foghorn
16th Sep 2001, 19:41
Being a pprune regular who finally qualified last week, I've had a few requests for my 'story'. I was saving it up for when I get a job, however recent events in New York may mean that that is going to happen much later than I expected, so here goes. I've drawn a lot of inspiration from the stories of WWW, Pilot Pete etc. along the way. I don't think that my story is not as extensive as WWW's and does not show as much sheer commitment in the face of adversity as Pilot Pete, but I hope you find it at least remotely interesting and maybe a little encouraging in these dark days.
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As a kid I always wanted to fly. The series Fighter Pilot on BBC1 in the late seventies started all that. My left-wing parents have an instinctive dislike of the uniformed services and killed any plans I had to join the ATC and the RAF. Know-it-all school careers advisers at the comprehensive I attended told me that Airline Pilot jobs were only for the elite and the ex-military. How would a big clumsy oaf like me ever be a pilot jibed my jealous classmates? After all the only sport I was any good in was rugby where size was all that really mattered.
Over a period of time I buried my flying ambitions and put my mind to academic work. I clearly had a flair for maths and the physical sciences and sailed through GCSE's and A-levels and got a place at Cambridge. By now my flying ambitions had been so thoroughly suppressed that I miss a sterling opportunity to fly with the UAS. Idiot. Got into rowing in a major way and drank a lot of beer, and didn't do massively well academically. Flatmate with ATC hours wanted to be a pilot but no-one's sponsoring or hiring - it's still the Gulf War recession. No point me trying, then. Did a Masters to postpone the inevitable. The inevitable comes and I graduate into a recession with no job, not for the want of trying. Careers service advises me to become an accountant 'you might make it into the second-tier firms but I'm afraid opportunities in all careers are scarce... blah blah... poor current outlook for the economy'. Yeah, right, an accountant. Ended up working for a mate in his start-up company halfway across the world in IT just to avoid the dole, earning as much as an instructor.
Years pass and I'm back in the UK with a happy home life and a good job earning good money in an industry I never wanted to work in, feeling very very unfulfilled. What do I do? An MBA? No, I've got degrees coming out of my ears, they did me no good in the last recession and I hated academia anyway. Then one day, I'm browsing the internet, and I come across Cabair's site. What the hell, I'll go for a trial lesson. The girlfriend is upset as she's been planning one as my XMas present.
We're only just airborne from runway 22 at Cranfield in a Cabair Cheetah on a blazingly hot July day when it hits me like a laser beam. Yes, THIS is what I always wanted to do. I don't think I could speak initially the shock of realisation was so great. Years of suppressed ambitions flood back. Luckily the instructor is a top bloke and yes, I will book more lessons - what's the cheapest route to a PPL part-time - out comes the magic plastic we'll just have to find a way to pay for it.
Within a few weeks my mind was made up. The PPL was finished in four months part time, I move house and then enrol on an IMC at Biggin Hill and the ATPL theory distance learning with Four Forces. Sometimes I get the jitters at the enormity of the whole thing - cost included - am I cut out for it? - those schoolyard clumsy kid jibes resurface at the back of my mind. Instructors tell me that my flying skill is 'beyond my hours'.
Meanwhile I've taken a contract job overseas because the money is much better than in the UK. OK, the personal life will suffer, but it's all money in the bank. Every weekend I'm flying, hour building and IMC-ing, every Monday morning I fly out to Holland to work and then hole up in the hotel every night with the ATPL books until I fly home Friday afternoon for another weekend flying. IMC passed in August, ATPL Nav subjects in October and in November I head off to Cape Town for a month's hour building and multi-training. Long suffering girlfriend who has hardly seen me since March is still standing by my side, although she's annoyed that I've managed to turn our annual holiday together after so long apart into an extended flying session. She gets paid back with some spectacular views of the Cape from the right hand seat of a Cherokee, though. Back home for Christmas and then off on another overseas contract, this time in Denmark. ATPL techs are passed in May and the last few hours are built, then I'm off to Leeds to do the CPL/IR.
During the course I'm staying with the parents in South Yorkshire: it cuts down on accommodation costs but means a 1+ hour drive in a morning. I can't quite understand why, but I feel constantly under the weather and tired. Once or twice I get tunnel vision and a woolly head just like flu but without the achy joints and cold-like symptoms. For example I can fly but I don't have the spare brainpower to negotiate with ATC or navigate. I have to bin out of several lessons, on one time after departure. Scarey. The effects seem to come on only when I go to Leeds to fly. I wonder if I'm not cut out to be a professional pilot, despite showing no similar problems in 180+ hours of flying. My instructor even wonders if it's his style. I visit the doctor who thinks I have mild sinusitis and prescribes antibiotics. I can fly as long as I feel well. After several days off I return but once again have to bin out of a lesson with the engines running. After a long discussion with the instructor I decide to take several weeks off to get rid of whatever it is that I have. On the way home.... bang... the car exhaust shears off right at the exhaust manifold, where the hot air muffler draws air to heat the cabin and not a million miles from the cold air intake. The rescue guy tut-tuts as he welds the exhaust and tells me it's been like this for a while - the weld was dodgy and has been failing over a period of time and there will have been Carbon Monoxide getting into the cabin. It's been getting in through the cold air when stationary and the hot air all the time. So that explains it. After months of fairly light use with no ill effects, the car has been gradually gassing me every morning on the long drive in.
Anyway after two weeks I restart the CPL, feeling OK, but with hindsight maybe I should have left more recovery time. Oh, and I've got a new (second-hand) car too. I partial the first attempt at the CPL by dint of getting lost after the IMC leg, and pass on the second attempt. The IR course goes smoothly and after what seems like years locked up in a simulator (the approved JAR course), and after a false start due to a broken Pitot Heat switch, I pass the IR first time on minimum hours (my landings seem to have gone pants though - something to work on in future).
Without waiting I get my CV bashed out to the top twenty airlines likely to hire low-hour pilots. However events have caught up with me on that - my CV was landing on airline doormats just as the horrific scenes in New York were playing out on live TV. So it looks like no sooner have some barriers been overcome, more huge ones loom up in my path.
I now stand with a JAA CPL/ME/IR and 240 hours looking ahead into a darkening sky.
I am not going to let the repercussions of the shocking events in NY affect me. I've gone too far for that. Nothing will deflect me from my goal this time. I'm doing an MCC and Instructors Rating over the next few months, when the money will finally run out. Then I hope to get an instructors job as I cannot face a return to IT. If needs must, though, it is my backup plan.
And if you're interested, I'm lucky and my girlfriend is still with me - being a doctor she has always understood the sheer drive and motivation that comes of knowing that a vocation is the one for you.
keep the faith,
foggy
[ 16 September 2001: Message edited by: foghorn ]
---
As a kid I always wanted to fly. The series Fighter Pilot on BBC1 in the late seventies started all that. My left-wing parents have an instinctive dislike of the uniformed services and killed any plans I had to join the ATC and the RAF. Know-it-all school careers advisers at the comprehensive I attended told me that Airline Pilot jobs were only for the elite and the ex-military. How would a big clumsy oaf like me ever be a pilot jibed my jealous classmates? After all the only sport I was any good in was rugby where size was all that really mattered.
Over a period of time I buried my flying ambitions and put my mind to academic work. I clearly had a flair for maths and the physical sciences and sailed through GCSE's and A-levels and got a place at Cambridge. By now my flying ambitions had been so thoroughly suppressed that I miss a sterling opportunity to fly with the UAS. Idiot. Got into rowing in a major way and drank a lot of beer, and didn't do massively well academically. Flatmate with ATC hours wanted to be a pilot but no-one's sponsoring or hiring - it's still the Gulf War recession. No point me trying, then. Did a Masters to postpone the inevitable. The inevitable comes and I graduate into a recession with no job, not for the want of trying. Careers service advises me to become an accountant 'you might make it into the second-tier firms but I'm afraid opportunities in all careers are scarce... blah blah... poor current outlook for the economy'. Yeah, right, an accountant. Ended up working for a mate in his start-up company halfway across the world in IT just to avoid the dole, earning as much as an instructor.
Years pass and I'm back in the UK with a happy home life and a good job earning good money in an industry I never wanted to work in, feeling very very unfulfilled. What do I do? An MBA? No, I've got degrees coming out of my ears, they did me no good in the last recession and I hated academia anyway. Then one day, I'm browsing the internet, and I come across Cabair's site. What the hell, I'll go for a trial lesson. The girlfriend is upset as she's been planning one as my XMas present.
We're only just airborne from runway 22 at Cranfield in a Cabair Cheetah on a blazingly hot July day when it hits me like a laser beam. Yes, THIS is what I always wanted to do. I don't think I could speak initially the shock of realisation was so great. Years of suppressed ambitions flood back. Luckily the instructor is a top bloke and yes, I will book more lessons - what's the cheapest route to a PPL part-time - out comes the magic plastic we'll just have to find a way to pay for it.
Within a few weeks my mind was made up. The PPL was finished in four months part time, I move house and then enrol on an IMC at Biggin Hill and the ATPL theory distance learning with Four Forces. Sometimes I get the jitters at the enormity of the whole thing - cost included - am I cut out for it? - those schoolyard clumsy kid jibes resurface at the back of my mind. Instructors tell me that my flying skill is 'beyond my hours'.
Meanwhile I've taken a contract job overseas because the money is much better than in the UK. OK, the personal life will suffer, but it's all money in the bank. Every weekend I'm flying, hour building and IMC-ing, every Monday morning I fly out to Holland to work and then hole up in the hotel every night with the ATPL books until I fly home Friday afternoon for another weekend flying. IMC passed in August, ATPL Nav subjects in October and in November I head off to Cape Town for a month's hour building and multi-training. Long suffering girlfriend who has hardly seen me since March is still standing by my side, although she's annoyed that I've managed to turn our annual holiday together after so long apart into an extended flying session. She gets paid back with some spectacular views of the Cape from the right hand seat of a Cherokee, though. Back home for Christmas and then off on another overseas contract, this time in Denmark. ATPL techs are passed in May and the last few hours are built, then I'm off to Leeds to do the CPL/IR.
During the course I'm staying with the parents in South Yorkshire: it cuts down on accommodation costs but means a 1+ hour drive in a morning. I can't quite understand why, but I feel constantly under the weather and tired. Once or twice I get tunnel vision and a woolly head just like flu but without the achy joints and cold-like symptoms. For example I can fly but I don't have the spare brainpower to negotiate with ATC or navigate. I have to bin out of several lessons, on one time after departure. Scarey. The effects seem to come on only when I go to Leeds to fly. I wonder if I'm not cut out to be a professional pilot, despite showing no similar problems in 180+ hours of flying. My instructor even wonders if it's his style. I visit the doctor who thinks I have mild sinusitis and prescribes antibiotics. I can fly as long as I feel well. After several days off I return but once again have to bin out of a lesson with the engines running. After a long discussion with the instructor I decide to take several weeks off to get rid of whatever it is that I have. On the way home.... bang... the car exhaust shears off right at the exhaust manifold, where the hot air muffler draws air to heat the cabin and not a million miles from the cold air intake. The rescue guy tut-tuts as he welds the exhaust and tells me it's been like this for a while - the weld was dodgy and has been failing over a period of time and there will have been Carbon Monoxide getting into the cabin. It's been getting in through the cold air when stationary and the hot air all the time. So that explains it. After months of fairly light use with no ill effects, the car has been gradually gassing me every morning on the long drive in.
Anyway after two weeks I restart the CPL, feeling OK, but with hindsight maybe I should have left more recovery time. Oh, and I've got a new (second-hand) car too. I partial the first attempt at the CPL by dint of getting lost after the IMC leg, and pass on the second attempt. The IR course goes smoothly and after what seems like years locked up in a simulator (the approved JAR course), and after a false start due to a broken Pitot Heat switch, I pass the IR first time on minimum hours (my landings seem to have gone pants though - something to work on in future).
Without waiting I get my CV bashed out to the top twenty airlines likely to hire low-hour pilots. However events have caught up with me on that - my CV was landing on airline doormats just as the horrific scenes in New York were playing out on live TV. So it looks like no sooner have some barriers been overcome, more huge ones loom up in my path.
I now stand with a JAA CPL/ME/IR and 240 hours looking ahead into a darkening sky.
I am not going to let the repercussions of the shocking events in NY affect me. I've gone too far for that. Nothing will deflect me from my goal this time. I'm doing an MCC and Instructors Rating over the next few months, when the money will finally run out. Then I hope to get an instructors job as I cannot face a return to IT. If needs must, though, it is my backup plan.
And if you're interested, I'm lucky and my girlfriend is still with me - being a doctor she has always understood the sheer drive and motivation that comes of knowing that a vocation is the one for you.
keep the faith,
foggy
[ 16 September 2001: Message edited by: foghorn ]