I'm glad everyone seems to be enjoying this - I'm definitely enjoying writing it. And it also helps me gather my thoughts about each flight, too. Anyway, here's today's flight:
Day 3 - Tuesday 11th November
Finally, I've had a full day of flying!!!
The weather today was similar to yesterday, with scattered clouds at 2500' and a fairly strong, gusty wind. But the wind had veered to within 30 degrees of the runway, and the gaps in the clouds were more than big enough for us to work with, so we went flying. The weather forecasters seem to think that this is the end of the bad weather, so I'm looking forward to blue skies tomorrow. I flew twice today, performing very similar exercises each time around.
The first thing we worked on were stalls: a fully developed stall in the clean configuration, followed by incipient stalls on a simulated base-to-final turn, and on a simulated final approach. No real problems with these, although it took a couple of attempts to get the pitch on the recovery to exactly the point where the instructor wanted it. (My initial reaction was to pitch down quite a lot, in order to ensure the wing is flying properly, but particularly on the incipient stalls this is not necessary, and results in excessive loss of altitude.)
The next task for the day was slow flight. I soon had the stall warner going, but the instructor wanted me to slow down even more, to just a knot or two above the stall. It took a lot of concentration to set the aircraft up for this, to hold it there, and then to turn with 5 degrees of bank, but it wasn't particular difficult. The instructor was sufficiently satisfied that we only needed to do this one the first flight of the day, whereas most of the other exercises we practiced both times. Steep turns we only practiced once, too, to iron out the problems from Sunday's steep turns. Much better today - not quite steep enough at times maybe, but no spiral dives.
PFLs were to be the problem item for the day. We did two PFLs on the first flight. The first PFL went pretty well - we had an engine fire, and it took a reasonable amount of time in the emergency descent before it was extinguished. (The instructor later told me that we were so high that the PFL would be too easy from up there, which was why he let me descend for so long before the fire went out... but I just thought it was fun!) Once the fire was out, I set up to land in a suitable field, and made the field quite comfortably. What I didn't do so well, though, was the checks. I tried to restart the engine despite it having been on fire, then forgot to squawk 7700, declare Mayday or do the shut-down checks.
The second PFL I tried to make sure I got all the checks in. My instructor pointed out a field to me this time, before positioning me in a roughly suitable place to start the exercise, to make it easy for me. I did get the checks in - but they were very rushed, and in the process I failed to notice that my instructor's "suitable place to make it easy" was (deliberately, he claimed, although I wasn't so sure!) far too close. Once I'd finished the checks I realised we were close and high, and corrected for it, and again we made the field comfortably.
During the debrief, the instructor suggested that I need to slow the checks down. Of course I have to get them all in - but not at the expense of flying the aircraft, which is what happened on the second attempt. So, during the second flight, we did two more PFLs. This time the checks were much better, with everything completed calmy and properly. But I failed to make the field both times.
I think the problem is multi-tasking. At the moment, I'm having to work too hard on both the checks and the flying, and I can't do both at once. I need one or the other to become totally second nature so that I can get on with doing it in the background. So tonight I will study the checks again, and make sure I know where to move my hands, what to say, and when to do each check. Hopefully when we try again tomorrow this will free up some mental capacity for me to concentrate on making the field.
The final flying task for the day was some circuits - with a cross-wind, of course. No real problems here. I don't get to practice in cross-winds much since my home airfield, White Waltham, nearly always has a runway that's into wind. But after a couple of days practice here, the technique is starting to come back to me. I accepted the criticism from my instructor about not using ailerons properly on the ground (remember the soft-field take-off last Sunday???), and once I made an effort to remember this, the landings and take-offs were much smoother.
Tomorrow, as well as revising some of the general handling again (mainly the PFLs), we will be doing some navigation, and we spent a while briefing for that. The technique they like to use here is the "1/2 way mark" technique, where you make a mark 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 of the way along each leg. I prefer the 6-minute-mark technique myself, since it's more suitable for legs of varying lengths, but I'm quite happy to use their technique for the CPL course. What I wasn't so happy about, though, was that they are insisting on me using the school's plog. I have two issues with this. The first is that it's too big - I don't like having an A4 kneeboard, and I've designed a plog which fits very nicely onto my A5 kneedboard which I normally use. We compared the two, and found that I have all the same information on my own plog as they have on theirs, but they won't let me use it. The second problem is that their plog is, quite frankly, crap! It's not immediately obvious which heading/altitude/etc corresponds to which leg. Columns that need to be filled in in flight, such as Actual Time of Arrival, are duplicated so that you need to fill them in twice. The column for the actual duration of a leg is nowhere near the columns for the actual start time and arrival time, which makes it difficult to calculate. It looks like someone has simply thrown all the information onto a piece of paper, without any thought being put into how to lay them out.
I have reluctantly agreed to have a go at using this plog. If I really can't get to grips with it (and I'm sure I will get used to it eventually, except maybe for its size) then I will have to bring the subject up with my CPL instructor and try to convince him to let me use my own plog.
Right now, though, it's homework time. I have more checklists to learn. The navigation checklist doesn't cover anything I don't do already (Turn, Time, Talk, for example, and FREDA) - although it includes some techniques that are specific to the 1/2-way mark method of navigation. I also have a "passenger briefing" checklist to learn. It covers the initial briefing for a passenger who's not familiar with the aircraft, as well as a pre-takeoff and pre-landing briefing. By the time I come to take the test, I should be able to recite all of these, and sound professional as I do so.
As well as the checklists, I also have the plan a navigation leg for tomorrow. It's a fairly short leg (30-odd miles), from a road junction close to the airport, to a point where a canal meets a lake. Once I arrive at the destination, I will be diverted, and will have to fly the diversion under the hood, making use of navaids to confirm my progress and my final destination. I'm told that my IMC rating will mean that this won't be difficult - I hope they're right!
FFF
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