Committed

So I have finished up at work... FREEEEEEEEEEDOMMMMM!

And I have dealt with other things that required my attention, such as being best man at my friends wedding. And my bank balance is looking healthy thanks to my severance package and the weather, while less than brilliant has been very flyable.

All of which means I went and got my Class 1 Medical renewed on Monday (no major issues, yay!) and I've spent the last two days being assessed by CFI Rob as to where I currently am flying-wise, and what we'll need to do to get me to CPL Flight Test Standard.

Yesterday was just over an hour of cloud and shower dodging, while trying to demonstrate compass turns, steep turns, stalling in the turn, Forced Landings, Low Flying in the bad weather config, Coastal Reversal Turns and a nice Overhead Join with a shortfield grass landing to finish.

Today looked like it was going to be a washout, but I could almost have got sunburnt this afternoon, as the drizzle and low cloud gave way to blue skies and sunshine! So it was more steep turns, Max Rate Turns, Forced Landings, more low flying and coastal reversal turns, Steep Gliding Turns, a flapless landing and another shortfield landing onto the grass.

The upshot of all this (aside from being about $600 poorer) is that Rob thinks I am around 10 to 15 hours away from a CPL Flight Test. Which is better than I thought, bearing in mind that I had not been in an aircraft for about 2 months and had certainly not done any "proper" flight training for almost 3, I figured I was probably going to be a little underdone.

As expected my forced landings were a little rusty... the flying is not a problem, it is the rest of the procedure (initial actions, trouble checks, mayday call, passenger brief etc) that I get mixed up with. But this is really just a practice thing.

Most other things I am relatively competent at, I just need to polish them up a little to get them to a CPL standard. As Rob is fond of saying "Attention to Detail".

I am under no illusions that the next few weeks/months are going to be a lot of hardwork, but I'm up for it. So, I have more flights booked up for the rest of this week. Fingers crossed the weather holds ;)


These Flights: 1.1 Dual + 1.3 Dual
Total Hours: 219.2 (101.3/93.6 Day, 8.6/15.7 Night, 7.7 IFR)

One door closes... another door opens?

So I'm another year older... and perhaps a little wiser, depending on who you ask :P

The last couple of months have been something of a roller coaster both professionally and personally.

I've managed to sneak the odd flight in here and there, trying to keep my hand in and learn some of the CPL skills at the same time. However, for the most part I had been holding off due to the chance of being made redundant which meant that, one, I needed to be a little careful with the funds until I had a clearer picture of how everything was going to pan out and, two, that I might soon be able to fly "full time" which would help with currency.

The last couple of weeks have been particularly bad, having picked up this years rather nasty flu that left me in bed for 3 days and nowhere near able to fly for about 2 weeks :(

To top it off last week I got my letter informing me that my services would no longer be required effective October 16th. While this was not entirely unexpected, given that we were told back in May what the master plan was which basically gave us no longer than April 2010 but possibly, it still leaves you with that slightly numb feeling to be given a set date.

Being something of a "glass half full" kind of guy, I am looking at the opportunities that have presented themselves, namely "Time" as I no longer have to be at work Mon-Fri and "Money" as I stand to get a fairly healthy payout.

So I have decided that Time+Money = full-time flying to finish off my CPL and invest in a multi-engine instrument rating. Hopefully the Spring/Summer weather will be a bit nicer than the rubbish we've had the last week or so!! ;)

When you least expect it...

Saturday morning saw me drag my butt out of bed at ridiculous o'clock to drive down to Hamilton for a sim session with Trevor (and the promise of a ride in the back of the Twin Comanche, DOK)...

In typical fashion, the only thing that occurred according to plan was that we drove to Hamilton and back :P

It turned out that the twin was booked most of the day by someone else. So John, Trevor's Instructor, decided we would do a quick session in the Sim and then we would take the nice "new" Archer III, WIT, for a ride so Trevor could familiarise himself with the cockpit instruments as it has the same "glass" instruments as the Twin Comanche.

While we were at it, John decided Trevor would fly us Matamata and they'd play with all the fancy pants equipment like the 3-axis autopilot, dual Garmin 430's and the Aspen Avionics EFD1000, then we'd swap over and I could take him for some circuits and do some stalls and a forced landing etc. on the way back to Hamilton and thus get "checked to line" for Waikato Aero Club purposes.

So my cruisy day of sitting in the sim and the backseat watching proceedings quickly turned into a $200+ mini-checkride :-/

So while Trevor and John finished up in the sim, I went out and pre-flighted WIT.
There are more excellent photo's that Chris has taken over on his blog here and here. Note that these pics were taken before the avionics upgrade. You can see a demo of the Aspen EFD1000 here.

The aircraft is still in pretty good nick... it even has that nice "new car leather" smell... Ooooo Shiny! ;) My only complaints are that there isn't enough room in the back (I couldn't wear my normal headset as I simply didn't have enough headroom!! So I had to resort to my homemade headset that wraps around the back) and because of the auto-pilot, the controls are quite "heavy" as the controls are all run through servo's. Other than that, the machine is a real dream!

The "check-ride" actually went pretty well... although due to an impromptu airshow being conducted at Matamata by a homebuilt scaled-down Fockewolfe FW-190, ZK-FWI our plan for circuits ended up being the stalling and forced landing component of the ride which went pretty well, although I got a little wide on the forced landing due to the longer wing on WIT compared with LMA, so my visual references using the wing-tip to judge spacing was a bit out. To my credit I did pick up on it and corrected it as best I could.

We came back and landed at Matamata to pick up Trevor and then headed back to Hamilton to finish up for the day and head back to Auckland.

So, not quite the day we had planned, but I think it turned out pretty well... and I have finally flown an aircraft that is actually younger than I am! It's a 2004 model with around 420hours TT ;)

Sunday, I came crashing back down to "reality" as I went and did some simulated IFR and forced landing practise in one of Airline Flying Club's C-152's :( Actually, to be fair, they're pretty tidy, and fun, little aircraft... and cheaper too ;)

The IFR was OK and I did a fairly decent job with the Partial Panel work. The forced landings were a little poor, I keep getting fixated on finding a field to land in before actually running through the procedures and checks, the end result being that I get everything mixed up and it just makes things really messy.

I thought I was doing pretty well with the glide approach onto the grass until Trevor suggested I use more flaps than I thought was necessary... the end result being that we came up "a little short", and I got a first-hand lesson on just how much you can steepen an approach using flaps... and why you should never extend downwind when doing glide approaches/forced landings!


These Flights: 0.9 Dual + 1.1 Dual (0.3 IFR)
Total Hours: 216.0 (98.9/92.8 Day, 8.6/15.7 Night, 7.7 IFR)

Glide time...

Glide Approaches that is.

The purpose of the glide approach is to practice the last part of the forced landing. ie. everything that happens after you hit your 1000' point abeam your 1/3 aiming point in your paddock/field/road/clearing/beach etc. Basically, as you come abeam the aiming point, you pull the power back to idle and glide the aircraft down onto the ground as if you were carrying out a forced landing. It's just that in this instance, instead of pretending to land in Farmer Joe's paddock, you land it on the runway :)

This is excellent practice, because when doing forced landing practice out in the training area, aiming for a paddock, you usually get to 500' (if solo) and say "yeah, I would get that in from here"... but you never really know for sure. Doing glide approaches, you definitely find out.

Sunday was looking a bit iffy weather-wise, but as we were planning on remaining in the circuit I was pretty confident we would be OK.

As it turns out, the iffy weather was just what I needed, as it kept everyone else on the ground meaning I had the entire circuit pretty much all to myself, making it relatively easy to get some decent glide approach practise without having to slot in amongst guys flying battleship sized circuits.

Along with the light showers and relatively low cloud base, we also had 25kt winds at circuit altitude. It was "only" 14kts gusting 20-ish on the ground, and being 20 to 30 degrees off centre meant a nice 5 to 10kt crosswind component to deal with.

Things happen quite quickly when a 25kt tailwind is increasing your normal ground speed by a 1/4! Turn downwind, make radio call, do downwind checks, initiate glide approach. Doesn't sound like it would be too difficult, until you only get about 5 seconds to do all of it!! :-/

Was quite challenging, but good fun... and unfortunately cut a little short due to approaching "bad" weather. Still, I got a good look at the effects of various techniques used to ensure you make your field... ie. making allowances for strong headwinds and turning a little tighter so as not to get blown too far downwind, carrying extra speed to get better forward penetration, losing altitude faster initially to get out of higher winds sooner, not using flaps until completely sure you're going to make the field etc.

The good news is that I "made" every approach and I think I have a much better appreciation for the approach profile that I should be aiming for when doing practice forced landings.


This Flight: 0.6 Dual
Total Hours: 214.0 (96.9/92.8 Day, 8.6/15.7 Night, 7.4 IFR)

Going around in circles...

Saturday was meant to be a Sim session in the 'Tron, watching Trevor get put through the multi-engine emergency procedures wringer... However, due to some confusion over dates, we got all the way there to find no instructor!

So we decided to do a BIG circle and headed over to Matamata for a look-see... great 'little' airfield with quite a bit happening... at least on the gliding front.

Sunday, was 'revision' day for me. Trevor and I headed out to the Training Area for the first time in months to see if I could remember how to actually handle an aircraft. Medium Turns, Steep Turns, Basic Stalls, Approach Stalls and a couple of Forced Landings. Not too shabby, but definitely not perfect my any means.

Then we tried some of the CPL level manoeuvres... Steep Gliding Turns and Max-rate Turns.

After getting a good bicep workout trying to hold the aircraft level while whizzing about in circles as fast as possible, we went through the basics of the CAA's new favourite topic 'slow flight'. As the name suggests, you fly slow... maintain straight and level and then try a couple of turns. Not exactly rocket science, but is now part of the flight tests... yay! :-/

Was a good blowout... and really emphasised how different the aircraft handling is compared with flying 1 hour legs from A to B!


This Flight: 1.4 Dual
Total Hours: 213.4 (96.3/92.8 Day, 8.6/15.7 Night, 7.4 IFR)

One step closer...

and another sticker in the log book.

The latest one declares that I have successfully completed the CPL Cross Country Syllabus and passed the cross country flight test. :)

After not being anywhere near an aircraft for almost a month due to weather and prior commitments, I got a call from CFI Rob last wednesday... "Long range forecast looks good for the weekend, let's go flying!"

Saturday was just too good a day not to go flying. Light winds, and visibility forever.

I flight planned Ardmore (NZAR) - Hamilton (NZHN) - Taumarunui (NZTM) - Taupo (NZAP) - Ardmore (NZAR).

Being a cross-country flight test, I knew that out of all of those, I was likely to only visit Hamilton (and Ardmore :P) and everything else would be a combination of lost procedures and diversions!

We started with a simulated engine failure after take-off (yay... lots of sports fields and paddocks off the end of runway 21!) and then headed for Hamilton. We made it in and out of NZHN relatively unscathed... and then we started the various "fun activities" that Rob had planned.

First of all we had the forced landing, cunningly disguised as "a ground speed check". Obviously I was caught a little off-guard, but I did OK. It was not great and I got a little low, but I made my field. Climbing out, Rob handed me the instrument hood. This is where the lack of currency really showed. I got the leans about 3 seconds after putting the hood on and it took me a minute or two to really get on top of the aircraft :(

We flew around for 10 or 12 minutes at which point Rob told me to take the hood off. My first reaction was "How the !@#$@# did I get into this valley?" We were at 1700' and had been holding a steady altitude the entire time I was under the hood, as I was in this bowl shaped valley, completed surround by hills that were higher than we were flying!!

My next reaction was "Where the $##@$^ is this valley?" when Rob said to me "Ok, remain at 1700' and tell me where we are and what that town over there is called."

We circled over the top of the town, while I put my "Lost Procedures" into practise... "Ok, about 10 minutes flying at roughly 90kts, should put us around 15nm from where I put on the hood... we were mainly flying headings from 090 to 130 magnetic... so that should put us in this general area on the map..."

"How can you confirm that?" asked Rob.

"Ok, we have a railway line over there... some transmission lines... and the road following the railway line and then curving away through the valley while the railway goes through a tunnel. That would match up with these features on the map... so we are here and that town is XXXXXXXX." (removed to keep it secret for future victims... errr I mean students -ed.)

"Excellent" said Rob, "Spot on!"

I must at this point give a big shout out to Trevor for giving me the low down on lost procedures. Despite knowing where this spot is, he had refused to tell me... no matter how much bourbon I offered! ;)

But his advice of noting the time when entering IFR, so I could calculate the time spent in IFR conditions, plus keeping tabs on the general direction of flight so as to be able to narrow down the area on the map was spot on.

Rob then instructed me to set course for Tokoroa, work out how far it was and how long it was going to take to get there. So out came the map, a rough course hand drawn and heading worked out. Distance calculated using fingers (2 of my fingers = 10nm ;) 30 nautical miles at roughly 90kts will take us around 20 minutes. I called up Christchurch Information to amend our flight plan, give them our rough ETA at Tokoroa[1] and amend my SARTIME.

After Tokoroa, it was VFR nav back to Ardmore, doing ground speed checks and amending my ETA at Ardmore[2] all while avoiding controlled airspace around Hamilton and trying really hard to ignore the cramp that was developing in my bum from being stuck in a 152 for 3 hours!!!

After landing, we debriefed over a cup of tea at which point Rob said somewhat matter of factly "oh.. by the way... you passed" and shook my hand ;)


This Flight: 3.0 Dual (0.2 IFR)
Total Hours: 212.0 (94.9/92.8 Day, 8.6/15.7 Night, 7.4 IFR)

[1] - My mental arithmetic was actually not too bad... I was only off by about 1 minute ;)
[2] - You get +/- 2 minutes for your ETA's at CPL level... I was bang on ;)

One engine good, Two engines better?

Not necessarily!

Saturday, I was back in the Sim at Waikato Aero Club, watching Trevor get back up to speed with Multi-Engine flying...

Light twins don't traditionally cope too well with an engine failure... and watching what happens when one dies was certainly a wakeup call!

As the old saying goes "When one engine fails on a twin-engine aircraft, you always have enough power left to get you to the scene of the crash."

In a single engine aircraft, when it all goes quiet, you're basically a glider and the aerodynamics are pretty much the same (minus of course the thrust). The aircraft will generally fly pretty straight... but, of course, not so much level! ;-)

In a twin, when one engine goes out, everything changes. The thrust line is now offset from the centreline of the aircraft (asymmetric thrust), with the result being that it wants to constantly yaw left or right, depending on which engine has died, as one side of the aircraft is trying to fly faster than the other!

You're then left trying to troubleshoot while trying to maintain control of an unstable aircraft... and for added fun, you can try it with only reference to instruments!

The idea of keeping aviation as a 'fun hobby' is starting to look more and more appealing! :-/

Following the sim session, I almost scored a ride in the back of WIT (WAC's newish Archer III), but unfortunately, they were pushing a little close to maximum weight as it was full of fuel :(

Meanwhile, I'm hoping to catch some nice weather soon so I can get the Cross-Country Syllabus completed and tick another of the CPL boxes!