Hello all,
It's been a long time since I've posted on here, many apologies! Hope everyone is well! It's also been a long time since I've been flying, but luckily I've managed to get 2 flights in over the last few days. For the benifit of those who haven't seen or don't read flyer, here's an account of yesterdays flight:
I hadn’t flown in three months due to university, so desperately needed to get flying. After about 5 cancelled lessons I wasn’t holding much hope for joining the class of 2006. Luckily though, weather was good enough on Thursday to get flying, and I did just that.
Had a lovely revision flight with my instructor, and all went to plan just about! I rang my examiner that night (whilst Christmas shopping
) and we were set to go, if the weather held out.
Woke up at 0830 and saw the weather – it was to be cloudy and not too nice. Spoke once again with the examiner and decided to go for it anyway, if worst came to worst we’d just do the skills section.
I had my route to plot, and had it all sorted. Once I got to the club I went straight to check the weather and wind forecasts – variable. Not the best I’d hoped for, but never mind.
I met my examiner, a very nice chap, we chatted about weather, maps and all sorts of wonderful things. Weather wasn’t brilliant, but “sod it”, we’d waited long enough.
Took off, left Newcastle’s zone and routed pretty much to the North. ¼ and ½ way points on the leg looked excellent. I actually remembered my FREDA checks for once and I was beginning to relax, which was greatly helped by the superb attitude of my examiner.
I arrived at my point a minute before I’d expected (terrible planning, eh). Unfortunately the cloud was becoming a nuisance, and I pointed out that had I in fact been solo, I probably wouldn’t have continued. We decided to carry on as we both felt safe though.
15 or 20 miles into the next leg I was told to divert. Quick moment of madness trying to find a pen that actually worked on my chart (good timing as ever), eventually scribbled a line on it and got an ETA. Off we went towards the coast, dodging a glider and a GVS. About half way in it as decided that my work load wasn’t high enough and I needed to fix our position using 2 VORs. Fair enough, I duly did so being very careful to get the right ones! Got my fix spot on(ish), and a few minutes later I saw where I was supposed to be heading . . . but I wasn’t heading towards it. Grr quick correction and we were fine though.
Got there and it was time for a 180 in “IMC”. No real troubles there except I couldn’t get my watch from under my jumper arm, so scrambled a bit but managed to get it accurate enough.
So, that was the end of navigation. Luckily the weather was good enough and I was quite chuffed to get it out the way!
“Time for a PLF” so says my examiner, and he pulls the plug. No problems really until it was decided that I needed an engine failure on go around too! Nose straight down and a nice field straight ahead to land in.
After a scaring a few cows like that it was decided we’d climb to 4000 and do some stalls. Eek, I do not like stalls – never have. Not because of what they are, but the recovery always seems so rushed! But anyway, I have to do them, so I just went for it. Unfortunately I went for it without doing the checks, which I was promptly reminded to do! Clean configuration was fine. Base turn not quite so good but I got away with it. With approach configuration I managed alright too.
Next we did a steep gliding turn, no worries there. And then a recovery from a spiral dive – fun! I’ve always loved these, not quite sure why but this was no exception and it was fine.
It was now apparently time to head back to Newcastle, “what, already?”. Examiner asked if he had forgotten to test me on anything . . . Steep turns! So we climbed back up to 4000 and did them. Good job I’m honest! To be fair though, I really like steep turns and I thought I handled them quite well.
Now it really was time to go back to the airfield. Slight obstacle in that there was some low cloud, but we skirted underneath it. Only consequence of the cloud was that we did bad weather circuits. After asking nice Mr ATCO for three circuits, we were rather rapidly on finals for only my second time in 3 months
, and my landing certainly wasn’t the best in the world. Ditto the second. And ditto the last. But they were safe – that’s all that matters, right?
And that was it, “well that’s a pass” from my examiner and one happy smile on my face! Got an obligatory picture with the aeroplane and my FI / examiner and then attempted to tackle the paperwork.
Apologies for the length, but it’ll be nice for me reading this one day too! All in all I had an excellent flight, flew reasonably well and really enjoyed it.
As you can imagine, I'm a rather happy John at the moment!
Just a quick thank you to all who have posted on here. Especially Mazzy, this thread has often given me the motivation to carry on when it "just wouldn't click". And I've learned a lot through it, too.
Cheers everyone, hope to see you all sometime!
Merry Christmas to all, and I hope you all have a great new year full of happy (and safe) flying!
JWF.