Hi guys. Long time lurker first time poster.
Here's my story:
I started my PPL 2 years ago, unconventially I decided to complete all of the ground school before I even had one lesson. I should add I have "some" glider experience, so the initial itch that needed scratching of experiencing flight on your own had already been achieved.
I started my practical flying And when I got to about 15 hours and consolidating my solo stuff I found myself deployed to Afghan with work, I'm in the RAF. I spent the best part of 6 months there and then came home and got drunk for a month, which meant lots of no flying. I then took the bull by the horns and started again in August last year, everything went very swiftly and very well, I appeared to be progressing nicely, so nice that I had in fact reached all of the objectives by about 33 hours. Including a QXC where I ended up spotting another student pilot who I'd heard on the radio, he was orbiting overhead Gloucestershire and clearly struggling with locating the airfield. Via ATC I was able to assist him and I found that a huge boost and my confidence began to grow.
I then was lucky enough to actually fly in to and out of Birmingham international for a flight safety meeting. I went with my CFI but I did all of the flying as he had been there many times in his younger days. I have the entry in my log book and it makes me smile every time I see it.
In November as we all know the weather was horrific, I was ready to test but I just needed 6 more hours before I reached the magical 45, unfortunately the weather didn't play ball and then my personal life took a dive and I ended up separating from my partner.
I saw a job at a military gliding centre and decided to try my luck applying, they usually like you to be a glider instructor already but I applied anyway. I ended up coming for a week long "interview" where their CFI put me through my paces, mostly in a glider. He seemed impressed and after the boss spoke to my CFI for a reference about my flying "potential" I actually got the job....pending a successful skills test pass.
So then we get to January, I have 6 hours to get, I go and do 2 mock skills tests with my CFI who seriously tested me, we were doing 3 hours at a time and I did every thing he could think of to throw at me, his standards were ludicrously high. Sure enough as I reached 45 hours 15 minutes, I felt ready for the test.
Then one of the aircraft needed to go for servicing, my CFI asked if I'd like to go just as a passenger and we would get picked up by road, I agree, the cloud base was 800ft according to all relevant MET all the way to maint airfield which was why he would do the flying. We set off and got about halfway only to have the most unpredictable and ridiculous weather come in around us, by staying under the cloud base we ended up extremely low, I started to realise things were becoming problematic when my CFI shut up, he literally never shuts up. At one point we were clearly in trouble, or should I say if I'd been on my own I would have been in big trouble, I was actually picking out suitable fields. At this point our navigation aids in the cockpit all decide to die, we had nothing and were flying almost blind. The next thing my CFI calmly says "we are now going IMC, I'm on instruments, you have the radio and transponder"
He then pushes to full throttle and began to climb through the cloud, this seemed to take forever, I changed us from a basic service to a traffic service from a military controller and we eventually penetrated the cloud at 3k on the QNH.
My instructor then hands control to me and requests an 80kt rate one LH orbit, I duly comply as he begins calmly resetting all of our Nav AIDS and gps. He then takes control back, flew us to a specific point and began a decent down through clouds, to my amazement we pop out of the clouds at 220ft and right in front of us is a very welcoming runway, a call of finals to land and we softly touch down.
The only reasonable explanation for this is magic
To summarise we debriefed for a long time, it was a real eye opener about how wrong the TAFS and METARS can be, it also made me realise what a genuinely astonishing set of skills he and any of you have that can deal with that. i told him that if it had been me I'd have chosen one of the lovely fields I had seen and he agreed that I would have made the right choice, although he did tell me how to deal with things once I'd got on top if I had chosen that route.
So then last Saturday I strap in with an examiner, we have a 13kt crosswind, weather was far from ideal, we start with the circuit work where I demonstrate my best crosswind landings to date, inc flapless. Examiner tells me to fly to my first scatter point and I can make my decision as to whether or not to continue the test when we get there, we get up and it's very hazy, very bumpy but I can see the ground, we are going!! I inform him, he nods, writes on his clipboard and off we go.
The test went very well and I even managed a good PFL which I had struggled with in training, always too high for some reason. After a shocking landing :-/ at our airfield and he duly shakes my hand and congratulates me on a successful test. So after many trials and tribulations I have done it, I feel very humbled to have gained the experience I have, and I am glad these experiences happened with an 8000 hour pilot sat next to me.
I'm hungry for more training now, I will enjoy the summer and then I think IMC is calling. I now have to get my instructor rating on gliders and will be flying almost every flyable day, then hopefully next year I shall jump in the glider tug and start some aerotow training.
Sorry I've gone on a lot, none of my mates are interested in hearing all the details so thought I'd make written account for future reference.
Thanks for reading.