QNH - I've done about 18 or 19 hours of the course so far. That doesn't include the pre-CPL, though.
Paul - no, no pictures yet, although I will make sure I get some before I leave! Don't expect them to go on-line until I get back home, though, because I didn't bring the lead that connects the computer to the camera with me!
Day 12 - Friday 21 November
The only thing on the syllabus which we haven't covered yet is stalls, so that's what we did this morning. There's really not very much to say about the flight, though - it was almost a repeat of the stalling I did in the pre-CPL. I remembered the third L in the HASELLL checks, but almost forgot about the Lookout (I said it, looked out, but didn't do a clearing turn until my instructor prompted me - oops!) Apart from that, though, the three different types of stall all went fairly smoothly. I sometimes got a secondary stall when recovering from the clean stall - must remember not to raise the nose until the airspeed has built a little. And I must also get into the habit of applying power at the same time as lowering the nose - especially on the incipient stalls, where the lowering of the nose is less important than the power.
Stalls completed, and I suddenly found myself with an engine fire. Shut the engine down, the fire hadn't gone out, so I began an emergency descent. During the descent, I had been planning which field to land it, so that when the fire went out at around 3000' I was ready to set up for the landing. I headed for my high-key point - and then realised that I'd planned my high-key point at the wrong end of the field! At this point, I thought I screwed it up (and so did my instructor, he later admitted), but I stayed calm and re-planned. I figured out which side the low-key point was on (the oposite side to where I'd originally planned it, and facing in the other direction), and headed directly towards it. I was a little high when I arrived, but did some S-turns, being careful to keep the field in sight. I was shortly turning base at 1000', and when I rolled out on final I was just a touch high, which was easillly corrected with flaps and a small S-turn. I made the field - by far my best unexpected PFL yet, despite the original c0ck-up. A couple more of those, and hopefully they'll be CPL standard.
After lunch, we scheduled the "extra" navigation trip which I said that we would do. In order to not diverge from the syllabus too much, my instructor was keen to do some other stuff, too, so he asked me to plan a very short navigation, to give us time for some general handling afterwards.
The VFR leg should have been very easy. Most of the leg was roughly parallel to a railway line. The private airfield I was looking for was just after I crossed a road, railway line and some power lines. And it was only 20 miles. The only problem was that there was no easy way of identifying my half-way point (the leg was too short to have 1/4 and 3/4 way points).
I set myself on track, remembering to tell the instructor about the gross error checks. I paralleled the railway line, and the clock indicated that I was at the halfway point. So far so good - I was confident I was on track, but it was hard to tell if I was on time. I continued flying, and about a minute before the expected time, I saw a set of power lines crossing in front of me. Excellent - I'm there! No sign of the airfield, though, so I began circling. Then I saw the canal off to the right of my track. I had expected the canal to be to the right of my track, but it should have been a couple of miles before my destination. I'd screwed up.
I pointed myself back on the original heading, and, around a minute later, I saw another power line - this time with a road and a railway line running alongside it, as I expected. And, sure enough, the airfield I was looking for was tucked alongside it. The mistake I'd made was not believing my stopwatch. The secondary mistake was mis-identifying the power lines - no excuse for that, I should have realised it was the wrong power lines because of the lack of the road and the railway - but this wouldn't have mattered if only I'd believed in the stopwatch.
Then it was onto the IFR diversion. I set heading, put the foggles on, spent a while getting everything set up, and did a FREDA check. Then I got a position fix. About 6 or 7 miles left of track. No - I can't be that far off track, so close to the start of the leg. I got another fix, which showed that I was paralleling my intended track, about 7 miles to its left. I selected a different VOR/DME to confirm this - but the second VOR/DME said the same thing. I was definitely left of track. I applied a heading correction to the right, and got another fix. A bigger heading correction to the right, and another fix. I was converging with my intended track, but not fast enough. I applied one last huge heading correction to the right, and then my stopwatch told me we should be overhead the village we were looking for. I took the foggles off, and, although it took me a minute or two to identify it, I was exactly where I wanted to be!!!
I asked my instructor what I did wrong at the start of the diversion. He said that the problem was that it took me 5 minutes before I did my first FREDA check - I spent far too long getting everything set up first. The DI had wandered, so for the first 5 minutes I was flying the wrong heading. That's what got me off track. Not a big problem, since I identified that I was off track, verified it, and corrected it. But it's important to do FREDA checks immediately after any "turn, time, talk".
Before we headed back, we had time for me to put the foggles on again for some unusual attitudes, and VOR/NDB tracking. No problems there, and I didn't expect any problems. I took the foggles off, and immediately had an engine failure. There was no fire, so I pitched for Vg and picked a nice green field. Looking around me, though, I realised that we were close to Adams - our favourite private strip for doing PFLs near to. I looked around, but couldn't see Adams anywhere. Damn - I know it's here somewhere! Ok, I can't see it, so I'm going to carry on planning for the green field that I've already picked out. If I see Adams at any point, I'll make a decision on whether I'm suitably positioned to change my mind.
I'd passed the test. My instructor had deliberately pulled the power on me when we were directly overhead Adams, knowing that I wouldn't be able to see it. But I'd recognised my position (having just been under the foggles), and made a good choice to stick with the field I could see. There was no need to carry on with the PFL - I levelled off and we flew back to the airfield for a couple of quick circuits.
After checking the logbooks and student records, we figured out that the third flight wasn't actually required today. I won't have enough spare time to have another full day off if I want to leave myself enough time to be comfortable, but it's better to fly a little every day than to try to fly three times in one day. So it was just the two flights today. What's more, we're coming up to the 20 hour mark. The course requires a minimum of 5 hours on a complex aeroplane, but the instructors at EFT find that a little over 5 hours is usually better for most students. So that means that tody was my last flight in the Cessna - tomorrow morning, I will have a familiarisation flight in the Piper Arrow!
FFF
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