Hey guys, not posted for a cpl of days since I've been busy flying! Finally the weather up here has played ball and have flown lots
Had a flight on friday, this was a navex from edinburgh, up to leuchars for a matz penatration and then a full stop landing at dundee. Main point of this flight was so I could see dundee as I will be going there for my QXC. Weather was nice and clear but the wind was doin summit werid. In the leuchars overheard I was at full power and best climb speed and only managing to climb 50ft/min! The approach to dundee was possiblly the worst conditions I've landed in, being thrown about all over the shop, and with a near max cross wind. Once I was below 300ft tho it smoothed out and I decided it was ok to land and nailed it (cross-wind landings rock!) After paying the fees and having a quick cuppa we were off again. On the return leg to edinburgh I started doing unplanned diversions. I've been worrying about these as I wasn't quite sure how to go about doing them. It turns out that they ain't hard at all lol. Just gotta do a decent guess-timate for track, drift, distance, g/s and then just fly it. I had to adjust em slightly as my first guesses weren't quite on but I arrived at where I wanted within a minute of when I wanted. Not bad for a first attempt! My height holding wasn't that good, but I partly blame the turbulence, but its one of my weaker sides, really need to work on it!
Flight yesturday was to Prestwick! Now for those of you that don't know most of the airlines use prestwick for circuit training, and yesturday was no difference. Outbound leg was nice and simple, out of the edinburgh zone to the west and them change to glasgow to get a FIS, they were busy so couldn't give us a zone clearence so we had to go round the outside. Radio calls were all ok, if a little slow as I thought about what to say lol. Height holding was much better this time and so was very pleased with that. When we arrived at kilmarnock we had to hold for 20mins, which was slightly annoying! There was a easyjet 737 doing circuits there which was an interesting sight. However an even better sight was an Atlantic airways 747 arriving and also procedding to do circuits
When clearence was finally given I gingerlly entered the zone approaching a right hand base leg for runway 31. This was the circuit of the 737 and so I had to join number two to him. The 747 was doing a left hand ciruit and just touched down as I enterd the circuit.
Apart from having to hold for 20mins Prestwick is a very friendly place. The flight back was uneventful. Good height holding, and glasgow were nice and let us transit their zone.
Today was an ok day, so went up to practice some VOR stuff, a brush up for stuff I did before and to do radio fixes. This was a good plan until we got 20mins outside of edinburgh to find out the VOR kit in the tommy is buggered lol. Got a vague idea about radio fixing so will practice that in MS FS2004 later (probably the only usful thing that can be done with it lol) after that did a PFL and then headed back to edinburgh, ending the day with a greaser of a landing
Hopefully off to glasgow tomorrow for a zone transit and a approach and go-around, then some more unplanned diversions.