleared before they handed me back to Teeside. It wasn't so easy to see with the glare from the sun now reducing visibility. I thought I had spotted Sedgefield and continued my descent towards my Teeside zone cleared altitude of 1500 feet, but it turned out not to be as they told me it was still 5 nm to the south when I called overhead. This threw me and I couldn't spot it and it started a chain reaction of events that caused me to get behind the aircraft and cock up the join.
I then climbed back up to my previously cleared altitude which was stupid and baffled the CFI - I should have continued down to 1500 feet and then I would have been fine on entering the zone. Finally spotted the windfarm that is to the north east of Sedgefield but it was on the nose so I was clearly off track (and incidently should have picked up on this when they said Sedgefield was 5nm to the south). Turned roughly south, now directly into the sun and tried to pick out Sedgefield of the airfield or anything! The CFI asked my what my cleared altitude was and I told him 1500 feet, but I was still at 2000 feet so had to hot-foot it down to 1500 feet. I also had failed to get the ATIS.
Entered the zone for a right base join for runway 23 and eventually picked out the large factory on left base and suddenly realised that I should now have been at circuit height so had to get more height off quite quickly. This meant my field approach checks were rushed and only partially complete, as were my downwind checks. I also failed to get and set QFE which, while there was only one millibar (30 feet) difference between them, was a Bad Thing (tm) - at Leeds there is roughly 22 mb difference which equates to about 660 feet! I turned onto finals without having put my props to 25 as I should have done on my downwind checks, and had to be prompted for them. Fortunately the first circuit was a flapless so I didn't have to deal with getting the flaps down which helped. Finally got myself sorted and did a decent landing.
***TBC***
So effectively the result of the 170A (Mock Test) was a ...
Wednesday, 12 November 2008
since the pre-pre-test...
I know it's been a long time since I last updated the blog, but generally the weather has been abysmal and hence there's been next to no flying, but also cos I couldn't be arsed...
The day after the pre-pre-test I flew with an instructor to polish up on the items the CFI had highlighted:
Then the weather and CFI availability stuck a honking great big spanner in the works. The weather on the next day (Thu 30th Nov) when I was due to have my 170A was marginal and forecast to worsen which it in fact did, getting upt0 20 knots gusting 32 by 12:00 (was only forecast to be a tempo of 15 gusting 25) so this put paid to any 170A that day. On the 31st the CFI was away and he also doesn't fly on the weekends which meant that the next day to try for the 170A would be Mon 4th Nov.
But of course the British weather, and especially Leeds flicked me the bird and said, "uh-uh". The airport was pretty much fogged in for four to five days on the trot (including the weekend), and even the IR pilots who were lining up for their 170A and tests couldn't fly. Totally frustrating!!!
When the weather finally cleared up on the Friday, as luck would have it, the CFI was again unavailable. However, in order to keep some semblance of currency I did do a short flight that day to brush up on steep turns & stalls and to try to boost my instrument flying time which I'm, a little short on. Everything went pretty well and Brian (who is probably the most critical of the instructors [but in a good, tell it like it is way]) was pretty happy with all the flying I did that day. So I was quite pleased considering my concern about things especially with my lack of recent flying.
But of course the weather intervened yet again and after the weekend both Mon 10th and Tue 11th were scratched because of being blustery showery days.
And this brings us up to the present!
The day after the pre-pre-test I flew with an instructor to polish up on the items the CFI had highlighted:
- Steep Turns
- Fully Developed Stall
Then the weather and CFI availability stuck a honking great big spanner in the works. The weather on the next day (Thu 30th Nov) when I was due to have my 170A was marginal and forecast to worsen which it in fact did, getting upt0 20 knots gusting 32 by 12:00 (was only forecast to be a tempo of 15 gusting 25) so this put paid to any 170A that day. On the 31st the CFI was away and he also doesn't fly on the weekends which meant that the next day to try for the 170A would be Mon 4th Nov.
But of course the British weather, and especially Leeds flicked me the bird and said, "uh-uh". The airport was pretty much fogged in for four to five days on the trot (including the weekend), and even the IR pilots who were lining up for their 170A and tests couldn't fly. Totally frustrating!!!
When the weather finally cleared up on the Friday, as luck would have it, the CFI was again unavailable. However, in order to keep some semblance of currency I did do a short flight that day to brush up on steep turns & stalls and to try to boost my instrument flying time which I'm, a little short on. Everything went pretty well and Brian (who is probably the most critical of the instructors [but in a good, tell it like it is way]) was pretty happy with all the flying I did that day. So I was quite pleased considering my concern about things especially with my lack of recent flying.
But of course the weather intervened yet again and after the weekend both Mon 10th and Tue 11th were scratched because of being blustery showery days.
And this brings us up to the present!
Tuesday, 28 October 2008
pre-pre-test
Andy gave me a nav to plan down to Sturgate with a choice of either departing from Eccup or Dewsbury. Chose Eccup as distance was much of a muchness and it didn't involve transiting the Doncaster zone directly overhead the field.
***TBC***
***TBC***
Getting close
This morning was a short trip to polish up stalls and instrument flying before an afternoon flight with the CFI as a progress check to see what I need to work on before my 170A.
***TBC***
***TBC***
Monday, 27 October 2008
Thursday, 23 October 2008
Blowin' a Hoolie!
Strong crosswinds are NOT a good combination for polishing up asymmetric circuits :-(
Mini-nav and GH
After four days of not flying I was somewhat aprehensive about flying yesterday (Weds 22nd Oct) as I felt like I'd forgotten all the useful minor corrections I had been given on the two previous trips.
Planned a short nav out to Kirkbymoorside airfield, but with the wind from the west it was largely behind me and my calculated groundspeed of 160kts meant that the 26nm would happen very quickly (in 10 mins). Clocked Knaresborough as my GEC quickly and easily but thought that I was too close to Boroughbridge and was about to make a heading correction since I couldn't spot Tholthorpe disused airfield. But the instructor pointed it out and I didn't in fact need to correct my heading. Duely spotted the destination and was on time & on track, at which point I was given Holme-on-Spalding Moor as my diversion.
Planned the essentials and turned onto my new heading. Then I got bogged down in trying to find something for a GEC and wasted valuable time until the instructor pointed out the obvious - Castle Howard was on the nose - muppet! Anyway, things were on time and on track and I tuned in and identified OTR VOR but I wasted more time faffing with my plog around the halfway point. So by the time I used the VOR to position fix myself on track I was already almost at my destination, but it worked out well and I verified myself as on the 300 radial from OTR at 27D.
Was then asked to demonstrate the stalls. Had to have a few bites at the clean stall though the basics were ok. Just forgot to do the two reds, two blues, three greens at 80kts (though this wasn't on the original instructions we were given), and also didn't bring the nose back up enough after the initial lowering of the nose on initiating the stall recovery. The approach stall went quite well only I forgot to catch the prop as I applied full power, though I did get it right on the second attempt. Finally the landing configuration stall also went pretty well and I managed to do a second and not miss out or mess something out on either.
Onto the instrument work and note to self - I must remember to set 18/23 as the screens are going up to make things easier. Did my IMC brief again so hopefully that's ingrained again. Did struggle again to get my height keeping and trip setup nicely, but once that was sorted we did the basics of climbing, descending and turning on full panel. Onto limited panel and the bastard timed turns. These went well apart from one where I was 10 degrees off my target heading and I didn't reset the OBS to my actual heading and turned the wrong way for my 3 seconds correction. Must remember to use the OBS even for small corrections, even if I only count time in my head. Unusual positions work went well and I managed to arrest the climb/descent ok (mostly) and not overshoot the level flight position into a descent/climb respectively. Might seem like a simple task, but on instruments and especially limited panel it's quite hard to judge correctly.
Once the screens came down it the final bit was steep turns. The first one was a bit poor for a few reasons, but the only one I remember was that my height keeping in the turn was all over the place. The second attempt was much better and the one in the other direction similarly good.
Headed back to Leeds, did the field approach checks, routed in via Eccup and did the downwind checks as I joined on right base for 32. Managed to more or less get the descent right and the instruction I'd been given to work on speed control also went well. Once I got fully set up on base I kept the speed relatively nicely at 90kts and then on finals at 80kts and this time I remembered the 2 reds, 2 blues, 3 greens. Did drop slightly low right at the end but I masked that error by stating that I was going for the threshold and did quite a doozy on a landing on the centreline and onle just past the threshold!
In the debrief the instructor said he didn't really have much to say - just a few minor points he'd not covered in the air. So all in all a very good trip and I was really happy with things. If all continues to go well, I might just have one more trip to polish up the asymmetric curcuits and then I might be onto my 170A (Mock test).
Planned a short nav out to Kirkbymoorside airfield, but with the wind from the west it was largely behind me and my calculated groundspeed of 160kts meant that the 26nm would happen very quickly (in 10 mins). Clocked Knaresborough as my GEC quickly and easily but thought that I was too close to Boroughbridge and was about to make a heading correction since I couldn't spot Tholthorpe disused airfield. But the instructor pointed it out and I didn't in fact need to correct my heading. Duely spotted the destination and was on time & on track, at which point I was given Holme-on-Spalding Moor as my diversion.
Planned the essentials and turned onto my new heading. Then I got bogged down in trying to find something for a GEC and wasted valuable time until the instructor pointed out the obvious - Castle Howard was on the nose - muppet! Anyway, things were on time and on track and I tuned in and identified OTR VOR but I wasted more time faffing with my plog around the halfway point. So by the time I used the VOR to position fix myself on track I was already almost at my destination, but it worked out well and I verified myself as on the 300 radial from OTR at 27D.
Was then asked to demonstrate the stalls. Had to have a few bites at the clean stall though the basics were ok. Just forgot to do the two reds, two blues, three greens at 80kts (though this wasn't on the original instructions we were given), and also didn't bring the nose back up enough after the initial lowering of the nose on initiating the stall recovery. The approach stall went quite well only I forgot to catch the prop as I applied full power, though I did get it right on the second attempt. Finally the landing configuration stall also went pretty well and I managed to do a second and not miss out or mess something out on either.
Onto the instrument work and note to self - I must remember to set 18/23 as the screens are going up to make things easier. Did my IMC brief again so hopefully that's ingrained again. Did struggle again to get my height keeping and trip setup nicely, but once that was sorted we did the basics of climbing, descending and turning on full panel. Onto limited panel and the bastard timed turns. These went well apart from one where I was 10 degrees off my target heading and I didn't reset the OBS to my actual heading and turned the wrong way for my 3 seconds correction. Must remember to use the OBS even for small corrections, even if I only count time in my head. Unusual positions work went well and I managed to arrest the climb/descent ok (mostly) and not overshoot the level flight position into a descent/climb respectively. Might seem like a simple task, but on instruments and especially limited panel it's quite hard to judge correctly.
Once the screens came down it the final bit was steep turns. The first one was a bit poor for a few reasons, but the only one I remember was that my height keeping in the turn was all over the place. The second attempt was much better and the one in the other direction similarly good.
Headed back to Leeds, did the field approach checks, routed in via Eccup and did the downwind checks as I joined on right base for 32. Managed to more or less get the descent right and the instruction I'd been given to work on speed control also went well. Once I got fully set up on base I kept the speed relatively nicely at 90kts and then on finals at 80kts and this time I remembered the 2 reds, 2 blues, 3 greens. Did drop slightly low right at the end but I masked that error by stating that I was going for the threshold and did quite a doozy on a landing on the centreline and onle just past the threshold!
In the debrief the instructor said he didn't really have much to say - just a few minor points he'd not covered in the air. So all in all a very good trip and I was really happy with things. If all continues to go well, I might just have one more trip to polish up the asymmetric curcuits and then I might be onto my 170A (Mock test).
Tuesday, 14 October 2008
Abysmideous Weather
Abysmal + Hideous = Abysmideous
As you can probably guess, I've not been flying today :-(
As you can probably guess, I've not been flying today :-(
Monday, 13 October 2008
Monday - nowt yet...
I apologize for not really keeping up to date with the blog. It's hard work flying and I often just crash out when getting home and have no energy for (or forget about) the blog.
Consequently it gets left to the next day when the same thing often happens, so I get more and more behind :-(
*** TBC ***
Consequently it gets left to the next day when the same thing often happens, so I get more and more behind :-(
*** TBC ***
Flying on instruments in the twin - oh joy!
Sunday
It's rewarding if if goes well, but very hard work mentally.
*** TBC ***
It's rewarding if if goes well, but very hard work mentally.
*** TBC ***
Saturday, 11 October 2008
Thursday, 9 October 2008
Circuits? No, surprise nav
Wednesday dawned with practically not a cloud in the sky - woohoo!!
I had been expecting to be doing circuits, but the instructor said it was too nice a day not to do a nav, and that we could tag a couple of circuits into the end of the trip. So we planned a flight to Pickering.
Can't remember much of the detail, but I pretty much aced the first leg :-) Got my climb to 4000 feet approved while still in Leeds airspace and subsequently the MATZ crossing of Linton approved nice and early. The vis was great so my GEC of Wetherby was easy to spot. Marston Moor and Linton came up on track and on time, but was batting along so much quicker than my last nav that I realised it was pointless looking out for East Moor as I'd probably already passed it. So I concentrated on flying my heading and altitude as there wasn't much else to look out for enroute. Because things were happening quicker than previous experience I didn't properly note when I passed my halfway point so I had to guestimate (which is not approved CPL technique) and I thought I was a minute ahead of schedule so revised my ETA to two minutes earlier. Spotted Pickering relatively easily and quite well in advance and was given a diversion of Breighton. I arrived three minutes later than my revised ETA and only one minute later than my original ETA, so if I'd not botched it up it would have been a near perfect leg :-(
Turned over Pickering and set off for Breighton and completed all my planning and ETAs. Noted that I was left of track when approaching Malton after only about 6-7nm and realised that this was due to my not having applied a wind correction to my heading. The instructor also pointed out that I had turned a bit late over Pickering and so had rolled out left of planned track so there was also some parallel track error. My GEC should have picked out that I was to the left of Malton when I should have been to the right, but for some reason it didn't register. But a heading correction of 25 degrees for 2 mins (the twin only heeds 25 degrees rather than 30 for the single) put me back on track and I remembered to note it down on my plog! :-) The rest of the diversion when fine and I arrived at Breighton only a minute ahead of schedule.
Back to Leeds and did a touch and go, followed by and engine failure into an asymmetric circuit , then a low approach and go around finished off by a full stop landing. I can't properly remember how it went, but I think I struggled to maintain runway heading on engine failure and also go around, but it wasn't a disaster as my practice in the sim had helped again.
I had been expecting to be doing circuits, but the instructor said it was too nice a day not to do a nav, and that we could tag a couple of circuits into the end of the trip. So we planned a flight to Pickering.
Can't remember much of the detail, but I pretty much aced the first leg :-) Got my climb to 4000 feet approved while still in Leeds airspace and subsequently the MATZ crossing of Linton approved nice and early. The vis was great so my GEC of Wetherby was easy to spot. Marston Moor and Linton came up on track and on time, but was batting along so much quicker than my last nav that I realised it was pointless looking out for East Moor as I'd probably already passed it. So I concentrated on flying my heading and altitude as there wasn't much else to look out for enroute. Because things were happening quicker than previous experience I didn't properly note when I passed my halfway point so I had to guestimate (which is not approved CPL technique) and I thought I was a minute ahead of schedule so revised my ETA to two minutes earlier. Spotted Pickering relatively easily and quite well in advance and was given a diversion of Breighton. I arrived three minutes later than my revised ETA and only one minute later than my original ETA, so if I'd not botched it up it would have been a near perfect leg :-(
Turned over Pickering and set off for Breighton and completed all my planning and ETAs. Noted that I was left of track when approaching Malton after only about 6-7nm and realised that this was due to my not having applied a wind correction to my heading. The instructor also pointed out that I had turned a bit late over Pickering and so had rolled out left of planned track so there was also some parallel track error. My GEC should have picked out that I was to the left of Malton when I should have been to the right, but for some reason it didn't register. But a heading correction of 25 degrees for 2 mins (the twin only heeds 25 degrees rather than 30 for the single) put me back on track and I remembered to note it down on my plog! :-) The rest of the diversion when fine and I arrived at Breighton only a minute ahead of schedule.
Back to Leeds and did a touch and go, followed by and engine failure into an asymmetric circuit , then a low approach and go around finished off by a full stop landing. I can't properly remember how it went, but I think I struggled to maintain runway heading on engine failure and also go around, but it wasn't a disaster as my practice in the sim had helped again.
The rain in...
Leeds fell most of the day on Leeds...
(Tuesday 7th Oct)
IIRC, I did go up to the airport and spent a couple of hours practicing setup & recovery from stalls and engine failure drills & asymmetric circuits.
(Tuesday 7th Oct)
IIRC, I did go up to the airport and spent a couple of hours practicing setup & recovery from stalls and engine failure drills & asymmetric circuits.
First day back - rusty
Monday 6th Oct was my first day back flying after over 10 days off due to the weather and wedding commitments abroad.
I was thinking on the ground that I'd probably be doing circuits since that was the stage I was at. However the instructor recommended I did a bit of a twin refresher with general handling and then asymmetric work as I might be a little rusty. Probably a good thing, because despite the fact that I didn't think I'd really forgotten it, in the heat of the moment it can all just go straight out the window as happened today :-(
We took off and started out with some steep turns which went ok from what I remember. Then the instructor asked me to demonstrate a stall in the approach configuration. Now the same instructor had impressed upon me to learn by heart the stall procedures (practice them every night), but I had not really done it and was definitely caught out here. While I could remember more or less how to recover from the stalls I am required to demonstrate in the test, I couldn't remember all the specifics about how to set the aircraft up. With some prompting from the instructor I managed to set up the aircraft and perform the demonstrated technique passably (IIRC) and the same with the stall in the landing configuration.
Then onto asymmetric work. Can't remember the specifics of how it went since I'm writing up this blog entry a week after the event, but the rustiness definately showed. I initially struggled to maintain control/heading/airspeed on the engine failures in the cruise, but once they began to come more naturally again I had to add engine failure after takeoff to the mix. Because of the high power & low airspeed configuration, I again struggled to maintain my heading and also partially mucked up the vital actions and shutdown drills. One small crumb of comfort was that everything was beginning to polish up by the end of the lesson.
In the debrief the instructor rightly ticked me off for not having practiced my stall setup drills but overall wasn't too damning and said that the asymmetrics work wasn't a big problem, just down to a lack of currency. His debrief also went into the fact that if working in an airline I'd be expected to do this kind of thing all the time - I'd have to memorise many checklists, perform them in many different emergency situations, and that I'd have to do this very regularly such as every 6-12 months, so I'd better get into the habit/mindset of it sooner rather than later.
Suffice to say I do now practice the stalls in my head every day so hopefully won't arse them up again, but time will tell...
While today's performance wasn't beyond all hope, it did put me into a bit of a downer.
PS. This was totally reversed the next time I flew - this CPL malarkey is a always bloody roller-coaster ride - highs & lows/peaks & troughs :-(
I was thinking on the ground that I'd probably be doing circuits since that was the stage I was at. However the instructor recommended I did a bit of a twin refresher with general handling and then asymmetric work as I might be a little rusty. Probably a good thing, because despite the fact that I didn't think I'd really forgotten it, in the heat of the moment it can all just go straight out the window as happened today :-(
We took off and started out with some steep turns which went ok from what I remember. Then the instructor asked me to demonstrate a stall in the approach configuration. Now the same instructor had impressed upon me to learn by heart the stall procedures (practice them every night), but I had not really done it and was definitely caught out here. While I could remember more or less how to recover from the stalls I am required to demonstrate in the test, I couldn't remember all the specifics about how to set the aircraft up. With some prompting from the instructor I managed to set up the aircraft and perform the demonstrated technique passably (IIRC) and the same with the stall in the landing configuration.
Then onto asymmetric work. Can't remember the specifics of how it went since I'm writing up this blog entry a week after the event, but the rustiness definately showed. I initially struggled to maintain control/heading/airspeed on the engine failures in the cruise, but once they began to come more naturally again I had to add engine failure after takeoff to the mix. Because of the high power & low airspeed configuration, I again struggled to maintain my heading and also partially mucked up the vital actions and shutdown drills. One small crumb of comfort was that everything was beginning to polish up by the end of the lesson.
In the debrief the instructor rightly ticked me off for not having practiced my stall setup drills but overall wasn't too damning and said that the asymmetrics work wasn't a big problem, just down to a lack of currency. His debrief also went into the fact that if working in an airline I'd be expected to do this kind of thing all the time - I'd have to memorise many checklists, perform them in many different emergency situations, and that I'd have to do this very regularly such as every 6-12 months, so I'd better get into the habit/mindset of it sooner rather than later.
Suffice to say I do now practice the stalls in my head every day so hopefully won't arse them up again, but time will tell...
While today's performance wasn't beyond all hope, it did put me into a bit of a downer.
PS. This was totally reversed the next time I flew - this CPL malarkey is a always bloody roller-coaster ride - highs & lows/peaks & troughs :-(
Wednesday, 1 October 2008
Germany
Am now off to Germany to visit Priya (Rekha's sister) followed by a wedding of friends of Rekha's (and mine) who came to our weddings, both in India and in the UK. Will be back flying on Monday the 6th Oct weather permitting.
Wind and Rain
Tuseday and more of the same wind, only with rain, drizzle & generally piss poor conditions and of course not suitable for flying.
Wind and Aircraft Servicing
Initially the conditions were flyable and indeed I'd set off to the airport when I got a call saying that the aircraft had been in effect gazumped by a revision flight for an IR skills test/renewal due to happen the next day. And because it only had about 1:20 hours left before needing to go in for it's 50 hour check (kinda like an MOT), I would have to wait until later in the day until the only other aircraft that was not in for a service was available.
But by then the windy autumn had struck and the wind was something like 260/18G25 - basically not really suitable for practicing circuits, never mind asymmetric ones :-(
But by then the windy autumn had struck and the wind was something like 260/18G25 - basically not really suitable for practicing circuits, never mind asymmetric ones :-(
Friday, 26 September 2008
Aww, no flying today
After another foggy start, I was expecting to able to fly in the afternoon after the fog had lifted/burnt off. But the weather at Leeds is anything but predictable and by the time the weather was sufficiently good to do any meaningful flying it was already mid-afternoon and we'd given up for the day. Such a shame as it was a glorious almost cloud-free late afternoon and evening (though the vis was still marginal at about 9km last time I looked) :-(
Thursday, 25 September 2008
Practice Asymmetric Circuits at altitude
***WARNING***
This entry contains quite a lot of swearing as I quote pretty much verbatim what I said in the aircraft. People easily offended should stop reading now - you have been warned!
***WARNING***
The morning was all fogged in, so after a few errands I took the opportunity to go into the sim again and practice engine failure and asymmetric circuit touch drills for about an hour and a half. Hopefully that will put me in a better position for the real flight once the fog has (hopefully) lifted.
The fog had burnt off/lifted and the vis was ok in the afternoon so up we went. For the first engine failure the drills went ok and I didn't freeze with a mental blank or get too tongue-tied. When all the engine failure drills were done i was quite happy with things until the instructor said, "What have you forgotten?". I drew a blank and he pointed out the power/props/mixture that I should have pushed all forwards as my first action. "Fuck!".
The second I remembered to do the power and got things all more or less ok again. Or so I though... "You forgot to bring the gear and flaps up this time". "FUCK!!".
Third attempt was a right engine failure. Shoved the levers forward and remembered the the gear & flaps. Did the rest of the drills ok. "Why aren't we climbing?" the instructor asked. I looked at the controls and remembered what I'd done and couldn't figure it out. "Because you didn't push the throttle forward when you pushed the rest of the levers forward". Because the right engine was the failed one I'd not collected the left throttle lever with those to it's right when i pushed the forward. "FUCK FUCK FUCK!!!". Cue gales of laughter from the instructor and Dave in the back.
All of these were followed by simulated asymmetric circuits which went more or less ok apart from having difficulty maintaining my "runway" heading on the go around as before.
The final engine failure in the climb of the day before we headed back to Leeds. Did all the checklists and drills real punchy like and I was certain I didn;t forget anything. "What did you think of that Dave?" the instructor asked. I'm thinking smugly to myself, "Nowt wrong with that". "Pretty good" said Dave. "Except that he just shut down the good engine". "FUUUUUUUCCCCKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!". Cue more laughter from the instructor and Dave. I did everything right but after shutting down all the failed engine's systems (left) I'd then gone back over the good engine and done something like touched the right levers and switches but repeated the shutdown drills instead of the on drills. I don't think I actually did that, but in the test if you say something like "right fuel off" and touch the left lever, or touch the right level and say "left fuel off" when you meant to say "right fuel off", you fail - simple as that. So it's academic what I actually said/did - the fact that I got it wrong is all that counts! :-(
We then went back to Leeds, did a touch and go followed by an engine failure in the climb into an asymmetric circuit into a low approach and go-around, into another asymmetric circuit and a real asymmetric landing. And it all went pretty well as far as I remember. Didn't get anything wrong in the engine failure drills, the go-around went well and I nailed 85kts on the runway heading all the way and the real landing went well too! :-)
Despite the mishaps earlier in the lesson, I really enjoyed that trip - perhaps the most of any trip in the twin so far. And it's done a lot for my confidence, even though I know there is still room for a lot of improvement. I can't help laughing about the swearing in the trip, and I was still laughing about it quite a long time afterwards in a helpless kind of fashion. And I'm chuckling to myself on the train writing this now :-) That's what flying should be about - having fun, even if there is a more serious CPL underlying it all. Long may the fun continue!
This entry contains quite a lot of swearing as I quote pretty much verbatim what I said in the aircraft. People easily offended should stop reading now - you have been warned!
***WARNING***
The morning was all fogged in, so after a few errands I took the opportunity to go into the sim again and practice engine failure and asymmetric circuit touch drills for about an hour and a half. Hopefully that will put me in a better position for the real flight once the fog has (hopefully) lifted.
The fog had burnt off/lifted and the vis was ok in the afternoon so up we went. For the first engine failure the drills went ok and I didn't freeze with a mental blank or get too tongue-tied. When all the engine failure drills were done i was quite happy with things until the instructor said, "What have you forgotten?". I drew a blank and he pointed out the power/props/mixture that I should have pushed all forwards as my first action. "Fuck!".
The second I remembered to do the power and got things all more or less ok again. Or so I though... "You forgot to bring the gear and flaps up this time". "FUCK!!".
Third attempt was a right engine failure. Shoved the levers forward and remembered the the gear & flaps. Did the rest of the drills ok. "Why aren't we climbing?" the instructor asked. I looked at the controls and remembered what I'd done and couldn't figure it out. "Because you didn't push the throttle forward when you pushed the rest of the levers forward". Because the right engine was the failed one I'd not collected the left throttle lever with those to it's right when i pushed the forward. "FUCK FUCK FUCK!!!". Cue gales of laughter from the instructor and Dave in the back.
All of these were followed by simulated asymmetric circuits which went more or less ok apart from having difficulty maintaining my "runway" heading on the go around as before.
The final engine failure in the climb of the day before we headed back to Leeds. Did all the checklists and drills real punchy like and I was certain I didn;t forget anything. "What did you think of that Dave?" the instructor asked. I'm thinking smugly to myself, "Nowt wrong with that". "Pretty good" said Dave. "Except that he just shut down the good engine". "FUUUUUUUCCCCKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!". Cue more laughter from the instructor and Dave. I did everything right but after shutting down all the failed engine's systems (left) I'd then gone back over the good engine and done something like touched the right levers and switches but repeated the shutdown drills instead of the on drills. I don't think I actually did that, but in the test if you say something like "right fuel off" and touch the left lever, or touch the right level and say "left fuel off" when you meant to say "right fuel off", you fail - simple as that. So it's academic what I actually said/did - the fact that I got it wrong is all that counts! :-(
We then went back to Leeds, did a touch and go followed by an engine failure in the climb into an asymmetric circuit into a low approach and go-around, into another asymmetric circuit and a real asymmetric landing. And it all went pretty well as far as I remember. Didn't get anything wrong in the engine failure drills, the go-around went well and I nailed 85kts on the runway heading all the way and the real landing went well too! :-)
Despite the mishaps earlier in the lesson, I really enjoyed that trip - perhaps the most of any trip in the twin so far. And it's done a lot for my confidence, even though I know there is still room for a lot of improvement. I can't help laughing about the swearing in the trip, and I was still laughing about it quite a long time afterwards in a helpless kind of fashion. And I'm chuckling to myself on the train writing this now :-) That's what flying should be about - having fun, even if there is a more serious CPL underlying it all. Long may the fun continue!
Asymmetric 2 (Weds part 2)
The second trip of the day was refreshing the earlier engine failure drills, and in my case seeing if I could get the left engine failure detection right. This time I got most of them ok when I payed attention to the balance ball. So quite a relief that I wasn't a dunce and couldn't tell my left from right! :-)
Then we moved onto the big one - engine failure in the climb at 100 kts and 25/25 on the power/props. This produces a significant yaw such that you can barely maintain directional control which one of the the primary aims. If you were taking off at the end of a valley you couldn't afford to veer left or right or fail to maintain a climb of you'd risk a CFIT event. Initially both Dave and myself were all over the place with insufficient rudder causing the secondary effect of roll and veering us off our "runway" heading. You also need to maintain 85kts which is Vyse - the speed for best rate of climb on a single engine. If you're speed is lower, you are pitching higher and you have insufficient power to maintain any useful climb and furthermore the ability to control the aircraft is harder and harder. For speeds higher than 85 your pitch is too low to generate enough lift to climb.
You than have to go through a series of drills to confirm and shutdown and secure the dead engine so as to minimise drag, act on any fire that may be present, and configure and look after the live engine. It's all well and good doing these on the ground and think you have them down to a T, but up in the air when you're actually trying to fly the uncooperative beast it's a different matter and a lot of it goes out of the window. This is why you practice the drills again and again in the air and initially at altitude where you have the altitude to recover if you do the unthinkable and manage to put the aircraft inbto a spin. With the drills, it's so easy to forget one little item which could have a drastic effect on the situation. Both me and Dave were struggling and always managed to forget one or more things.
Once we "sort of" had the engine failure drills passable we then went into a simulated asymmetric circuit. This involved doing the same kind of things as in a normal circuit such as downwind checks, lowering the gear & flaps etc. but things are subtaly different and which I have practiced the drills for the normal circuit in the simulator cockpit, I was rubbish at the asymmetric ones. The crux comes at the ACH of 200 feet where you have to make a go-no-go decision to land or not, and in our case we practiced the go go around where you put on full power on the remaining engine and pitch up into the climb and immediately take up the gear and all flaps. This causes a sudden yaw and you have to boot in huge amounts of rudder as you had eased off some of the trim and maintain your "runway" heading. Needless to say, we were pretty crap at this and ended up veering off our heading by up to 30 degrees.
We then came back to Leeds and did a normal landing - not good enough to be trusted to handle things on a single engine only relatively few feet above the ground, and I was quite glad at that. Did a pretty ropey landing as if to emphasise the point. Felt pretty crap about things after this flight and it didn't help me to get a decent nights sleep which I so badly needed having been sleeping poorly recently on top of being stressed with the flying.
Then we moved onto the big one - engine failure in the climb at 100 kts and 25/25 on the power/props. This produces a significant yaw such that you can barely maintain directional control which one of the the primary aims. If you were taking off at the end of a valley you couldn't afford to veer left or right or fail to maintain a climb of you'd risk a CFIT event. Initially both Dave and myself were all over the place with insufficient rudder causing the secondary effect of roll and veering us off our "runway" heading. You also need to maintain 85kts which is Vyse - the speed for best rate of climb on a single engine. If you're speed is lower, you are pitching higher and you have insufficient power to maintain any useful climb and furthermore the ability to control the aircraft is harder and harder. For speeds higher than 85 your pitch is too low to generate enough lift to climb.
You than have to go through a series of drills to confirm and shutdown and secure the dead engine so as to minimise drag, act on any fire that may be present, and configure and look after the live engine. It's all well and good doing these on the ground and think you have them down to a T, but up in the air when you're actually trying to fly the uncooperative beast it's a different matter and a lot of it goes out of the window. This is why you practice the drills again and again in the air and initially at altitude where you have the altitude to recover if you do the unthinkable and manage to put the aircraft inbto a spin. With the drills, it's so easy to forget one little item which could have a drastic effect on the situation. Both me and Dave were struggling and always managed to forget one or more things.
Once we "sort of" had the engine failure drills passable we then went into a simulated asymmetric circuit. This involved doing the same kind of things as in a normal circuit such as downwind checks, lowering the gear & flaps etc. but things are subtaly different and which I have practiced the drills for the normal circuit in the simulator cockpit, I was rubbish at the asymmetric ones. The crux comes at the ACH of 200 feet where you have to make a go-no-go decision to land or not, and in our case we practiced the go go around where you put on full power on the remaining engine and pitch up into the climb and immediately take up the gear and all flaps. This causes a sudden yaw and you have to boot in huge amounts of rudder as you had eased off some of the trim and maintain your "runway" heading. Needless to say, we were pretty crap at this and ended up veering off our heading by up to 30 degrees.
We then came back to Leeds and did a normal landing - not good enough to be trusted to handle things on a single engine only relatively few feet above the ground, and I was quite glad at that. Did a pretty ropey landing as if to emphasise the point. Felt pretty crap about things after this flight and it didn't help me to get a decent nights sleep which I so badly needed having been sleeping poorly recently on top of being stressed with the flying.
Asymmetric 1 (Weds part 1)
Took off and climbed to about 6000 feet, leveled off and trimmed up. Then the instructor pulled the power back on an engine and the beast yawed dramatically in the direction of that "failed" engine. I then applied rudder to counter that yaw to bring the nose back in balance again. This was tried at various power settings and in climbs and turns. I identified and called out the engine that had failed with the strap line (if that's the right word) "dead leg, dead engine" - meaning that if I've stuck in a boot load of right rudder, the left leg is doing nowt and so is "dead" and that identifies the left engine as failed.
It's relatively controllable at high speeds in the cruise, but as the speed comes down, the rudder effectiveness is reduced and more & more rudder pressure is required to fly straight. The worst is at full power and prop fully forward at low speed such as would be in the climb out after takeoff. In those conditions, it's barely contollable and your leg is pushing so hard you feel like you're single leg pressing about 40kg!! Fortunately on the twin there is rudder trim which can be used to trim the rudder forces to zero so that you can fly the aircraft in most conditions perfectly normally. However, in the engine failure after takeoff/in the climb scenario you still have to apply significant rudder even with maximum trim. In a turn you need to roll the wings level first as the forces in a turn can be misleading especially if the rudder forces are relatively light.
For some unknown and infuriating reason, I could detect, react to and identify a right engine failure with no problems. But for the left engine I often applied left rudder first which exacerbated the yaw problem. And consequently called out the wrong engine as having failed. I was looking out the cockpit all the time and I think I saw the nose swing left and for some reason put in left rudder. In a normal turn to the left you can help kick the aircraft into a turn with a little left rudder but buggered if I know why it only affected left engine failures.
We also did a full and real engine shutdown which was quite spooky when you see a still prop on one side. But with the prop fully feathered and causing minimal drag it was surprisingly easy to control in the cruise and you could perform manoeuvres more or less as normal. Even stranger was restarting the engine where you unfeathered the prop to start it windmilling in the airstream but with no fuel. Once it was spinning you then richened the mixture and effectively bumpstarted it in the air! Strange but most satisfying.
Quite an enjoyable if frustrating trip all in all. After we landed Dave, who had no such problems, said that he was looking at the balance ball as the main identifier of a failure - if the ball went out to the right, kick the ball ie. ball right, right rudder. I'll have to pay more attention to that next time.
It's relatively controllable at high speeds in the cruise, but as the speed comes down, the rudder effectiveness is reduced and more & more rudder pressure is required to fly straight. The worst is at full power and prop fully forward at low speed such as would be in the climb out after takeoff. In those conditions, it's barely contollable and your leg is pushing so hard you feel like you're single leg pressing about 40kg!! Fortunately on the twin there is rudder trim which can be used to trim the rudder forces to zero so that you can fly the aircraft in most conditions perfectly normally. However, in the engine failure after takeoff/in the climb scenario you still have to apply significant rudder even with maximum trim. In a turn you need to roll the wings level first as the forces in a turn can be misleading especially if the rudder forces are relatively light.
For some unknown and infuriating reason, I could detect, react to and identify a right engine failure with no problems. But for the left engine I often applied left rudder first which exacerbated the yaw problem. And consequently called out the wrong engine as having failed. I was looking out the cockpit all the time and I think I saw the nose swing left and for some reason put in left rudder. In a normal turn to the left you can help kick the aircraft into a turn with a little left rudder but buggered if I know why it only affected left engine failures.
We also did a full and real engine shutdown which was quite spooky when you see a still prop on one side. But with the prop fully feathered and causing minimal drag it was surprisingly easy to control in the cruise and you could perform manoeuvres more or less as normal. Even stranger was restarting the engine where you unfeathered the prop to start it windmilling in the airstream but with no fuel. Once it was spinning you then richened the mixture and effectively bumpstarted it in the air! Strange but most satisfying.
Quite an enjoyable if frustrating trip all in all. After we landed Dave, who had no such problems, said that he was looking at the balance ball as the main identifier of a failure - if the ball went out to the right, kick the ball ie. ball right, right rudder. I'll have to pay more attention to that next time.
Tuesday, 23 September 2008
Stalling the twin
Before the flight today, I did another hour or so of touch drills, but this time I was in the cockpit of one of the twins so I couldn't fiddle with all of the controls.
Today was a little bit of a refresher in the general handling of the twin before starting with slow flight. This involves setting the power/throttle to a specified manifold pressure (MAP) and maintaining the altitude & heading while the speed bleeds off. Because it's a big heavy aircraft relative to the PA-28 and most light single aircraft, it takes noticeably longer to slow down, so you have to be patient. Furthermore, if you pitch up a few degrees in a single while flying, nothing happens, but in the twin with a variable pitch prop and enough excess power, it will climb. First I fly at 120kts which is the speed that the hold and approach will be done at in the IR. Then at 90kts which represents the base leg of a circuit, and then at 80kts which is finals in the circuit.
Then it's onto the scary bit - stalls.
In the clean configuration you are flying along configured as for the cruise and your pull the power back to idle and just keep pulling back on the control as the speed comes off. Once you get back to about 70kts you really have to pull back right into your chest and then more as the stall warner beeeeeeeeeps continuously. The aircraft then starts to judder as you reach the buffet and still you haul back until the nose starts to drop at which point the instructor tells you to recover. You are supposed to put on full power and lower the nose briefly to about level and then as soon as the speed starts to increase, you pitch up to just below where you were and climb away as the speed builds. I struggled with getting the pitch down and then back up again bit right and usually ended up loosing more height than I should have. The whole action of stall recovery only takes a few seconds but it's hard to get right.
The other two stalls are done with gear and flaps down:
After the trip I didn't feel very happy with things at all for the most part. Didn't feel like I had gotten the stalls properly right before we moved on, and the next time I'll do them will be in revision just before the skills test :-( On the plus side though, I managed to get a better feel for getting the aircraft in trim.
Today was a little bit of a refresher in the general handling of the twin before starting with slow flight. This involves setting the power/throttle to a specified manifold pressure (MAP) and maintaining the altitude & heading while the speed bleeds off. Because it's a big heavy aircraft relative to the PA-28 and most light single aircraft, it takes noticeably longer to slow down, so you have to be patient. Furthermore, if you pitch up a few degrees in a single while flying, nothing happens, but in the twin with a variable pitch prop and enough excess power, it will climb. First I fly at 120kts which is the speed that the hold and approach will be done at in the IR. Then at 90kts which represents the base leg of a circuit, and then at 80kts which is finals in the circuit.
Then it's onto the scary bit - stalls.
In the clean configuration you are flying along configured as for the cruise and your pull the power back to idle and just keep pulling back on the control as the speed comes off. Once you get back to about 70kts you really have to pull back right into your chest and then more as the stall warner beeeeeeeeeps continuously. The aircraft then starts to judder as you reach the buffet and still you haul back until the nose starts to drop at which point the instructor tells you to recover. You are supposed to put on full power and lower the nose briefly to about level and then as soon as the speed starts to increase, you pitch up to just below where you were and climb away as the speed builds. I struggled with getting the pitch down and then back up again bit right and usually ended up loosing more height than I should have. The whole action of stall recovery only takes a few seconds but it's hard to get right.
The other two stalls are done with gear and flaps down:
- Approach configuration (gear down, 20 degrees of flap, 18/25 on the throttle/props and 20 degrees of bank) as if in a turn onto finals.
- Landing configuration (gear down, full 35 degrees flap, 13/fully fine on the throttle/prop) as if on short finals.
After the trip I didn't feel very happy with things at all for the most part. Didn't feel like I had gotten the stalls properly right before we moved on, and the next time I'll do them will be in revision just before the skills test :-( On the plus side though, I managed to get a better feel for getting the aircraft in trim.
Monday, 22 September 2008
Touch Drills
Well, that's the Indian Summer over with... :-(
Cloudbase only a few hundred feet and an earlier IFR flight didn't punch through the tops of the clouds, so no flying today.
Now that I'm flying on the twin there is so much more to do and many new checklists to learn. At this early stage when I'm grounded due to the weather, I can use this time by just sitting in the cockpit of an aircraft, or in this case a simulator, and practicing flying as I would for real. I move the controls as I would for real, call out the checklists, the speeds and pitches I should be maintaining and the radio calls I would be making. For now I'm just practicing climbing and descending (turning has no relevance here) to memorise the power settings required for each stage of flight, and drills for flying the circuit. Subsequently I'll use these techniques to practice drills and checklists for engine failure emergency drills and asymmetric flight.
The instructors have said that you can see the people who have spent time practicing the touch drills as they have the checklists, speeds, power settings etc. available to recite at will. This makes for a more rapid progress and a more professional pilot and at the end of the day will hopefully reduce the number of hours I need to spend in the aircraft for real. And you really don't want to know how much it costs per hour, or even per minute!!
So I spent about an hour and a half practicing mostly circuit drills until I started going bug eyed (even practicing with my eyes closed)! But the checklists are starting to come more freely and accurately and I can recite most of the checks without pause and do the control actions with my eyes closed. So another few days should hopefully have things down to a T.
Cloudbase only a few hundred feet and an earlier IFR flight didn't punch through the tops of the clouds, so no flying today.
Now that I'm flying on the twin there is so much more to do and many new checklists to learn. At this early stage when I'm grounded due to the weather, I can use this time by just sitting in the cockpit of an aircraft, or in this case a simulator, and practicing flying as I would for real. I move the controls as I would for real, call out the checklists, the speeds and pitches I should be maintaining and the radio calls I would be making. For now I'm just practicing climbing and descending (turning has no relevance here) to memorise the power settings required for each stage of flight, and drills for flying the circuit. Subsequently I'll use these techniques to practice drills and checklists for engine failure emergency drills and asymmetric flight.
The instructors have said that you can see the people who have spent time practicing the touch drills as they have the checklists, speeds, power settings etc. available to recite at will. This makes for a more rapid progress and a more professional pilot and at the end of the day will hopefully reduce the number of hours I need to spend in the aircraft for real. And you really don't want to know how much it costs per hour, or even per minute!!
So I spent about an hour and a half practicing mostly circuit drills until I started going bug eyed (even practicing with my eyes closed)! But the checklists are starting to come more freely and accurately and I can recite most of the checks without pause and do the control actions with my eyes closed. So another few days should hopefully have things down to a T.
Sunday, 21 September 2008
Sunday - First flight in the twin!
Woohoo - the major milestone was now reached and my champing at the bit desire to fly the twin was finally realised.
The weather was great and the cloud base was quite ok for a first flight doing general handling since one needs more height available to generally chuck the aircraft around. I expected to go up more or less straight away since all we were going to do was general handling which we already knew how to do, only not in this aircraft. But we had to do nearly two hours of ground school (which I did not expect) about the differences and dangers of flying a twin. In fact it's quite scary! It's actually more dangerous that flying a single in the first 1000 feet or so after takeoff as it does not have a large excess of power like big jest such as the 737. Consequently, if an engine fails just after takeoff you have to sort it out pronto and fly at a safe speed that you can climb away at in order to circuit and land back again. So, to cut a long story short, it was quite sobering.
Once we were airborne and out over near Wetherby in the pilot's "playground" we practiced all the basics of straight and level, climbing & descending and turns. The first thing about flying a twin is you don't have a stonking great engine and propeller in front of you! This makes for a very much different perspective as far as the position of the horizon relative to the top of the dashboard (for want of a better word). I had quite a bit of difficulty getting just straight and level right and trimmed out as there is so much more land in front of you and you think you much be descending all the time, but if you pitch to the same horizon as you expect in the twin you end up climbing quite rapidly. In fact, I hadn't really grasped this by the end of the lesson. It all went reasonably ok, but my inability to get it in trim flying straight an level put a dampener on the trip somewhat.
It also takes quite a lot more time to slow down and whereas in a twin you can pitch the nose up to slow down on low power, in the twin it will just climb so you have to be really patient but consequently plan ahead more in terms of when you need to slow down/descend etc.
When we came back into Leeds, we had to do a full stop landing rather than a touch and go because of a big jet having departed shortly beforehand. My approach was pretty crap though The landing wasn't too bad for a first attempt as far as I remember. we then did a loop along the taxyway and back onto the runway for another takeoff and circuit. This time the approach went much better and I was pretty much on the money for the PAPIs all the way down and did another decent landing, though in both I flared somewhat high and late meaning I landed a bit further down the runway than ideal.
In the debrief, two main points came out:
So all in all a reasonable first trip, but something of an anticlimax as is so often the case in flying when there is for so long this distant goal. When you get there you often end up thinking, "Well, what was the big deal?". C'est la vie...
The weather was great and the cloud base was quite ok for a first flight doing general handling since one needs more height available to generally chuck the aircraft around. I expected to go up more or less straight away since all we were going to do was general handling which we already knew how to do, only not in this aircraft. But we had to do nearly two hours of ground school (which I did not expect) about the differences and dangers of flying a twin. In fact it's quite scary! It's actually more dangerous that flying a single in the first 1000 feet or so after takeoff as it does not have a large excess of power like big jest such as the 737. Consequently, if an engine fails just after takeoff you have to sort it out pronto and fly at a safe speed that you can climb away at in order to circuit and land back again. So, to cut a long story short, it was quite sobering.
Once we were airborne and out over near Wetherby in the pilot's "playground" we practiced all the basics of straight and level, climbing & descending and turns. The first thing about flying a twin is you don't have a stonking great engine and propeller in front of you! This makes for a very much different perspective as far as the position of the horizon relative to the top of the dashboard (for want of a better word). I had quite a bit of difficulty getting just straight and level right and trimmed out as there is so much more land in front of you and you think you much be descending all the time, but if you pitch to the same horizon as you expect in the twin you end up climbing quite rapidly. In fact, I hadn't really grasped this by the end of the lesson. It all went reasonably ok, but my inability to get it in trim flying straight an level put a dampener on the trip somewhat.
It also takes quite a lot more time to slow down and whereas in a twin you can pitch the nose up to slow down on low power, in the twin it will just climb so you have to be really patient but consequently plan ahead more in terms of when you need to slow down/descend etc.
When we came back into Leeds, we had to do a full stop landing rather than a touch and go because of a big jet having departed shortly beforehand. My approach was pretty crap though The landing wasn't too bad for a first attempt as far as I remember. we then did a loop along the taxyway and back onto the runway for another takeoff and circuit. This time the approach went much better and I was pretty much on the money for the PAPIs all the way down and did another decent landing, though in both I flared somewhat high and late meaning I landed a bit further down the runway than ideal.
In the debrief, two main points came out:
- I spend too much time looking in the cockpit at the instruments to see if I;m straight and level rather than looking at the picture/horizon outside and it's position relative to the dashboard.
- I was told I'm always trimming, and controlling the pitch on the trim rather than setting an attitude and holding it before trimming away any control forces.
So all in all a reasonable first trip, but something of an anticlimax as is so often the case in flying when there is for so long this distant goal. When you get there you often end up thinking, "Well, what was the big deal?". C'est la vie...
Double Nav Saturday - part 2
After lunch the viz was good enough to do the Blyton trip.
Blyton divert market weighton.
***TBC ***
Blyton divert market weighton.
***TBC ***
Double Nav Saturday
Right, officially bored of and abandoning this CPL day title. I've been on the CPL 4 weeks and am over half way through the minimum required hours, so despite significant weather disruptions things are proceeding at a reasonable rate - as long as there aren't more extended weather disruptions...
Initially the plan for today was to do a nav leaving the zone via Dewsbury and routing to Blyton which is about 7nm south of Scunthorpe. However, with some autumn morning fog patches, the vis at Doncaster whose zone we needed to transit was only 8km, so we decided to defer until later in the day in order to allow the vis to improve to zone transit levels. So as not to waste a challenging yet still navigable morning Roger gave us a nav to Mount Airey. Though I'd already done this nav, it hadn't gone very well and I'd struggled to find the airfield in low cloud so a repeat trip wouldn't be a waste of time.
Previously i had left the zone via Eccup but this time to spice it up a bit I planned to leave the zone via Dewsbury. Because the viz was pretty poor (not much above 10km) I couldn't even see Ferrybridge from Dewsbury. However, since I hsd been up esrlier in the morning I had seen that both Eggborough and Drax power stations were operating from their plumes of steam from the cooling towers which were clearly visible above the dirty inversion. At Dewsbury requested further climb to altitude 3500 and, once I'd done my gross error check of Wakefield on the right, I could see both plumes more or less ahead. This put me nicely on track since I was expecting to pass to the left of Eggborough (my halfway point) and directly over Drax.
Eggborough arrived on track & time and Drax was then clearly visible. As I approached Drax, it looked like I was a little to the left of track, but I refrained from making any correction until closer to Drax. When a few miles away I was clearly going to pass to the left of the power station when my track should have taken me overhead. So I estimated to be about 2 degrees and 1nm left so planned to turn right by the usual 30 degrees for a minute, but it was evident that this would have taken me too far to the right, so I revised to 30 seconds. Rolled back into my wind corrected heading and was spot on and passed between the north and south sets of cooling towers. As a bonus this also avoided me flying into the steam plume clouds as they were to the north.
The rest of the leg passed as sweet as a nut and I spotted Mount Airey quite a long way out - so much easier from a decent altitude despite the relatively poor vis. Was given a diversion to Fadmoor which is a few miles to the north-north-west of Kirkbymoorside where I'd visited before. I didn't even know it existed because it was unfortunately right on the fold of my map! Fortunately the instructor said should be ok without having to go through the rigmarole of unraveling my chart.
Freehand drew the line on my chart eyeballed the heading as 330, did a TTT and I was on my way. GEC of Market Weighton spotted and then got the rest of my diversion calculations out of the way and revised my eyeballed heading slightly to a magnetic wind-corrected 335. Everything else happened pretty much as planned/expected. About halfway, however, a few clouds appeared and my altitude of 3500 would take me above them. But since I'd been told that flying above clouds was ok on the CPL as long as I could remain clear of them and in sight of the ground and still able to navigate I made the judgement call and elected to remain above them as they were only a few. In fact, they didn't even get in the way at any point!
Arrived in the vicinity of Fadmoor but wasn't exactly sure of where it was, though I was pretty sure I had spotted it. Said to the instructor that I wasn't 100% sure but I that the location of the strip in relation to two nearby villages and that it was on a ridge between two valleys gave me a good assurance that it was correct. He confirmed that I was correct and mentioned that it's a real bugger to find and most people can't find it - which was nice! The only thing that was slightly wrong was I'd revised my ETA to be two minutes later but was in fact two minutes early - not sure why...
Was given a "divert" back to Harrogate which also went spot on, passing through the Boroughbridge gap without issue since Linton were closed and getting the ATIS in good time and starting my descent at the A1 to be overhead Harrogate at 1900 feet.
Nowt much more to mention really, but in the debrief, there wasn't really anything of note to debrief other than what had been mentioned enroute. I was given a 9.5/10 and was obviously very happy with it all :-)
Initially the plan for today was to do a nav leaving the zone via Dewsbury and routing to Blyton which is about 7nm south of Scunthorpe. However, with some autumn morning fog patches, the vis at Doncaster whose zone we needed to transit was only 8km, so we decided to defer until later in the day in order to allow the vis to improve to zone transit levels. So as not to waste a challenging yet still navigable morning Roger gave us a nav to Mount Airey. Though I'd already done this nav, it hadn't gone very well and I'd struggled to find the airfield in low cloud so a repeat trip wouldn't be a waste of time.
Previously i had left the zone via Eccup but this time to spice it up a bit I planned to leave the zone via Dewsbury. Because the viz was pretty poor (not much above 10km) I couldn't even see Ferrybridge from Dewsbury. However, since I hsd been up esrlier in the morning I had seen that both Eggborough and Drax power stations were operating from their plumes of steam from the cooling towers which were clearly visible above the dirty inversion. At Dewsbury requested further climb to altitude 3500 and, once I'd done my gross error check of Wakefield on the right, I could see both plumes more or less ahead. This put me nicely on track since I was expecting to pass to the left of Eggborough (my halfway point) and directly over Drax.
Eggborough arrived on track & time and Drax was then clearly visible. As I approached Drax, it looked like I was a little to the left of track, but I refrained from making any correction until closer to Drax. When a few miles away I was clearly going to pass to the left of the power station when my track should have taken me overhead. So I estimated to be about 2 degrees and 1nm left so planned to turn right by the usual 30 degrees for a minute, but it was evident that this would have taken me too far to the right, so I revised to 30 seconds. Rolled back into my wind corrected heading and was spot on and passed between the north and south sets of cooling towers. As a bonus this also avoided me flying into the steam plume clouds as they were to the north.
The rest of the leg passed as sweet as a nut and I spotted Mount Airey quite a long way out - so much easier from a decent altitude despite the relatively poor vis. Was given a diversion to Fadmoor which is a few miles to the north-north-west of Kirkbymoorside where I'd visited before. I didn't even know it existed because it was unfortunately right on the fold of my map! Fortunately the instructor said should be ok without having to go through the rigmarole of unraveling my chart.
Freehand drew the line on my chart eyeballed the heading as 330, did a TTT and I was on my way. GEC of Market Weighton spotted and then got the rest of my diversion calculations out of the way and revised my eyeballed heading slightly to a magnetic wind-corrected 335. Everything else happened pretty much as planned/expected. About halfway, however, a few clouds appeared and my altitude of 3500 would take me above them. But since I'd been told that flying above clouds was ok on the CPL as long as I could remain clear of them and in sight of the ground and still able to navigate I made the judgement call and elected to remain above them as they were only a few. In fact, they didn't even get in the way at any point!
Arrived in the vicinity of Fadmoor but wasn't exactly sure of where it was, though I was pretty sure I had spotted it. Said to the instructor that I wasn't 100% sure but I that the location of the strip in relation to two nearby villages and that it was on a ridge between two valleys gave me a good assurance that it was correct. He confirmed that I was correct and mentioned that it's a real bugger to find and most people can't find it - which was nice! The only thing that was slightly wrong was I'd revised my ETA to be two minutes later but was in fact two minutes early - not sure why...
Was given a "divert" back to Harrogate which also went spot on, passing through the Boroughbridge gap without issue since Linton were closed and getting the ATIS in good time and starting my descent at the A1 to be overhead Harrogate at 1900 feet.
Nowt much more to mention really, but in the debrief, there wasn't really anything of note to debrief other than what had been mentioned enroute. I was given a 9.5/10 and was obviously very happy with it all :-)
CPL day 20
Got to go flying again - woohoo!
Though the vis was pretty poor (borderline for VFR) Roger was happy for us to go where Brian hadn't been earlier in the week. The plan for Blyton was out because of the zone transit (see the next post), so we were given the relatively easy Market Weighton route, though from Dewsbury.
Again, can't remember much of the detail, but the initial nav went well, though I had to make a heading correction and didn't write it down. The divert was to Helmsley which is about 6 miles east of the white horse on Sutton Bank. It went well enough with a heading change being required, but this time I remembered to write it down on the plog. Found Helmsley quite easily despite it being only slightly larger than a small village.
Then "diverted" back to Harrogate and landed as normal. The main thing that came out of this trip (mainly from Dave's flight) if I remember correctly was that we need to stop feature crawling. This means flying with 99% looking outside the window using prominent features rather than every pissy little village and road (an exaggeration but illustrates the point).
Though the vis was pretty poor (borderline for VFR) Roger was happy for us to go where Brian hadn't been earlier in the week. The plan for Blyton was out because of the zone transit (see the next post), so we were given the relatively easy Market Weighton route, though from Dewsbury.
Again, can't remember much of the detail, but the initial nav went well, though I had to make a heading correction and didn't write it down. The divert was to Helmsley which is about 6 miles east of the white horse on Sutton Bank. It went well enough with a heading change being required, but this time I remembered to write it down on the plog. Found Helmsley quite easily despite it being only slightly larger than a small village.
Then "diverted" back to Harrogate and landed as normal. The main thing that came out of this trip (mainly from Dave's flight) if I remember correctly was that we need to stop feature crawling. This means flying with 99% looking outside the window using prominent features rather than every pissy little village and road (an exaggeration but illustrates the point).
Tuesday, 16 September 2008
CPL Day 17
Cloudbase was lovely and high, winds were light and mostly down the runway but today the sodding visibility was marginal at between 9 and 12km. Went up in the back seat of the twin for circuits and it was clear that while I could have done the nav, it wouldn't have been easy and I would probably have not got that much out of it. So with regret I gave up and went home again...
Monday, 15 September 2008
CPL Day 16
Myself and Dave were given a choice of two destinations - East Heslerton or Eddsfield. Neither looked great so we flipped a coin and I lost and got lumped with Eddsfield. To be honest I would have preferred Eddsfield anyway :-)
Because it's been almost a week since this one, I can't remember much of the detail about it, but it went pretty well and I managed to find Eddsfield without any problem. The diversion was south to Market Weighton and it all worked out ok from what I remember.
Two main things came out in the debrief:
Because it's been almost a week since this one, I can't remember much of the detail about it, but it went pretty well and I managed to find Eddsfield without any problem. The diversion was south to Market Weighton and it all worked out ok from what I remember.
Two main things came out in the debrief:
- One is that we need to note down on the plog times and any heading corrections made so that the flight could be reconstructed if required.
- The second which was a bit of a conflict of information was that eyeballing headings and thumb measurements of distances is not acceptable for CPL and thast we need to obtain accurate headings and distances. This hasn't been the first instance of conflicting information from different instructors and this lack of uniformity annoyed me quite a lot today.
Sunday, 14 September 2008
Sunday
What looked like being a good day from the previous day's forecast turned out to be marginal in terms of doing nav, and though it was set to improve later in the day, it still hadn't improved sufficiently by early afternoon which meant that it was a no-go. Gutted as I'd been looking forward to flying with Roger again.
CPL day 15a - hmm this "day" thing doesn't really work...
Although it's Saturday and the CPL is nominally 9-5ish Mon-Fri, one of the instructors, Roger, only does instructing part time and as such comes in over the weekend when there are people who are keen. That's me then :-) So putting this down as CPL day 16 kinda doesn't count as it's not a weekday, so I'll have to rethink things maybe...
Saturday dawned and the weather wasn't great to start with, but was forecast to get much better in a few hours. Went for an 8 or so mile run and then headed up to the airport for 12pm. Having previously been given the destination of Leyburn which is not too far from Catterick and north-west of Ripon I'd had the option of going out via Keighley (west) and then routing north, or via Harrogate (north-east) and then routing north-west planned. Both were identical in terms of distance, and all things being equal I would have preferred the Keighley route since there are better features to navigate by on that route. Alas the cloudbase conspired to make it necessary to route via Harrogate.
Navigation proceeded well and I was able to fund my pitiful halfway feature of a small lake and I was on track & on time and duely arrived at Leyburn on schedule. However, this is where the fun started and things went a bit pear shaped! :-( I was given a diversion destination of Kirkby Moorside (town, not airfield) which would take me straight over the top of Leeming's overhead. Called them up and found that they were active (unusual for a weekend) and so I was not able to go straight overhead and had to route to maintain 3nm clear to the north. I also fluffed my RT a bit which probably didn't help. I routed north-east up towards the disused Catterick airfield which I never actually spotted, but did spot the nearby lakes so knew I was outside their airspace. When they cleared me for a MATZ penetration direct to Northallerton (after liaising with Teeside for me), everything should have been easy from then on.
The problem was that there are next to bugger all features suitable for navigation once you've crossed the A1 just east of Northallerton. I did a 30 degrees heading for minutes and should have been back on track, but for some reason I ended up being too far right of track. And with having no features to locate me relative to my desired track I didn't establish this until I saw the field of Wombleton on my left which put me about three nm off track, but with only about 5 or so nm to run. I initially did the usual 30 degrees to correct, but then realised, just as Roger pointed it out that that wouldn't work and I would need more like 80-90 degrees heading change to reintercept. And in fact I could already see the town when I realised what I was looking at. Bizarrely, with all the track alterations I arrived only a minute ahead of an unrevised ETA.
I was then given another diversion destination of Haxby, just the the north-east of York. This went, on the whole much better with the nav going on track. However, on looking back at my plog just now and trying to figure out why my ETA was way ahead of my ATA (which fortunately wasn't spotted by the instructor), I realised that I mis-measured my distance and read off 26nm when it should have been 16. This made for an 8 minute difference, but had I calculated with the correct distance, the I would have arrived bang on ETA.
We then routed back to Wetherby for rejoin via Eccup and landed with no drama. In the debrief, Roger was reasonably happy with things overall (gave me 6.5-7 out of 10) and mentioned the various mistakes/issues (listed above) that I'd encountered with recommendations around them like being more ready for having to alter track for not being given a MATZ (or other equivalent) clearance. He also suggested that we try a more dead reckoning way of drawing out diversion track line on the chard freehand (to save faffing with rulers), eyeballing the heading and measuring the distance with a finger (eg. the second joint of my little finder is 7nm). We'll try this with him on our nav route tomorrow.
Saturday dawned and the weather wasn't great to start with, but was forecast to get much better in a few hours. Went for an 8 or so mile run and then headed up to the airport for 12pm. Having previously been given the destination of Leyburn which is not too far from Catterick and north-west of Ripon I'd had the option of going out via Keighley (west) and then routing north, or via Harrogate (north-east) and then routing north-west planned. Both were identical in terms of distance, and all things being equal I would have preferred the Keighley route since there are better features to navigate by on that route. Alas the cloudbase conspired to make it necessary to route via Harrogate.
Navigation proceeded well and I was able to fund my pitiful halfway feature of a small lake and I was on track & on time and duely arrived at Leyburn on schedule. However, this is where the fun started and things went a bit pear shaped! :-( I was given a diversion destination of Kirkby Moorside (town, not airfield) which would take me straight over the top of Leeming's overhead. Called them up and found that they were active (unusual for a weekend) and so I was not able to go straight overhead and had to route to maintain 3nm clear to the north. I also fluffed my RT a bit which probably didn't help. I routed north-east up towards the disused Catterick airfield which I never actually spotted, but did spot the nearby lakes so knew I was outside their airspace. When they cleared me for a MATZ penetration direct to Northallerton (after liaising with Teeside for me), everything should have been easy from then on.
The problem was that there are next to bugger all features suitable for navigation once you've crossed the A1 just east of Northallerton. I did a 30 degrees heading for
I was then given another diversion destination of Haxby, just the the north-east of York. This went, on the whole much better with the nav going on track. However, on looking back at my plog just now and trying to figure out why my ETA was way ahead of my ATA (which fortunately wasn't spotted by the instructor), I realised that I mis-measured my distance and read off 26nm when it should have been 16. This made for an 8 minute difference, but had I calculated with the correct distance, the I would have arrived bang on ETA.
We then routed back to Wetherby for rejoin via Eccup and landed with no drama. In the debrief, Roger was reasonably happy with things overall (gave me 6.5-7 out of 10) and mentioned the various mistakes/issues (listed above) that I'd encountered with recommendations around them like being more ready for having to alter track for not being given a MATZ (or other equivalent) clearance. He also suggested that we try a more dead reckoning way of drawing out diversion track line on the chard freehand (to save faffing with rulers), eyeballing the heading and measuring the distance with a finger (eg. the second joint of my little finder is 7nm). We'll try this with him on our nav route tomorrow.
Friday, 12 September 2008
CPL day 15
The prospects were good, but the weather was marginal most of the day, and because I'm done with instrument flying for the time being, didn't get to go flying.
Hopefully I will get a chance one day over the weekend.
Hopefully I will get a chance one day over the weekend.
Thursday, 11 September 2008
Glossary sorted
Have now sorted the glossary into alphabetical as requested.
Hopefully this will help you find the needle in the haystack of acronyms :-)
Hopefully this will help you find the needle in the haystack of acronyms :-)
CPL day 14 - more instrument flying
Yet again, what looked like a good day for flying on paper turned out to be kyboshed by low cloudbase. Still, above the lowest cloud was about 2-3000 feet gap before the next layer, so it meant I could do some more instrument flying. Because Dick was on holiday, this was my first trip with Brian, an instructor I've never flown with before.
The aim was to do at least doing unusual positions work. This is where the instructor makes the plane go a bit like a roller coaster and leaves it in an "unusual position" for you to recover from as if you had somehow got yourself into it. The technique is first to check your airspeed:
When we set off Brian said that he was going to go through all the basic instruments work in addition to unusual positions to see where I was at against the required standard. So we did a bit of basic climbing, descending & turning before having a simulated gyro failure and doing most of the rest of the trip on a limited panel. We did timed turns which worked out generally better than my earlier trip, though it's always difficult to get an exact rate 1 position on the TC and maintain it to correctly roll out onto your desired heading. But on the second attempt we got to within about 10 degrees which was not to bad. We then did unusual positions which went well enough once I was reminded of the limited panel technique I described above.
We also did intercepting of radials from a "pseudo" NDB of Minster Radio on 666KHz which is located in the centre of York. This was a bit more challenging than just tracking inbound/outbound and involved calculating the best intercept angle to pull/push the needle round onto the required radial, but reducing the intercept angle as the needle approached the desired radial so as not to overshoot. When trasking outbound from the beacon, you have to be on the ball and turn immediately the needle stabilises onto your outbound radial or you very quickly overshoot and have to go through the palava of intercepting it again.
It's relatively easy when tracking inbound using the "push the head" technique. This is where you adopt a heading greater than (eg. 090) the heading the needle points to (eg. 060) which will cause your relative heading to decrease, hence pushing the needle towards your desired radial (eg.030). But when you're intercepting outbound you have to use the "pull the tail" technique. This means that if you to intercept 030 outbound, you want the tail of the needle to be on say 030. If you're currently on 060 outbound you need to adopt a heading of say 000 which is less than your desired heading which will pull the tail of the needle towards your desired 030. Hope this makes sense to everyone - it's hard enough visualising it as a pilot when you're not flying! If not, don't worry - I think you can probably live a happy an fulfilled life without this :-)
Everything went pretty well, and then back on a full panel I flew headings as passed to be by the instructor to route me onto final before landing which went very nicely. In the debrief Brian was happy with all my instrument flying and said he didn't think there was any need to do any more until later on, perhaps when they put the screens up on a diversion leg. So that's good news as it means I'm well on track for the twin once the nav is up to scratch.
The aim was to do at least doing unusual positions work. This is where the instructor makes the plane go a bit like a roller coaster and leaves it in an "unusual position" for you to recover from as if you had somehow got yourself into it. The technique is first to check your airspeed:
- If it's decreasing then you are nose high so you put on full power.
- If it's increasing then you're nose down so you pull the power back to idle.
When we set off Brian said that he was going to go through all the basic instruments work in addition to unusual positions to see where I was at against the required standard. So we did a bit of basic climbing, descending & turning before having a simulated gyro failure and doing most of the rest of the trip on a limited panel. We did timed turns which worked out generally better than my earlier trip, though it's always difficult to get an exact rate 1 position on the TC and maintain it to correctly roll out onto your desired heading. But on the second attempt we got to within about 10 degrees which was not to bad. We then did unusual positions which went well enough once I was reminded of the limited panel technique I described above.
We also did intercepting of radials from a "pseudo" NDB of Minster Radio on 666KHz which is located in the centre of York. This was a bit more challenging than just tracking inbound/outbound and involved calculating the best intercept angle to pull/push the needle round onto the required radial, but reducing the intercept angle as the needle approached the desired radial so as not to overshoot. When trasking outbound from the beacon, you have to be on the ball and turn immediately the needle stabilises onto your outbound radial or you very quickly overshoot and have to go through the palava of intercepting it again.
It's relatively easy when tracking inbound using the "push the head" technique. This is where you adopt a heading greater than (eg. 090) the heading the needle points to (eg. 060) which will cause your relative heading to decrease, hence pushing the needle towards your desired radial (eg.030). But when you're intercepting outbound you have to use the "pull the tail" technique. This means that if you to intercept 030 outbound, you want the tail of the needle to be on say 030. If you're currently on 060 outbound you need to adopt a heading of say 000 which is less than your desired heading which will pull the tail of the needle towards your desired 030. Hope this makes sense to everyone - it's hard enough visualising it as a pilot when you're not flying! If not, don't worry - I think you can probably live a happy an fulfilled life without this :-)
Everything went pretty well, and then back on a full panel I flew headings as passed to be by the instructor to route me onto final before landing which went very nicely. In the debrief Brian was happy with all my instrument flying and said he didn't think there was any need to do any more until later on, perhaps when they put the screens up on a diversion leg. So that's good news as it means I'm well on track for the twin once the nav is up to scratch.
Wednesday, 10 September 2008
CPL day 13
Today the initial nav was to Mount Airey airfield about 4nm north of Brough and about 8nm west of Hull. Yesterday I looked at various probable destinations on Google Earth to aid in spotting them from the air, but sods law was that the one I couldn't find was Mount Airey :-( Furthermore, because G-BXLY was in for a service we had to use G-BOVK instead which doesn't have as sophisticated instruments, key in this case being no HSI (which it permanently aligned with magnetic north) and just a standard DI. This meant that I would have to regularly check the DI to ensure it was aligned with the compass to avoid inadvertently going off track.
My planned track was due to take us directly overhead Church Fenton so I'd need to be at 3500 feet aal to remain clear. So planned for that, but once in the air it became clear that I wouldn't be able to get above about 2000 feet. Called up Linton and requested a MATZ penetration (and partially fluffed my RT). However, I didn't request penetration of Church Fenton. Consequently the controller there pussy footed about before he realised he could have handed me directly off to Church Fenton's frequency. This meant that I had to alter my heading to the north to remain clear of their MATZ. When I finally got clearance it was for no closer than 3nm to their field (ie. penetrate the MATZ but remain outside the ATZ), though it didn't matter by then since I'd already altered my track.
Tracked through their zone and once clear made to rejoin my original track by adjusting my heading by 30 degrees to the right for 3 mins before reverting to my original planned heading. While all this was happening the cloudbase was steadily descending and ended up dropping to around 1000 feet agl which meant I had to make step descents to remain clear of the clag along with the rest of my workload. This meant I neglected one my FREDA check despite swearing to myself that I wouldn't! :-( In fact the DI was at least 10 degrees out to the right so the result was that rather than rejoin my planned track I was diverging from it to the right. I only spotted this when I saw Breighton on my left IIRC when it should have been about 2nm to my right.
A correction in track and I was back on course again. Only I couldn't see Mount Airey, at all, anywhere! :-( Eventually Dick helped me out to locate it, and it became evident why I couldn't locate it earlier - because I was so low with the cloudbase being about 900 feet and me at about 800 it was hidden behind a band of trees. Had I been 1000 feet or more above it would probably have been much easier to spot. All the events so far had gotten me somewhat bothered and my brain was frazzled such that Dick orbited for me a couple of times while I worked out my diversion to Ferrybridge (a very easy and well known feature, perhaps chosen partially because of the bad conditions, but perhaps to settle me down) again.
Anyway, we headed off and not long after (with a bit of helpful prompting from Dick) I realised that we were left of track because we should be over the M62 and it was to our right. This was partially because I didn't really know what to use as a GEC until Dick pointed out that the point where the M62 crosses a railway would be a good one. After correcting my heading things panned out more or less as planned, though I had to alter my heading for a wandered DI again.
Can't really remember any more of the details but I think I did a most excellent crosswind landing :-)
My planned track was due to take us directly overhead Church Fenton so I'd need to be at 3500 feet aal to remain clear. So planned for that, but once in the air it became clear that I wouldn't be able to get above about 2000 feet. Called up Linton and requested a MATZ penetration (and partially fluffed my RT). However, I didn't request penetration of Church Fenton. Consequently the controller there pussy footed about before he realised he could have handed me directly off to Church Fenton's frequency. This meant that I had to alter my heading to the north to remain clear of their MATZ. When I finally got clearance it was for no closer than 3nm to their field (ie. penetrate the MATZ but remain outside the ATZ), though it didn't matter by then since I'd already altered my track.
Tracked through their zone and once clear made to rejoin my original track by adjusting my heading by 30 degrees to the right for 3 mins before reverting to my original planned heading. While all this was happening the cloudbase was steadily descending and ended up dropping to around 1000 feet agl which meant I had to make step descents to remain clear of the clag along with the rest of my workload. This meant I neglected one my FREDA check despite swearing to myself that I wouldn't! :-( In fact the DI was at least 10 degrees out to the right so the result was that rather than rejoin my planned track I was diverging from it to the right. I only spotted this when I saw Breighton on my left IIRC when it should have been about 2nm to my right.
A correction in track and I was back on course again. Only I couldn't see Mount Airey, at all, anywhere! :-( Eventually Dick helped me out to locate it, and it became evident why I couldn't locate it earlier - because I was so low with the cloudbase being about 900 feet and me at about 800 it was hidden behind a band of trees. Had I been 1000 feet or more above it would probably have been much easier to spot. All the events so far had gotten me somewhat bothered and my brain was frazzled such that Dick orbited for me a couple of times while I worked out my diversion to Ferrybridge (a very easy and well known feature, perhaps chosen partially because of the bad conditions, but perhaps to settle me down) again.
Anyway, we headed off and not long after (with a bit of helpful prompting from Dick) I realised that we were left of track because we should be over the M62 and it was to our right. This was partially because I didn't really know what to use as a GEC until Dick pointed out that the point where the M62 crosses a railway would be a good one. After correcting my heading things panned out more or less as planned, though I had to alter my heading for a wandered DI again.
Can't really remember any more of the details but I think I did a most excellent crosswind landing :-)
Monday, 8 September 2008
CPL day 11
Today the initial destination was the disused airfield at Driffield. The wind at altitude was forecast to be all over the place which meant planning pretty much stick a finger in the air and think of a number and was not likely to be very successful.
Took off and got in my RT calls to Linton in a nice punchy fashion and got a MATZ crossing at 2000 feet (cloudbase didn't permit any higher). My GEC points of Boston Spa and Wetherby meant I was heading in the right direction. My main features of Tadcaster, York and Elvington arrived as expected and I was just slightly to the left of track (but not worth correcting) and about half a min ahead of scheduled which meant revising my ETA to add a minute. Full Sutton maximum security prison and Pocklington gliding field arrived to the left and right as expected. After that it became more challenging as the cloudbase forced us down to about 1500 feet and there are precious little features to navigate by in the run in to Driffield. But kept to my heading and tried to pick out the lead in roads. Did manage to pick them out, just, by the sunlight glinting off a few cars and duly the disused airfield appeared, easily identifiable by the hangers and a few bits of disused runway/perimeter track.
Was then given a diversion of Breighton (about 5nm east of Selby). Much more easily plotted my line on the chart this time (having obtained smaller bulldog clips) and filled in most of the plog properly. Did a TTT having arrived on schedule for the revised ETA and set my new ETA for +12 mins at 00.
Didn't do a GEC and there things got bolloxed up. Should have been to the right of the road heading south-west, but hadn't spotted I was to the left of it. Only spotted my lapse when Market Weighton appeared on the nose when it should have been about 3 nm to the left. Applied the standard CPL technique to request to track of a turn of 30 degrees towards desired track for one minute for every nautical mile off track. Three minutes later and about to turn back onto my desired track when the instructor asked me what correction I should apply. One of the things he taught us on the debrief of the first nav trip was that three things can result in you being off track:
Returned back to Leeds much the same way as before from what I remember by tracking the NDB back in whilst remaining clear of Church Fenton's ATZ. Contacted Leeds Approach and was cleared to rejoin via Ecup. Shortly after I would have failed my CPL test because I forgot to change my QNH to Leeds from Barnsley Regional (which is always lower to guarantee a certain level of terrain clearance). Fortunately I joined at Ecup at 1700 feet on the Barnsley (which would equate to a circuit height of 1000 feet aal on the Leeds QNH) which when I wound on the correct Leeds QNH I was at about 1950 feet and the clearance is almost invariably not above altitude 2000 feet. Had I joined at 1900 feet on the Barnsley I would have busted my cleared altitude and probably been reprimanded! Still, better now than on the test. The approach and landing were pretty decent from what I remember.
Was pretty annoyed about the GEC failure, but at least it'll teach me to get it right next time. The instructor was overall happy with things, and looking back on it, it was actually a good trip because I learnt two valuable lessons in practice and hopefully won't make the same mistakes again.
Took off and got in my RT calls to Linton in a nice punchy fashion and got a MATZ crossing at 2000 feet (cloudbase didn't permit any higher). My GEC points of Boston Spa and Wetherby meant I was heading in the right direction. My main features of Tadcaster, York and Elvington arrived as expected and I was just slightly to the left of track (but not worth correcting) and about half a min ahead of scheduled which meant revising my ETA to add a minute. Full Sutton maximum security prison and Pocklington gliding field arrived to the left and right as expected. After that it became more challenging as the cloudbase forced us down to about 1500 feet and there are precious little features to navigate by in the run in to Driffield. But kept to my heading and tried to pick out the lead in roads. Did manage to pick them out, just, by the sunlight glinting off a few cars and duly the disused airfield appeared, easily identifiable by the hangers and a few bits of disused runway/perimeter track.
Was then given a diversion of Breighton (about 5nm east of Selby). Much more easily plotted my line on the chart this time (having obtained smaller bulldog clips) and filled in most of the plog properly. Did a TTT having arrived on schedule for the revised ETA and set my new ETA for +12 mins at 00.
Didn't do a GEC and there things got bolloxed up. Should have been to the right of the road heading south-west, but hadn't spotted I was to the left of it. Only spotted my lapse when Market Weighton appeared on the nose when it should have been about 3 nm to the left. Applied the standard CPL technique to request to track of a turn of 30 degrees towards desired track for one minute for every nautical mile off track. Three minutes later and about to turn back onto my desired track when the instructor asked me what correction I should apply. One of the things he taught us on the debrief of the first nav trip was that three things can result in you being off track:
- Pilot error
- Turned too early/late at turning point resulting in a parallel track
- Wind stronger/weaker than forecast
Returned back to Leeds much the same way as before from what I remember by tracking the NDB back in whilst remaining clear of Church Fenton's ATZ. Contacted Leeds Approach and was cleared to rejoin via Ecup. Shortly after I would have failed my CPL test because I forgot to change my QNH to Leeds from Barnsley Regional (which is always lower to guarantee a certain level of terrain clearance). Fortunately I joined at Ecup at 1700 feet on the Barnsley (which would equate to a circuit height of 1000 feet aal on the Leeds QNH) which when I wound on the correct Leeds QNH I was at about 1950 feet and the clearance is almost invariably not above altitude 2000 feet. Had I joined at 1900 feet on the Barnsley I would have busted my cleared altitude and probably been reprimanded! Still, better now than on the test. The approach and landing were pretty decent from what I remember.
Was pretty annoyed about the GEC failure, but at least it'll teach me to get it right next time. The instructor was overall happy with things, and looking back on it, it was actually a good trip because I learnt two valuable lessons in practice and hopefully won't make the same mistakes again.
CPL day 10 and the weekend
No flying on the Friday, and no prizes for guessing why.
Was away for the weekend, so no flying then either.
Was away for the weekend, so no flying then either.
Thursday, 4 September 2008
CPL day 9
No flying on account of the weather, and there's almost certainly not going to be any tomorrow with the forecast :-(
Wednesday, 3 September 2008
CPL day 8 - second nav trip
This and all subsequent nav trips are going to be as would be done on the test - you get a destination to plan to for your first leg and then a couple of minutes before you arrive at that destination you are given a diversion destination to plan for in the air and fly to.
So, a relatively easy one to start with - leave the zone by Dewsbury and then plan a leg to Winterton (which is about 5 miles north-north-east of Scunthorpe. From Dewsbury set my planned heading and noted down the ETA of 43 and pointed out the M62 as being to the left as planned for my GEC. Dick pointed out that motorways are not good features for GEC as you could still be to the left, but 30 degrees off your desired track and it would still be left; it would depend on your angle of approach and where you would cross which not suitable for navigation. A better feature he pointed out would be that big urban area of Wakefield just to the left of the nose - oh yeah, that would be better!
Anyway, carried on with my planned heading and altitude (2000 feet) and the power stations of Ferrybridge and Eggborough appeared down the left as expected, and my halfway point of Snaith (that we saw the day before) arrived just to the left of track as planned and a minute ahead of schedule. Put in the revised ETA of 45 as if we were one minute ahead at half way we should be two minutes ahead at destination.
Continued on with the heading as everything was looking good. Picked up my main feature of Goole as expected to the left of track. Struggled to find the funnel features I'd picked of the cables across Trent Falls and Flixborough as neither was easy to pick out in the dull light, but everything was still good with the track because I could see I was tracking to the north of the bend in the river. As we came up on Winterton there wasn't a lot of easy features to positively identify it by, but the instructor pointed out that it was the only big town in the area.
He then gave me the diversion destination of Melbourne (no, not in Oz, but 10nm south-east of York). Drew on my line and eyeballed the heading 330 and did a TTT noting that instead of two minutes after the original ETA as expected, we arrived one minute before it at 42 and three minutes ahead of the revised ETA. Revised the true heading to be 325 and then applied a max drift correction of 12 degrees left to it to give me a heading of 313. The distance was 15nm and at roughly a mile and a half a minute the ETA was 52. Noted that down on the plog but, ahem, that's all I wrote down.
Anyway, my halfway point came up on track and on schedule and I duly arrived overhead Melbourne on schedule (if I remember correctly since I didn't note down the ATA on the plog). Then tracked the NDB back to Leeds, partially IMC and did a reasonable approach and landing.
In the debrief Dick was ok with the general flying, altitude and heading keeping put pointed out that I need to fill in the plog better.
So, a relatively easy one to start with - leave the zone by Dewsbury and then plan a leg to Winterton (which is about 5 miles north-north-east of Scunthorpe. From Dewsbury set my planned heading and noted down the ETA of 43 and pointed out the M62 as being to the left as planned for my GEC. Dick pointed out that motorways are not good features for GEC as you could still be to the left, but 30 degrees off your desired track and it would still be left; it would depend on your angle of approach and where you would cross which not suitable for navigation. A better feature he pointed out would be that big urban area of Wakefield just to the left of the nose - oh yeah, that would be better!
Anyway, carried on with my planned heading and altitude (2000 feet) and the power stations of Ferrybridge and Eggborough appeared down the left as expected, and my halfway point of Snaith (that we saw the day before) arrived just to the left of track as planned and a minute ahead of schedule. Put in the revised ETA of 45 as if we were one minute ahead at half way we should be two minutes ahead at destination.
Continued on with the heading as everything was looking good. Picked up my main feature of Goole as expected to the left of track. Struggled to find the funnel features I'd picked of the cables across Trent Falls and Flixborough as neither was easy to pick out in the dull light, but everything was still good with the track because I could see I was tracking to the north of the bend in the river. As we came up on Winterton there wasn't a lot of easy features to positively identify it by, but the instructor pointed out that it was the only big town in the area.
He then gave me the diversion destination of Melbourne (no, not in Oz, but 10nm south-east of York). Drew on my line and eyeballed the heading 330 and did a TTT noting that instead of two minutes after the original ETA as expected, we arrived one minute before it at 42 and three minutes ahead of the revised ETA. Revised the true heading to be 325 and then applied a max drift correction of 12 degrees left to it to give me a heading of 313. The distance was 15nm and at roughly a mile and a half a minute the ETA was 52. Noted that down on the plog but, ahem, that's all I wrote down.
Anyway, my halfway point came up on track and on schedule and I duly arrived overhead Melbourne on schedule (if I remember correctly since I didn't note down the ATA on the plog). Then tracked the NDB back to Leeds, partially IMC and did a reasonable approach and landing.
In the debrief Dick was ok with the general flying, altitude and heading keeping put pointed out that I need to fill in the plog better.
CPL day 7 - first nav trip
The weather was looking good, at least until the afternoon, and ideal for nav training. Dick gave us a fairly simple route to plot - leave the zone via Ecup, route to Castle Howard, then down to Snaith and back up to Ecup. It was a trip where Dick would not say anything about the nav and would use it as a measure of how up to scratch we were on out navigation. Myself and Dave who is at the same stage in the CPL both planned it as we saw fit and took it in turns to do the trip and Dave got the dubious pleasure of going first. His nav and plog went more or less according to plan - me found both destinations, and was on track and on time (as per revised ETA), so I knew the marker had been laid down. At least I knew what to look for when finding Snaith which I'd never been to before.
The cloudbase had fortunately risen to above my planned 3000 foot cruising altitude which would enable a request of a MATZ crossing of Linton rather than a MATZ penetration. Nevertheless, I would still request a penetration because the top of the MATZ is 3000 feet and it's a courtesy to request it just to be safe. After handover to Leeds Approach I requested a climb to altitude 3000 feet and to contact Linton to get ahead of the game. I think they asked for me to stay not above 2000 feet (the usual VFR clearance when leaving the zone) and remain with them until I'd left the zone. Once I had been released to contact Linton I requested aMATZ penetration (though I fumbled my RT a bit on passing my details) and got cleared so everything was good. The track was good most of the way on the first leg and the navigation features popped up as expected. At halfway I was one min behind of schedule which required revising my ETA at destination to be two minutes later. Arrived on time and the altitude and heading holding had been good.
The second leg went more or less the same as the first with an ETA and track correction required. After turning at Snaith and heading back to Leeds the fun started. There was a large shower washing in over Ferrybridge power station and the ATIS was reporting CBs and rain! As I tracked in we entered the shower and the visibility almost vanished! I could still see things beneath me on the ground and spotted Sherburn to the right since the shower hadn't reached there. But ahead was impossible because the sunlight from behind the shower lit everything up and that combined with the rain streaming over the cockpit meant all I could do was fly my heading on instruments. It became a bit more bumpy (had been quite bumpy anyway) as a result of passing beneath the CB but we had the Leeds NDB tuned in and our track matched the ADF needle which meant both that we were tracking in the right direction, but more so that the CB wasn't a TS (or the ADF needle would have been swinging all over the place or pointing at the centre of the TS. Still managed to spot my halfway point and was on track and on time. Once we'd been cleared to enter the zone and were positioning for downwind right for runway 14 we popped out of the rain and into the clear and sunshine, perfect timing :-) Everything calmed down, there was no more bumpiness and the wind dropped to something like 230/04. Finished off a good trip with a good approach and a pretty good landing.
Had a quick individual debrief with Dick where he was happy with the trip but pointed out my tendency to navigate too much by looking for every little feature (micro-navigation), rather than pick three or four main features and fly by them.
That was followed by a longer debrief with both Dave and myself where Dick laid down the expectations and required CPL standards for navigation and also key points for nav in general and for each leg of the trip and various other useful things - way too much to put in here. But suffice to say I'm not too far off where I need to be and just need to fold in some of these new ideas/requirements, so I'm a happy bunny!
The cloudbase had fortunately risen to above my planned 3000 foot cruising altitude which would enable a request of a MATZ crossing of Linton rather than a MATZ penetration. Nevertheless, I would still request a penetration because the top of the MATZ is 3000 feet and it's a courtesy to request it just to be safe. After handover to Leeds Approach I requested a climb to altitude 3000 feet and to contact Linton to get ahead of the game. I think they asked for me to stay not above 2000 feet (the usual VFR clearance when leaving the zone) and remain with them until I'd left the zone. Once I had been released to contact Linton I requested aMATZ penetration (though I fumbled my RT a bit on passing my details) and got cleared so everything was good. The track was good most of the way on the first leg and the navigation features popped up as expected. At halfway I was one min behind of schedule which required revising my ETA at destination to be two minutes later. Arrived on time and the altitude and heading holding had been good.
The second leg went more or less the same as the first with an ETA and track correction required. After turning at Snaith and heading back to Leeds the fun started. There was a large shower washing in over Ferrybridge power station and the ATIS was reporting CBs and rain! As I tracked in we entered the shower and the visibility almost vanished! I could still see things beneath me on the ground and spotted Sherburn to the right since the shower hadn't reached there. But ahead was impossible because the sunlight from behind the shower lit everything up and that combined with the rain streaming over the cockpit meant all I could do was fly my heading on instruments. It became a bit more bumpy (had been quite bumpy anyway) as a result of passing beneath the CB but we had the Leeds NDB tuned in and our track matched the ADF needle which meant both that we were tracking in the right direction, but more so that the CB wasn't a TS (or the ADF needle would have been swinging all over the place or pointing at the centre of the TS. Still managed to spot my halfway point and was on track and on time. Once we'd been cleared to enter the zone and were positioning for downwind right for runway 14 we popped out of the rain and into the clear and sunshine, perfect timing :-) Everything calmed down, there was no more bumpiness and the wind dropped to something like 230/04. Finished off a good trip with a good approach and a pretty good landing.
Had a quick individual debrief with Dick where he was happy with the trip but pointed out my tendency to navigate too much by looking for every little feature (micro-navigation), rather than pick three or four main features and fly by them.
That was followed by a longer debrief with both Dave and myself where Dick laid down the expectations and required CPL standards for navigation and also key points for nav in general and for each leg of the trip and various other useful things - way too much to put in here. But suffice to say I'm not too far off where I need to be and just need to fold in some of these new ideas/requirements, so I'm a happy bunny!
Tuesday, 2 September 2008
CPL day 6 (good day, bad day) - part 2
This is the good day piece :-)
Later in the day the weather had deteriorated so we could no longer to general handling or a nav trip, so we ended up doing an instruments flight. This time it was VOR/NDB tracking. Screens up and took off leaving the zone via Ecup and climbing to 3000 feet. I was then asked to intercept the 155 radial from GAM. Tuned in the beacon, idented it no probs and intercepted the radial quite nicely. Then was asked to track it towards GAM and intercept the 280 radial from OTR. Tuned in & idented OTR and proceeded to track towards GAM. The whole trip was in and out of cloud the whole way and bumpy with a lot of up and down drafts. This meant for a difficult time in maintaining heading and especially altitude, but I did a pretty damn good job of it considering my lack of recent experience in instrument flying. This meant that the VOR tracking was good and I was well within the inner two dots (signifying 2 degrees off track) all the way and factored in any wind corrections nicely.
Came up on the OTR radial and turned to intercept accurately. After a while tracking inbound to OTR the needle was moving out to the right a bit towards the two degrees dots. Applied a correction, but it took a long time for the needle to come back in since we were quite far from the VOR. The needle was still a bit out to the right when the instructor asked me to turn 180 degrees and intercept the reciprocal radial and which was I was going to turn. Because I was still a degree or so to the right of track and the wind was about 230 with our track 280 I realised that I needed to turn left so that I would be flying towards the correct radial or otherwise we would have been blown further off track.
Established on the reciprocal heading and here I made the mistake of failing to set the OBS to the reciprocal heading. This meant that the instrument was no longer functioning as a command instrument (ie. needle left "commands" turn left to regain track), but rather the opposite. So as the needle headed towards the two degrees left dot I made an adjustment towards the left when in fact I was still to the left of track and was heading further away from the desired radial. The instructor pointed out that something was wrong and that I was on a heading of nearly 270 (and was heading towards Doncaster's new class D airspace without clearance) and said to turn onto a heading of 330. It took a minute or so to realise what I'd done wrong - a stupid mistake.
Anyway we got things sorted to keep us away from the class D and then the instructor asked me to track inbound to the Leeds NDB which was at the time reading 300. Setting a heading of 290 to allow for the wind worked out very nicely and we tracked it in and Ecup appeared more or less on the nose
Bit annoyed by OBS issue as is was such a silly mistake and spoiled what would have otherwise been a perfect trip, but at least it will etch in my memory the need to correctly set the OBS.
Later in the day the weather had deteriorated so we could no longer to general handling or a nav trip, so we ended up doing an instruments flight. This time it was VOR/NDB tracking. Screens up and took off leaving the zone via Ecup and climbing to 3000 feet. I was then asked to intercept the 155 radial from GAM. Tuned in the beacon, idented it no probs and intercepted the radial quite nicely. Then was asked to track it towards GAM and intercept the 280 radial from OTR. Tuned in & idented OTR and proceeded to track towards GAM. The whole trip was in and out of cloud the whole way and bumpy with a lot of up and down drafts. This meant for a difficult time in maintaining heading and especially altitude, but I did a pretty damn good job of it considering my lack of recent experience in instrument flying. This meant that the VOR tracking was good and I was well within the inner two dots (signifying 2 degrees off track) all the way and factored in any wind corrections nicely.
Came up on the OTR radial and turned to intercept accurately. After a while tracking inbound to OTR the needle was moving out to the right a bit towards the two degrees dots. Applied a correction, but it took a long time for the needle to come back in since we were quite far from the VOR. The needle was still a bit out to the right when the instructor asked me to turn 180 degrees and intercept the reciprocal radial and which was I was going to turn. Because I was still a degree or so to the right of track and the wind was about 230 with our track 280 I realised that I needed to turn left so that I would be flying towards the correct radial or otherwise we would have been blown further off track.
Established on the reciprocal heading and here I made the mistake of failing to set the OBS to the reciprocal heading. This meant that the instrument was no longer functioning as a command instrument (ie. needle left "commands" turn left to regain track), but rather the opposite. So as the needle headed towards the two degrees left dot I made an adjustment towards the left when in fact I was still to the left of track and was heading further away from the desired radial. The instructor pointed out that something was wrong and that I was on a heading of nearly 270 (and was heading towards Doncaster's new class D airspace without clearance) and said to turn onto a heading of 330. It took a minute or so to realise what I'd done wrong - a stupid mistake.
Anyway we got things sorted to keep us away from the class D and then the instructor asked me to track inbound to the Leeds NDB which was at the time reading 300. Setting a heading of 290 to allow for the wind worked out very nicely and we tracked it in and Ecup appeared more or less on the nose
Bit annoyed by OBS issue as is was such a silly mistake and spoiled what would have otherwise been a perfect trip, but at least it will etch in my memory the need to correctly set the OBS.
CPL day 6 (good day, bad day)
Monday and a fine sunny start to autumn - perhaps this is the Indian Summer I've been hoping for... No (well not yet) - a band of very heavy rain associated with a cold front sweeping in over Scotland. But if I was lucky I'd get in a sortie before the rain hit, so I hot-footed it over to the airport.
Checked out the aircraft as black clouds started to loom in and headed off to go general handling while the weather was still good. Started with stalls which didn't go very well :-( They're not something you ever really practice except while initially learning to fly to get your PPL.
The basic stall is done in straight and level flight with a clean aircraft (ie. no flaps or undercarriage). In this you pull the power back to idle and keep pulling back on the nose to maintain your starting altitude. The stall warner then goes off and continues to beep continuously while you continue to haul back on the controls (you're really hauling back a lot now). Then the aircraft starts to shake a little as you reach the stall buffet, but you still keep pulling back until the instructor tells you to recover. Then you're supposed to shove full power on and lower the nose to just below the horizon and then as soon as you start to see the airspeed increase again, you bring the nose back up to minimise your altitude loss. You're supposed to achieve this with a loss of less that 100 feet. However, I didn't really get it right in the three goes I had because I didn't bring the nose up soon enough and lost somewhere between 150 and 300 feet :-(
The other two stalls are initiated in the same way, but are in a landing configuration, either with full flap, straight and level to simulate final approach, or with two stages of flap and with a 20 bank to simulate a turn onto finals. In both of these you can't afford to put the nose down to gain speed or you risk planting it firmly into the ground! So at the first sign of stall ie. the stall warner, you shove full power on, lower the nose a fraction to unstall the wing and as soon as airspeed starts increasing you take away drag flap (if you have full flap) and then as speed builds and you start to climb away you bring up the rest of the flaps in stages. The aim being to lose no height, but I again did a shoddy job and still lost height. Still, I'll get more chances to get it right when I do stalling in the twin.
Once we'd finished the stalling we climbed up to 2000 feet and he suddenly chopped the power. Oh no - an engine failure... panic, panic! Well, not really that bad, but even a PFL does get the adrenalin going. I think we did about 3 or 4 and sadly I would have died in nearly all of them :-(
I can't remember the details, but I learnt a few important things:
Checked out the aircraft as black clouds started to loom in and headed off to go general handling while the weather was still good. Started with stalls which didn't go very well :-( They're not something you ever really practice except while initially learning to fly to get your PPL.
The basic stall is done in straight and level flight with a clean aircraft (ie. no flaps or undercarriage). In this you pull the power back to idle and keep pulling back on the nose to maintain your starting altitude. The stall warner then goes off and continues to beep continuously while you continue to haul back on the controls (you're really hauling back a lot now). Then the aircraft starts to shake a little as you reach the stall buffet, but you still keep pulling back until the instructor tells you to recover. Then you're supposed to shove full power on and lower the nose to just below the horizon and then as soon as you start to see the airspeed increase again, you bring the nose back up to minimise your altitude loss. You're supposed to achieve this with a loss of less that 100 feet. However, I didn't really get it right in the three goes I had because I didn't bring the nose up soon enough and lost somewhere between 150 and 300 feet :-(
The other two stalls are initiated in the same way, but are in a landing configuration, either with full flap, straight and level to simulate final approach, or with two stages of flap and with a 20 bank to simulate a turn onto finals. In both of these you can't afford to put the nose down to gain speed or you risk planting it firmly into the ground! So at the first sign of stall ie. the stall warner, you shove full power on, lower the nose a fraction to unstall the wing and as soon as airspeed starts increasing you take away drag flap (if you have full flap) and then as speed builds and you start to climb away you bring up the rest of the flaps in stages. The aim being to lose no height, but I again did a shoddy job and still lost height. Still, I'll get more chances to get it right when I do stalling in the twin.
Once we'd finished the stalling we climbed up to 2000 feet and he suddenly chopped the power. Oh no - an engine failure... panic, panic! Well, not really that bad, but even a PFL does get the adrenalin going. I think we did about 3 or 4 and sadly I would have died in nearly all of them :-(
I can't remember the details, but I learnt a few important things:
- You need to get the carb heat on straight away as if you have carb icing (the most common cause of engine stoppage in the UK) if can take a few minutes for the ice to melt before you would have any chance of restarting the engine.
- Get your vital actions out of the way (trim for best glide, carb heat, mixture rich, fuel pump on, change tanks) so you can make a Mayday call ASAP. It's ok if you're in an area of good radio coverage like the Vale of York, but if you're over the Scottish Highlands you need to be at a decent altitude to ensure your mayday is received or you won't get any help when you're broken in a broken and/or burning aircraft!
- When you're pretty low (< 500 feet) and the field you've chosen looks good, you're probably too high. In my last attempt I thought I was ok, but he said I was too high and then proceeded to do a couple of proper S turns at 60 degrees of bank to lose the height and by then we'd got down to about 200 feet and we would still have gotten in. I would still made the field, but in the middle rather than near the start which would have left me little or insufficient braking run.
Le Weekend - Dimanche
The last day of the glorious Summer of 2008 - dense fog followed by pouring rain in the afternoon - more like the late autumn than summer. Obviously no flying...
Le Weekend - Samedi
Mostly CPL instruction is Monday to Friday, 9-5:30. But one of the instructors, Roger, is part time and is available for weekends if required/appropriate. So on the Friday I'd arranged to go flying with him at about midday on the Saturday. Unfortunately he phoned first thing in the morning to cancel as he 'd not been able to sleep a wink that night or the night before and he feared he was coming down with a cold. A shame, but the last thing I want is a sodding cold!
I'd booked our aircraft from 15:00 anyway, so I could use that slot to do a bit of solo flying as I still need a couple of hours. I was going to take one of my friends from the gym flying, but not only was he not available but the weather was pretty grotty. I set off on my own in a visibility of 12 or 15k (can't remember which) but it was pretty poor and I couldn't see all that far. Not too much of a problem as such as I was planning to to some PFLs and position fixing. The PFLs didn't go too bad - would only have died a couple of times :-S but I still need to work on my vital actions, checks and mayday calls to get them more slick. Did have a close-ish call with first a Robin flying school aircraft out of Leeds and then a microlight - what kind of fools fly on such a poor vis day?! Oh yeah, that would be me too... :-) Just goes to show that even on a crap day, you still have to keep your eyes peeled as there will always be someone out there no matter what the conditions.
Tracked the OTR VOR for a little way and did a position fix between OTR and POL and quite bizarrely when I tuned in POL I was bang on the heading that happened to be on the OBS at the time. I really need to buy the VORTRAK attachments as it's so much hassle to do a position fix without them, and they have been recommended as excellent diversion planning tools also.
Headed back to Leeds and was inbound to Ecup at the same time as another aircraft. Couldn't spot him for toffee in the murk and ended up deciding to reduce speed by about 20 knots to let him get well ahead as I knew he was a bit ahead of me but that I was faster. Didn't spot him until I saw him turning onto finals - damn I hate crap vis! Misjudged the landing a bit and needed to squirt some power on to avoid thumping it onto the deck. Still, another hour bites the dust...
I'd booked our aircraft from 15:00 anyway, so I could use that slot to do a bit of solo flying as I still need a couple of hours. I was going to take one of my friends from the gym flying, but not only was he not available but the weather was pretty grotty. I set off on my own in a visibility of 12 or 15k (can't remember which) but it was pretty poor and I couldn't see all that far. Not too much of a problem as such as I was planning to to some PFLs and position fixing. The PFLs didn't go too bad - would only have died a couple of times :-S but I still need to work on my vital actions, checks and mayday calls to get them more slick. Did have a close-ish call with first a Robin flying school aircraft out of Leeds and then a microlight - what kind of fools fly on such a poor vis day?! Oh yeah, that would be me too... :-) Just goes to show that even on a crap day, you still have to keep your eyes peeled as there will always be someone out there no matter what the conditions.
Tracked the OTR VOR for a little way and did a position fix between OTR and POL and quite bizarrely when I tuned in POL I was bang on the heading that happened to be on the OBS at the time. I really need to buy the VORTRAK attachments as it's so much hassle to do a position fix without them, and they have been recommended as excellent diversion planning tools also.
Headed back to Leeds and was inbound to Ecup at the same time as another aircraft. Couldn't spot him for toffee in the murk and ended up deciding to reduce speed by about 20 knots to let him get well ahead as I knew he was a bit ahead of me but that I was faster. Didn't spot him until I saw him turning onto finals - damn I hate crap vis! Misjudged the landing a bit and needed to squirt some power on to avoid thumping it onto the deck. Still, another hour bites the dust...
CPL day 5 part 2
Because the weather was rubbish for visual flying I was able to get a second flight in on Friday which was a bonus because it meant I was still in instrument flying mode and also provided some mitigation against the miserable start to the week.
Did some more general handling with climbs, descents and turns to polish the edges on that, followed by some limited panel work. Limited panel means that one or more of your instruments have failed and you have to infer the missing information from a combination of the remaining ones. Typically, and for the test, it will be the vacuum driven gyro instruments the AI and DI that have "failed". To simulate these failures, the instructor will stick a rubber suction cup over the instruments to obscure them.
Did some basic climbing and descending which isn't too bad since you still have a VSI, ASI and altimeter so you can set the correct speed for the climb/descent and level off at your desired altitude. However, since you have no DI to maintain a heading to and you can't really use the compass because of it's errors, you have to closely monitor the turn coordinator to ensure you keep the wings level and don't inadvertently enter a slight turn and lose your heading.
It really gets "fun" when you have to do turns. You keep your altitude in the usual way by monitoring the VSI and altimeter, but you only have the compass for heading. Because of the compass turning errors, the only realistic way you can perform turns is by doing a rate 1 turn (which is marked on the turn coordinator) so you have a known rate of turn and time it. So if you're turning from 090 onto 240 (150 degrees) at a rate of 3 degrees/sec (which 10 seconds foe every number on the the VOR ring which helps work out how many seconds to turn for) you'll need to turn for 50 seconds and try to maintain an accurate rate 1 turn all the way through. So you start your stopwatch, roll into the turn, maintain rate 1 and then as your desired time is reached you start to roll out of the turn. You then let the compass settle and if you've done it spot on, your new heading should be correct.
Of course it's all very much easier said than done.
Firstly what happens if you need to turn from 090 through a heading of say 107 degrees? You've got to be very quick at division and multiplication by three in your head which is not at all easy when you're struggling with flying correctly and instrument failure. The use of the VOR ring helps here - you can set your current heading at the top, count the number of whole digits which are between your current heading and the desired one (in this case 3 which equals 30 seconds). Then the remainder - do you add a fourth 10 seconds and subtract the difference (roughly 4 secs), or just add the remainder (roughly 6 secs). If you alternate between the two it's all to easy to add the remainder instead of subtracting it or vice versa (I did this a couple of times) which could quite easily result in an error of 20 or so degrees.
Then there's the turn coordinator. Do you position the needle/aircraft image wingtip directly on the needle, or so the point of the needle is at the bottom of the mark, or the top? It quite probably varies from aircraft type to aircraft type, and possibly between aircraft of the same type.
As far as my results go, it wasn't very successful and I was mostly 10-30 degrees out. Dick pointed out the quirks of where to position the turn coordinator needle after we'd had a few poor attempts. On the PA-28 (G-BXLY) you need to position the needle on the bottom border of the rate 1 turn mark; I'd been trying to keep it in the middle of the mark. It may not seem like much, but an under turn of only 0.25 deg/sec over 50 secs would result in an error of 12.5 degrees which is quite significant. But Dick was happy with my technique.
A similar return on instruments for a visual approach went well and the landing was pretty reasonable with only a slight balloon on the flare.
Did some more general handling with climbs, descents and turns to polish the edges on that, followed by some limited panel work. Limited panel means that one or more of your instruments have failed and you have to infer the missing information from a combination of the remaining ones. Typically, and for the test, it will be the vacuum driven gyro instruments the AI and DI that have "failed". To simulate these failures, the instructor will stick a rubber suction cup over the instruments to obscure them.
Did some basic climbing and descending which isn't too bad since you still have a VSI, ASI and altimeter so you can set the correct speed for the climb/descent and level off at your desired altitude. However, since you have no DI to maintain a heading to and you can't really use the compass because of it's errors, you have to closely monitor the turn coordinator to ensure you keep the wings level and don't inadvertently enter a slight turn and lose your heading.
It really gets "fun" when you have to do turns. You keep your altitude in the usual way by monitoring the VSI and altimeter, but you only have the compass for heading. Because of the compass turning errors, the only realistic way you can perform turns is by doing a rate 1 turn (which is marked on the turn coordinator) so you have a known rate of turn and time it. So if you're turning from 090 onto 240 (150 degrees) at a rate of 3 degrees/sec (which 10 seconds foe every number on the the VOR ring which helps work out how many seconds to turn for) you'll need to turn for 50 seconds and try to maintain an accurate rate 1 turn all the way through. So you start your stopwatch, roll into the turn, maintain rate 1 and then as your desired time is reached you start to roll out of the turn. You then let the compass settle and if you've done it spot on, your new heading should be correct.
Of course it's all very much easier said than done.
Firstly what happens if you need to turn from 090 through a heading of say 107 degrees? You've got to be very quick at division and multiplication by three in your head which is not at all easy when you're struggling with flying correctly and instrument failure. The use of the VOR ring helps here - you can set your current heading at the top, count the number of whole digits which are between your current heading and the desired one (in this case 3 which equals 30 seconds). Then the remainder - do you add a fourth 10 seconds and subtract the difference (roughly 4 secs), or just add the remainder (roughly 6 secs). If you alternate between the two it's all to easy to add the remainder instead of subtracting it or vice versa (I did this a couple of times) which could quite easily result in an error of 20 or so degrees.
Then there's the turn coordinator. Do you position the needle/aircraft image wingtip directly on the needle, or so the point of the needle is at the bottom of the mark, or the top? It quite probably varies from aircraft type to aircraft type, and possibly between aircraft of the same type.
As far as my results go, it wasn't very successful and I was mostly 10-30 degrees out. Dick pointed out the quirks of where to position the turn coordinator needle after we'd had a few poor attempts. On the PA-28 (G-BXLY) you need to position the needle on the bottom border of the rate 1 turn mark; I'd been trying to keep it in the middle of the mark. It may not seem like much, but an under turn of only 0.25 deg/sec over 50 secs would result in an error of 12.5 degrees which is quite significant. But Dick was happy with my technique.
A similar return on instruments for a visual approach went well and the landing was pretty reasonable with only a slight balloon on the flare.
Sunday, 31 August 2008
CPL day 5
Friday dawned grey.
Prospects didn't look great and while I drove Rekha into work, the cloudbase was only 500 feet, though it was forecast to rise to ~3000 feet later in the day. However the winds were much lighter.
But Dick (who will likely be my main CPL instructor) said to come in anyway and I was going to suggest if it might be possible to do some of the required 5 hours of instrument flying since the weather wasn't suitable for the normal starting flight of general handling and stalls.
So I finally got to start my CPL by doing some instrument flying. In order to prevent the pilot from seeing any visual features and use them to judge his attitude (you wouldn't be able to see any features in cloud which is just like fog), simulated instrument flight uses slatted screens (or a in some aircraft a hood or "foggles", but I'll just be using screens) which block the pilots view of the outside, but still allowing the instructor to see outside for safety. So we put the screens up and took off.
Dick passed my headings and altitudes to fly to and we punched through the main cloud layer at about 3000 feet and into the sunlight above at about 4500 feet. We then did general instrument handling to get into the normal swing of instrument flying. Because I've already done IMC training I knew (in theory) how to do all this and how to maintain an instrument scan, but it was just a case of getting back into the swing of things since it had been a couple of years since I last flew on instruments.
An instrument scan is a pretty obvious thing to have to do - namely monitor all the instruments to check you're flying as desired (in this case, initially straight and level). In practice it's actually quite difficult to get to grips with because you can't fixate on any one instrument, say the altimeter because then you might gradually enter a slight turn (imperceptible to your body's senses) and lose your heading, or worse enter a spiral dive. So you have to constantly flick your eyes over each instrument in turn (usually in set patterns depending on what you're doing - straight & level, climbing/descending, turning etc.) only staying on one for about 2 seconds. So it's really quite mentally taxing until you get used to it, and it's easy for your scan to break down and you fixate too much on one instrument and your flying goes to shit.
So I was initially doing this and trying to maintain straight and level. I think the hardest part is getting the aircraft in trim. This is where you use a wheel to move a small control surface on your elevator (in all aircraft, but some also have rudder and aileron trim) that is independent of the main control column with the aim of reducing any push or pull pressure you might have to zero so you could take your hands off and the aircraft should remain flying straight and level. In instrument flights it only takes very small movement to start climbing/descending or turning, so having it in trim to prevent your slight control column pressure from putting you into a climb/descent is very important or you're fighting a losing battle.
Once I got the hang of it again we started doing rate 1 turns - 360 degrees first one way and then the other. In these you have to maintain your rate of turn whilst keeping your altitude constant. Then climbing and descent where you maintain your heading but monitor your airspeed to ensure the correct rate of climb/descent. The trick is not to devote too much of your scan to your altimeter when in a climb for example but just enough so that you know when you're approaching your desired altitude so you can then bring it into your scan and not overshoot your altitude. The same goes for the DI in a turn. Finally you do both at the same time.
Considering I'd not done and instrument flying for so long I picked it up again really pretty quickly and was not too bad by the end of the lesson. Flew back to the airport for a visual approach, but taking headings from Dick to position for right base for runway 32. And did a damn fine landing for my first time in a PA-28 for a long time!
Prospects didn't look great and while I drove Rekha into work, the cloudbase was only 500 feet, though it was forecast to rise to ~3000 feet later in the day. However the winds were much lighter.
But Dick (who will likely be my main CPL instructor) said to come in anyway and I was going to suggest if it might be possible to do some of the required 5 hours of instrument flying since the weather wasn't suitable for the normal starting flight of general handling and stalls.
So I finally got to start my CPL by doing some instrument flying. In order to prevent the pilot from seeing any visual features and use them to judge his attitude (you wouldn't be able to see any features in cloud which is just like fog), simulated instrument flight uses slatted screens (or a in some aircraft a hood or "foggles", but I'll just be using screens) which block the pilots view of the outside, but still allowing the instructor to see outside for safety. So we put the screens up and took off.
Dick passed my headings and altitudes to fly to and we punched through the main cloud layer at about 3000 feet and into the sunlight above at about 4500 feet. We then did general instrument handling to get into the normal swing of instrument flying. Because I've already done IMC training I knew (in theory) how to do all this and how to maintain an instrument scan, but it was just a case of getting back into the swing of things since it had been a couple of years since I last flew on instruments.
An instrument scan is a pretty obvious thing to have to do - namely monitor all the instruments to check you're flying as desired (in this case, initially straight and level). In practice it's actually quite difficult to get to grips with because you can't fixate on any one instrument, say the altimeter because then you might gradually enter a slight turn (imperceptible to your body's senses) and lose your heading, or worse enter a spiral dive. So you have to constantly flick your eyes over each instrument in turn (usually in set patterns depending on what you're doing - straight & level, climbing/descending, turning etc.) only staying on one for about 2 seconds. So it's really quite mentally taxing until you get used to it, and it's easy for your scan to break down and you fixate too much on one instrument and your flying goes to shit.
So I was initially doing this and trying to maintain straight and level. I think the hardest part is getting the aircraft in trim. This is where you use a wheel to move a small control surface on your elevator (in all aircraft, but some also have rudder and aileron trim) that is independent of the main control column with the aim of reducing any push or pull pressure you might have to zero so you could take your hands off and the aircraft should remain flying straight and level. In instrument flights it only takes very small movement to start climbing/descending or turning, so having it in trim to prevent your slight control column pressure from putting you into a climb/descent is very important or you're fighting a losing battle.
Once I got the hang of it again we started doing rate 1 turns - 360 degrees first one way and then the other. In these you have to maintain your rate of turn whilst keeping your altitude constant. Then climbing and descent where you maintain your heading but monitor your airspeed to ensure the correct rate of climb/descent. The trick is not to devote too much of your scan to your altimeter when in a climb for example but just enough so that you know when you're approaching your desired altitude so you can then bring it into your scan and not overshoot your altitude. The same goes for the DI in a turn. Finally you do both at the same time.
Considering I'd not done and instrument flying for so long I picked it up again really pretty quickly and was not too bad by the end of the lesson. Flew back to the airport for a visual approach, but taking headings from Dick to position for right base for runway 32. And did a damn fine landing for my first time in a PA-28 for a long time!
Saturday, 30 August 2008
Wednesday, 27 August 2008
CPL day 3
Unlikely to be flying again today because of the cloudbase and the wind :-(
PS. Have moved the glossary to the right so that it's always fairly close to hand.
PS. Have moved the glossary to the right so that it's always fairly close to hand.
Tuesday, 26 August 2008
comments
Please feel free to leave comments - I've opened it to anonymous comments.
But if you can leave your first name or some means of my identifying who made the comment it would be nice so I can see who's reading it and asking questions/making suggestions.
PS. I've updated the glossary to correct for recent omissions that have been pointed out to me.
But if you can leave your first name or some means of my identifying who made the comment it would be nice so I can see who's reading it and asking questions/making suggestions.
PS. I've updated the glossary to correct for recent omissions that have been pointed out to me.
CPL day 2
No flying again :-(
A persistent git of a dying front is sitting over southern Scotland. It's not really raining, but the cloudbase has barely gotten above 800 feet and there is periodic drizzle keeping the viz quite low (though still over 10k) meaning that there is next to sod all chance of doing anything worthwhile.
A persistent git of a dying front is sitting over southern Scotland. It's not really raining, but the cloudbase has barely gotten above 800 feet and there is periodic drizzle keeping the viz quite low (though still over 10k) meaning that there is next to sod all chance of doing anything worthwhile.
Monday, 25 August 2008
CPL day 1
Well, the day is finally here!
Only the weather isn't :-(
Yet another deep Atlantic depression causing more miserable August weather, though strangely no rain in Leeds. However, the wind is forecast to be too strong and all crosswind. Still needed to get all the paperwork done and so met with the other two who were starting the CPL on the same day:
Firstly it seems like it's not that trivial to correctly judge the positions and equalities of the power and prop levers, though I daresay you get used to them quite quickly. It does yaw about noticably if you don't use them in unison.
Secondly, I knew that on engine failure and simulated asymetric flight you get a large yaw moment from the opposite engine but I was still unprepared for how much you get. With no action it really does yaw very strongly and quickly Nick really had to put the boot in to the rudder to maintain straight and level flight, and even with max rudder trim on 25/25 (inches of manifold pressure/hundreds of rpm) he said he still had to put in quite a bit of rudder. I picked up an aide memoir for identifying the dead engine - because you have to put in so much opposite rudder you could have the other leg dead and still fly, hence the phrase "Dead Leg, Dead Engine" ie. if you don't need to use your right leg (all left rudder) then it's the right engine that had failed.
Finally another thing which I think will help me is that Nick observed that whenever you touch the throttle you need to be thinking about doing something with the Carb Heat (hot when reducing power for descent/asymetric) and/or the Cowl Flaps (closed for cruise/descent and open/half open for climb). Here's a mnemonic I thought of - "Throttle, Carb Heat, Cowl Flaps" Ten CC (as in the 1970's pop group). This will hopefully be a particularly useful one as I'm often forgetting about the cowel flaps in G-BFMH.
Really looking forward to flying the twin now! :-D
Only the weather isn't :-(
Yet another deep Atlantic depression causing more miserable August weather, though strangely no rain in Leeds. However, the wind is forecast to be too strong and all crosswind. Still needed to get all the paperwork done and so met with the other two who were starting the CPL on the same day:
- Nick - from the RAF having flown Jaguars and more recently instructing on Tocanos. He's only got to do the minimal time (about 10 hours) to get his ME rating and convert his IR.
- Dave - the same position as me being just short of 70 hours P1
Firstly it seems like it's not that trivial to correctly judge the positions and equalities of the power and prop levers, though I daresay you get used to them quite quickly. It does yaw about noticably if you don't use them in unison.
Secondly, I knew that on engine failure and simulated asymetric flight you get a large yaw moment from the opposite engine but I was still unprepared for how much you get. With no action it really does yaw very strongly and quickly Nick really had to put the boot in to the rudder to maintain straight and level flight, and even with max rudder trim on 25/25 (inches of manifold pressure/hundreds of rpm) he said he still had to put in quite a bit of rudder. I picked up an aide memoir for identifying the dead engine - because you have to put in so much opposite rudder you could have the other leg dead and still fly, hence the phrase "Dead Leg, Dead Engine" ie. if you don't need to use your right leg (all left rudder) then it's the right engine that had failed.
Finally another thing which I think will help me is that Nick observed that whenever you touch the throttle you need to be thinking about doing something with the Carb Heat (hot when reducing power for descent/asymetric) and/or the Cowl Flaps (closed for cruise/descent and open/half open for climb). Here's a mnemonic I thought of - "Throttle, Carb Heat, Cowl Flaps" Ten CC (as in the 1970's pop group). This will hopefully be a particularly useful one as I'm often forgetting about the cowel flaps in G-BFMH.
Really looking forward to flying the twin now! :-D
Conington
On Sat 23rd I really didn't feel like going flying; some days you just wake up like that. But I forced myself to go since It was a great day and I'd promised my sister & brother-in-law I would try to come down to Peterborough when the weather was good.
Quickly planned the route, cheating slightly and reusing all the headings, distances and MSAs from my previous trip down there when I injured my back (maybe even cracked a rib) doing a simulated skydive at bodyflight. Other than that did some quite accurate VOR tracking both inbound and outbound from GAM nothing really worth mentioning about the flight down. Approach to Conington was good but I bounced it once on landing and it wasn't even a crosswind :-( Got a friendly "telling off" by the admin guy there about flaring it more - not like I didn't know I ballsed it up...
Consequently I was a bit apprehensive about taking Jo and Pierre for a jolly round the local area; this landing inconsistency is pissing me off. Anyway, set off and did a nice trip round Peterborough, up to Rutland Water and back down past Spanhoe to Conington and showed them the many of the same sights as I showed my parents previously. Joined downwind for runway 28, did a decent approach and then absolutely greased the landing down short field style! :-) Inconsistency rules yet again... *sigh* I hadn't actually meant to land like that where you descend quite rapidly and do a quite abrupt flare and touch down just as the flare zeros your rate of descent; I meant to to the traditional flare and float it along and touch it down near the stall. Still, a good landing is a good landing and my confidence was back.
For the trip back again pretty good VOR tracking and a bit of practice in position fixes. Landing this time on 14 with a right crosswind instead of the usual 32 with wind from the left. Got it down quite nicely with a timely decrab and dip of the into wind aileron. I'm probably improving overall but progress is slow and I need more practice. Thought's just occurred to me - Why don't I head over to somewhere like Elvington (where the landings are cheap or even free) one day when it's a crosswind there and practice.
Now just need 2:10 P1 to be able to start the ME rating.
Quickly planned the route, cheating slightly and reusing all the headings, distances and MSAs from my previous trip down there when I injured my back (maybe even cracked a rib) doing a simulated skydive at bodyflight. Other than that did some quite accurate VOR tracking both inbound and outbound from GAM nothing really worth mentioning about the flight down. Approach to Conington was good but I bounced it once on landing and it wasn't even a crosswind :-( Got a friendly "telling off" by the admin guy there about flaring it more - not like I didn't know I ballsed it up...
Consequently I was a bit apprehensive about taking Jo and Pierre for a jolly round the local area; this landing inconsistency is pissing me off. Anyway, set off and did a nice trip round Peterborough, up to Rutland Water and back down past Spanhoe to Conington and showed them the many of the same sights as I showed my parents previously. Joined downwind for runway 28, did a decent approach and then absolutely greased the landing down short field style! :-) Inconsistency rules yet again... *sigh* I hadn't actually meant to land like that where you descend quite rapidly and do a quite abrupt flare and touch down just as the flare zeros your rate of descent; I meant to to the traditional flare and float it along and touch it down near the stall. Still, a good landing is a good landing and my confidence was back.
For the trip back again pretty good VOR tracking and a bit of practice in position fixes. Landing this time on 14 with a right crosswind instead of the usual 32 with wind from the left. Got it down quite nicely with a timely decrab and dip of the into wind aileron. I'm probably improving overall but progress is slow and I need more practice. Thought's just occurred to me - Why don't I head over to somewhere like Elvington (where the landings are cheap or even free) one day when it's a crosswind there and practice.
Now just need 2:10 P1 to be able to start the ME rating.
Windemere
Friday the 22nd and the weather was good again. Had offered to take Darren, a running friend up for a jolly if the weather was suitable so gave him a bell and he was raring to go. Asked if Julie (his wife) could come along and I was fine with that - the more the merrier (as long as the W&B are ok). Decided to just go for a local flight as it made things easier and beside, I wanted to practice some position fixing if possible over an area I knew quite well anyway. This local flight ended up going over Windemere in the end because they wanted to see the lake where they used to run a boat.
Did my plan and the passenger briefing and we were off. I expected it to be quite bumpy since there were quire a lot of fluffy clouds but it was remarkably smooth except in the up and downdrafts as we returned from Windemere over the northern part of the Dales. Still managed to do a pretty good job of altitude holding and I reckon it's not to far off what is required for the CPL now.
There was a glut of traffic when we came back into Leeds and I did get a bit nervous when I had to extend downwind way beyond normal and ended up being almost overhead the city centre - I even saw the C&W building where I work from the air for the first time which gives some indication of how far out we got (in the photo you can just see the nearby condemned semicircular building on the far left about a fifth of the way down) . But the approach from about an 8nm final was pretty good (two reds, two whites most of the way) and the landing was at least passable if I remember rightly.
Daz and Julie really enjoyed the trip and were impressed how I didn't get in a flap at any stage and sounded really professional over the radio which certainly gives me a bit more confidence about things.
Did my plan and the passenger briefing and we were off. I expected it to be quite bumpy since there were quire a lot of fluffy clouds but it was remarkably smooth except in the up and downdrafts as we returned from Windemere over the northern part of the Dales. Still managed to do a pretty good job of altitude holding and I reckon it's not to far off what is required for the CPL now.
There was a glut of traffic when we came back into Leeds and I did get a bit nervous when I had to extend downwind way beyond normal and ended up being almost overhead the city centre - I even saw the C&W building where I work from the air for the first time which gives some indication of how far out we got (in the photo you can just see the nearby condemned semicircular building on the far left about a fifth of the way down) . But the approach from about an 8nm final was pretty good (two reds, two whites most of the way) and the landing was at least passable if I remember rightly.Daz and Julie really enjoyed the trip and were impressed how I didn't get in a flap at any stage and sounded really professional over the radio which certainly gives me a bit more confidence about things.
Turweston
On Weds 20th Aug I flew down to Turweston which is about 12nm west of Milton Keynes. Unfortunately I can't remember that many details about this trip (except the obvious as you will see) so this will be a fairly short entry.
I planned to fly at 3000 feet since the forecast cloudbase at the time was supposed to be 2800 feet. In fact I never got above 2500 feet and kept having to descend going below 2000 feet on a number of occasions. Other than this the flight was pretty uneventful. Turweston have some very strict noise abatement procedures which include a final approach which is at an angle of 20 degrees to the centreline until you pass a farm about 1nm from the threshold. This makes for a challenging approach requiring some accurate flying. But it all went more or less perfectly... right until I landed...
The runway was 28 with a fairly breezy wind from 210 so the wind on touchdown was something like 210/13. I don't quite know what I did wrong but I think I landed more or less straight but somehow didn't remain that way. Most likely I still had some crab on but the result was that I started to veer off to the left of the runway and briefly tracked onto the grass! :-( Fortunately it was ok and I managed to regain the runway. Not wishing to make too abrupt a corrective action and risk damage to the nosewheel or tipping over I gently steered back onto the runway swearing and red faced an my ineptness even though no-one could see me. :-) :-(
Taxied in and went to pay my dues and get filled up with fuel. No one was in the tower, but the chap on duty with the fuel bowser however had noticed my landing incident but just laughed and said "I won't say anything if you don't". Anyway, once I'd had a sandwich I set off back and apart steering a heading to keep me well clear of Husbands Bosworth where there was a gliding competition in progress, the trip back went well. And I think the landing back at Leeds on 14 was a pretty good crosswind landing - why can't I be consistent :-(
I planned to fly at 3000 feet since the forecast cloudbase at the time was supposed to be 2800 feet. In fact I never got above 2500 feet and kept having to descend going below 2000 feet on a number of occasions. Other than this the flight was pretty uneventful. Turweston have some very strict noise abatement procedures which include a final approach which is at an angle of 20 degrees to the centreline until you pass a farm about 1nm from the threshold. This makes for a challenging approach requiring some accurate flying. But it all went more or less perfectly... right until I landed...
The runway was 28 with a fairly breezy wind from 210 so the wind on touchdown was something like 210/13. I don't quite know what I did wrong but I think I landed more or less straight but somehow didn't remain that way. Most likely I still had some crab on but the result was that I started to veer off to the left of the runway and briefly tracked onto the grass! :-( Fortunately it was ok and I managed to regain the runway. Not wishing to make too abrupt a corrective action and risk damage to the nosewheel or tipping over I gently steered back onto the runway swearing and red faced an my ineptness even though no-one could see me. :-) :-(
Taxied in and went to pay my dues and get filled up with fuel. No one was in the tower, but the chap on duty with the fuel bowser however had noticed my landing incident but just laughed and said "I won't say anything if you don't". Anyway, once I'd had a sandwich I set off back and apart steering a heading to keep me well clear of Husbands Bosworth where there was a gliding competition in progress, the trip back went well. And I think the landing back at Leeds on 14 was a pretty good crosswind landing - why can't I be consistent :-(
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
