Speedbird, you want a run-through of the ground school? Study, study, study and more study should about cover it!
Good luck with it.
VFE - I'm not that devious, but now you mention it, that is a nice side benefit, isn't it? Actually, if anyone at the school is reading this, they haven't said anything to me about it yet. At least one instructor has mentioned PPRuNe, though, so I'm sure it's only a matter of time...
Day 5 - Friday 14 November
The first of today's flights was circuits, and in this flight I discovered the eccentricity of the Florida wind. The ATIS informed us that runway 27 was in use. By the time we'd called for taxy clearance, the runway in use had changed to 32. After a couple of circuits, the wind started changing speed and direction pretty much every 30 seconds, which resulted in some interesting non-standard r/t by the controller as he tried to let everyone in the circuit know what their wind components were. ("N123 you're cleared to land, wind is, um, er, looks like it's just swinging around to 050 - no, it's back at 010 about 10 to 15 knots. You guys better be careful out there!") Eventually, he decided to switch to runway 9, and stayed there for the rest of the day.
During all of this, I was doing a combination of flapless, glide, and "normal" (whatever normal is when the wind is like that) approaches, and handling it all pretty well. (I did screw up when the runway was changed, but soon got that sorted out.) We also had a go at a short-field approach, but twice I managed to end up far too high and went around, and I wasn't asked to do another one. Interestingly, although my first few landings were good, they weren't quite perfect - there was just a little bit of crab left on each time. But as the crosswind component increased, the landings improved, and my final 3 landings all got applause from my instructor as the into-wind wheel touched first, followed by the down-wind wheel and then the nosewheel.
The de-brief was mostly positive, which pretty much reflected the way I thought the flight went. The biggest criticism was for not flying square circuits - I tended to drift away from the runway on both the downwind and the base leg. There is another circuit session scheduled in the syllabus, and during this session we will have to have another go at short-field landings, as well as bad-weather circuits (we decided that there was a little too much low-level windshear to be hanging around at 500' for any longer than necessary today, which is why we didn't do bad-weather circuits this morning).
And so on to the VFR navigation from this afternoon. The briefing was quite long, and pretty much reinforced my opinion of the techniques I'm being taught. The reason for using the 1/2-way marks, my instructor said, is because it's very easy to update your ETA along the route. That's true - but my instructor conceded that it's also very easy with 6-minute marks (your 6-minute marks become 7-minute marks, or 5-minute marks). As for the plog, it seems that most of the instructors at the school, mine included, agree with me that it's really not suitable for the job. I changed some of the column headings around, included some that were missing, and crossed out some that are simply no use whatsoever, and eventually came up with something which I thought was useable, and my instructor thought was close enough to what the CAA have authorised for no-one to complain about.
We again discussed the idea that I'm not allowed to look at my chart except for within 2 minutes of one of my checkpoints. As I said the other day, I think this is a rather ridiculous way of flying - but it was made even more ridiculous today, when my instructor suggested that, although I'm not allowed to look at the chart, there's nothing stopping me making a sketch on my plog to show all the main features along my route, and confirming my ded reckoning using that instead!!!
Briefing finished, and there was plenty of time before the flight for me to copy all the numbers from the plog I did last night onto a copy of my "amended" plog with the more sensible columns. Once again, I was not allowed to use any wind correction, relying instead on working out the wind correction at my first way-point. (I think this is a very good idea, by the way - obviously not realistic, but it's very hard to demonstrate to someone how to get back on track if they never get off track to start with.) And then it was time to go flying - first to Okeechobee, then on to River Ranch!
The weather this afternoon was absolutely beautiful - blue, cloudless skies, and visibility which went on for miles and miles. There was a bit of crap lower down which reduced the vis to about 20 miles, and was also pretty bumpy, but above that was the best flying weather I've seen in the week or so I've been here. I hadn't quite got the hang of sketching the important features, so the visibility didn't help me all that much when the few features I had sketched turned out to be those ones that are totally invisible until you're on top of them! But it's all part of the learning curve, and next time we do VFR navigation I'll have a much better idea of what to put on my plog in order to play the game correctly.
It all started to get interesting on the second leg, though. This was the leg which took us through two Military Operating Areas. My pre-flight briefing had established that only one of those was active, but we'd still need to contact Miami Centre to get through that zone. (MOAs in the US have a very similar legal status to the UK MATZ - there are no rules preventing you from flying through them without talking to anyone, but it's not generally considered to be a clever thing to do.) I dialled the frequency, and although I could hear several aircraft I couldn't hear Miami's reply. I climbed a couple of thousand feet, and then I could hear Miami loud and clear, so I called them up - but it seemed that they couldn't hear me. Either that, or they were just ignoring me! We tried the second radio, but again got no response. I suspected a radio problem, but my instructor told me afterwards that this area is well know locally for being a bit of a radio black-spot, especially in good weather. 20 miles away in any direction, and you can talk to Miami without any trouble, but this one spot was known to be a problem.
We were now speeding towards the MOA without having been able to make contact. I wasn't quite sure where I should be going, but I knew I didn't want to be going in this direciton. I turned to the north whilst trying to figure out what to do. And here's where the whole "I'm Captain" mentality comes into play. Right now, my though process was something along the following lines: Ok - my instructor has given me a nice easy navigation leg to break me in gently. It hasn't gone according to plan - not through anything I've done - so I'm expecting him to give me an alternative destination, or possibly have me head home. WRONG! The CPL mentality
should be as follows: Ok, we need to get to River Ranch. I can't go the way I'd planned, so I need to find an alternative route. This mentality is not a problem - it's something I've done many times, whether it's been for a weather diversion, or because I've been unable to contact someone, or denied a clearance. So why didn't I think to do it today? I have no idea! I think it must be this whole thing about becoming stupid when there's an instructor sat next to you.
My instructor didn't seem to think this was such a big deal. It's very early on in the training, and he expects me to still treat him like an instructor to a certain extent. He was pleased that I'd taken the initiative to make the initial turn to the north away from the MOA - so even though I hadn't come up with a positive plan of action I'd still kept us safe. Not a big problem, but I think it's an interesting mistake to learn from for the future.
Now, I know you're all wondering how I'm getting on with my new plog. Well, the plog isn't too bad. I did manage, twice, to fly the true track instead of the magnetic track (on my usual plog I fold the true track out of sight because it's not really very much use in flight) but that's nothing which a highlighter pen won't fix for the next flight. The one thing I really haven't been able to get to grips with, though, is having an A4 kneeboard. It prevents me from having full, free movement of the controls. It's big enough that when I move it in any way it interferes with the controls and I need to grap hold of them before we enter an unusual attitude. I've also followed the advice of my earlier instructor and clipped my chart to the back of it, which means that I need to turn it over constantly in flight, and also rotate it. I think I'm going to try flying with the chart not clipped to the kneeboard next time - this will save me from having to flip the kneeboard, and will also avoid the problems of rotating it. (When it's rotated, it interferes with the controls every single time instead of just sometimes.)
Both of today's flights were really enjoyable. I'm beginning to settle down now, becoming comfortable with the local area and with the interesting local wind patterns. I also like my new instructor - so far I have only once had any doubt what he was asking from me, and that was cleared up almost immediately.
Tomorrow, we move on to the IFR stuff. I can guarantee the weather will be good - it's nearly always good when I'm going to be under foggles!
FFF
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