Hi Wee Weasley Welshman:
I also doubt that any instructor would have sent a solo student out on a Navex with thunderstorms in the local area. FI's are paranoid about that particular scenario and I have never ever met one who wasn't and didn't as a result ere on the side of extreme caution.
On what date was it that you flew this navex?
Well, it’s been a pretty long time since my word was questioned.
However as I am fairly new to this site, as I am to flying, and as you are also a moderator, I shall answer that question with all the implications it carries. If I were in your shoes, and knowing even just the comparatively little I know now, I think I would want to ask the same question. I presume what you want to do is to try to substantiate or rather verify what I have said from the weather at the time etc. I have no problems with that, in fact it makes me even more concerned over the events. In fairness to the club concerned, I will not post the details on this public board, but I am sending you now by pm full details of the flight as per my log book and flight log.
Your posting has made me look back at my log, and I have to correct or qualify a couple of things I said in my #1 Para in the original posting of this thread. First, my second solo flight was not of 10 circuits, but of 4 circuits. I had completed 5 other circuits the same day immediately prior with Instructor #1 on board, he got out and then I did 4 circuits solo. This means that I was sent on this navex with a total solo flying time of 60 minutes, consisting of a total of 5 circuits. Second, the navex consisted of overflying 4 towns not three, and it was the third navigation point that I flew North of and then overflew as described heading south. Third, in all fairness to the Instructor #2, I should say I think that earlier that day I had flown this route with that Instructor on board, and then after a break for about an hour I was sent on the solo to repeat the navex we had just done. I have also found that it was on this day that I had had explained to me the basics of navigation and how to use the CRP-1; indeed, the flight log is half completed in the Instructor’s handwriting, and then mine as I was asked to calculate the HDG and GS for the remaining two legs.
I also quite clearly recall that the final words to me from the Instructor #2 as I boarded the aircraft for the solo were along the lines of ‘look at that magnificent cumulonimbus cloud formation… did [I] know that that type of cloud has more energy in it than an atomic bomb’. (Actually, it might have been 6 A-bombs). I had no idea whether that was true at the time, and frankly still don’t, I have yet to read or take Met. Whether the thunder and lightning had started before my navex I cannot say, I am not sure. It had not at the airfield.
With regard to the rest of your comments: GPS, none on board, so it is not relevant. I definitely fell into the category (for the paras #1 & #2) of Not Knowing how to use basic radio nav kit. The term QDM I might have heard previously but certainly didn’t understand what it meant let alone have any ability to use it. Air Law I knew nothing about at the time of the navex in #1 Para above, but I had taken and passed the exam by the time of the QXC. You put over an interesting alternative viewpoint as to the use of radnav equipment prior to completion of QXC, and I am always ready to bow to greater knowledge and experience. But just from my own experiences as related above, I think I now belong in the camp of thinking it is best to know how to use this equipment as soon as possible and certainly for any extended solo navex’s, including the QXC - after all, as has been mentioned earlier, the QXC only takes into account the circuit and landing, not what happens en route.
If I get lost or stuck up there, I want to know exactly how to get myself out of it. So should every other student. IMH - and relatively inexperienced - O.
TP