Penguina - you're right, I hate talking about flying, almost as much as I hate flying
HWD - that's very intersting. I've heard of the half-way method being used for PPL training before (I think it's pretty common, in fact - it's just not the way I personally prefer), but never heard of not being allowed to look at the chart. I know what you mean about not thinking about where you are.... during today's nav (which you can read about below), I knew that I was right of track, but wasn't allowed to get back on track - I have to stay within 5 degrees of my planned heading, even if I know it's wrong, until one of the pre-determined points where I can update it. Not the way I'd fly in "real life", and my instructor agrees, but it's the way the CAA want us to do it for the skills test!
Anyway, the more observant amongst you may have noticed that I have two "Day 5"s so far... This isn't deliberate, it's just that I can't count! I won't bother changing the previous posts, but I'll put in the correct day numbers from now on - so that's why there's no "Day 7".
Day 8 - Sunday 16 November
My regular instructor was back today, feeling much better. We flew two flights - two quite different flights.
PFLs was the subject of the first flight. Well, PFLs and engine fires. The flight was very similar to the PFLs that I did during the pre-CPL with the other instructor. The drill was exactly the same: "Is there an engine fire", and then respond appropriately. We started off with my instrucor positioning me nicely for a good field, then moved on to having engine fires at random points in the sky. Each time I found a field, and made it safely. (Well, ok then - one time I put the flaps down a little too early and cut it very tight, but probably still made it.) I was pretty happy.
My instructor was happy too. He had two comments for me. The first was that I need to think about the paying passenger sat next to me - he's going to be aware that something's wrong, and quite likely will be pretty scared. As well as flying the aircraft and doing all the necessary checks, I also need to explain to my passenger what's going on - that the engine has caught fire, so I've shut it down and we're going to do a forced landing in that large field down there. I have to do this in a calm, professional voice, even if I'm not feeling calm and professional about the fact that every field for miles is unsuitable!
The second comment was about my field selection. Every time, I picked a field which was suitable... but my instructor felt that I wasn't often picking the
most suitable field. He thinks this is because my lookout isn't up to scratch. I'm spending lots of time looking ahead, and not enough time looking sideways and downwards (neither for emergency landing sites nor for traffic). He proved the point by pulling the power when were within gliding distance of no less than 3 private airstrips, and I didn't spot any of them - although he did admit that he does that to all his students, and none of them notice the airstrips, so I didn't feel so bad about not seeing them myself.
Now that we'd covered PFLs, I was warned that my engine may fail at any point on any flight from now on - and even if my engine doesn't fail, my instructor can still ask me where we'd land if it did, and expect a near-instant reply.
We had a break for lunch, during which I planned the afternoon's navigation leg. It was a simple leg, to a private airfield called River Oak. Once again I wasn't allowed to use any wind correction. After that, I was told to expect a diversion - but, unlike the CPL test, the diversion would be VMC today, using navaids to fix the position along the route.
At the quarter-way point, I correctly identified that the wind had blown me to the right of track, and I corrected. At the half way point, I correctly took out half of the previous correction. The three-quarter way point was very close to Obeechokee airfield, and should be very easy... but I managed to miss the two large tarmac runways at Okeechobee just off to my right, and pointed out an empty field just in front of the nose instead! No problem - my instructor helped me out a little, but I was happy that I would have realised the error pretty quickly. Having established that I was off track, I added a correction for the final quarter of the leg, and arrived on time. At least, I thought I'd arrived - the fork in the canal was where it was supposed to be, as was the road, but I couldn't see an airfield. I explained to my instructor that I was confident that I was in the right place, and we'd circle a couple of times until we spotted the airfield. I found it eventually - it's one of those "airport communities" where people live alongside the runway and have hangars instead of garages. Wouldn't you love to live on one of those??? But if you're looking for a runway, and you don't know that it's an airport community, it's very difficult to find, because everything we know about runways tells us that they won't be in the middle of a bunch of houses!
The diversion was to another private strip, called Adams. I planned a heading and a time, and set course, then began the task of tuning and identing navaids, and plotting radials. Suddenly, I found myself very busy. The aircraft didn't have a DME fitted, so I had to take cross-cuts from two VORs. One of the two I selected turned out to be out of range, which made me even busier as I had to plan again. Eventually, I got two radials, and plotted a point which was on track, so I was happy - although I had flown just a couple of miles from Okeechobee airfield at 2000' without having called them on the radio.
We found Adams fairly easilly - it turned out to be one of the three fields which I hadn't noticed when doing PFLs this morning, but it was much easier to spot when I was looking for it.
So the nav went pretty well, then. Except it didn't. Laterally, it went reasonably well. But vertically, I was all over the place. I planned to fly at 4500', with cloud bases forecast just above that, but I found the clouds to be closer to 2500', so I settled on 2000' as my altitude. Which was fine - except that I wandered around between around 1850' and 2200' the whole time. It was particularly bad on the diversion, but wasn't good on the planned leg either. I was particularly unhappy with this flight, mainly because of the altitude deviations, but I seemed to generally be slightly behind the whole time, and my headings, although accurate enough to get us where we were going, weren't as accurate as I know they can be.
During the debrief, my instructor confirmed what I already knew - that I was spending too much time navigating, especially when I had VORs to contend with, and not enough time flying. For my next navigation trip, I will need to make a concious effort to break everything down into small tasks, and fly the aircraft in between. Centre the VOR needle, then fly. Centre the second VOR needle, then fly. Write down the time, then fly. Place the ruler for the first radial, then fly. Draw the radial, then fly. And so on. As well as this, I'm hoping that as I practice the new techniques I'm being taught, they will gradually start to become second nature, and as I spend less time thinking about them I will have more spare capacity to get everything done. One hint from my instructor was to plot the VOR radials to the half-way point of the diversion, then select those radials on the OBS and wait until the needles centre themselves. I'll have to try that one.
After the diversion, my instructor gave me the engine failure he'd half-promised. Although it was behind me, I knew that Adams was within gliding distance since we'd just flown over it, so I starting pointing the aircraft that way. I then asked if there was an engine fire - there wasn't, which was lucky because it had taken me long enough to get around to asking the question that the fire would have spread by then if there had been one! I turned downwind for Adams, and then my instructor pointed out that I'd turned the wrong way, and we'd be landing downwind. Damn!!! A total lack of thinking, having been too busy being pleased with myself for remembering that Adams was behind us.
Tomorrow, I have a day off (it's normal to fly 6 days a week at EFT), so my next flight will be on Tuesday - so that's all until then!
FFF
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