(another) First solo Land-away and my QXC!!!

[knobbygb]

Doesn’t time seem to fly when you’re enjoying yourself? It was only a couple of weeks ago that I was still doing solo consolidation in the circuit, watching the hours total slowly build up and wondering if I’d ever get out of the circuit alone.

Now, only 12 days later, I’ve done my first solo navex, first trip to an ‘international’ airport with ATC, first solo land-away (yesterday) and have two possible dates booked for the QXC!:eek: I totted up the hours in my logbook last night expecting to find about 25 and I have 31.4

I will not be mentioning the dates for the QXC so as not to attract attention from the weather gods, but they’re sometime NEXT WEEK!!! Rest assured I’ll let you know how it goes.

Anyway, the solo land-away was, without a doubt, the highlight of my training so far. I mentioned on this BB earlier in the year that I was quite disappointed with my first solo and was left feeling a bit deflated. Well I can now own up to finally having the :D BIG GRIN :D for the first time. I am a real pilot. I went somewhere and came back again (EGCJ to EGNE) without any help from an instructor, and without bending the aircraft or contravening any regs. (as far as I know).

I did make one possibly bad mistake, which I am glad to say I have learnt a couple of lessons from, and I think this has helped keep my feet on the ground (so to speak) and realise my limitations. While departing the circuit into the surrounding MATZ I managed to catch a button on the intercom while changing frequencies and could no longer hear anything from the radio. My first compulsion was to panic and turn round and land back at the field. I didn’t know what I’d pressed and, to be honest, didn’t have a clue how to work the intercom as they’re always set correctly and we never usually adjust them. It seems that while being taught to fly the aircraft, use the radio, navigate etc. no-one ever thought to show me this. My fault or the instructor? Probably both.

Anyway, lesson 1 - know the aircraft inside out before you do anything solo.

So, I’m flying through a MATZ in a busy AIAA with no radio. What should I do? I decided to continue out of the MATZ, as technically I did’t actually have to talk to them anyway, and sort the problem out when clear. I couldn’t return immediately to the field anyway, as I’d need to climb to do an overhead join at 1500ft to check for traffic. It was at this point that the thought of altitude made me realise that I was approaching a local landmark, a power station, height agl 700ft, at only 1000ft on the QFE (probably 950ft on QNH):eek:. A very quick climb put me right over the power station at just the safe and legal altitude of 1200ft. I just managed to avoid the plume of steam from the towers, but only by luck.

Lesson 2 - aviate, navigate, communicate - in that order! (Heard that somewhere before, I think).

I finally got the intercom working by playing around with the buttons (a sixth-sense with things electrical from years of IT work helped), and continued to my destination without problem. Weather on route was fine - broken cumulus at 3000ft with shafts of sunlight streaming through, and visibility at least 40km (I could see a landmark near my destination as soon as I turned onto heading - makes the nav easy!). The frequency was very quiet and I didn’t see another a/c all the way. Got handed over to Waddington Zone and then to Gamston Radio for the approach.

A greaser of a landing raised my confidence, (only my second landing on tarmac!) and I actually managed to find my parking spot without asking for directions (believe it or not, this was the bit that was worrying me most prior to the flight). The guy in the ‘tower’ seemed a bit surprised that I was on my first solo trip and said I’d done very well.
£10 for the landing, £2 for coffee and cake in the very welcoming coffee/pilot shop, and back off home.

Same route back, picked out all the local landmarks as soon as I was airborne and both Waddington and Fenton virtually silent. I actually got to admire the view for the first time in my flying ‘career’. One thing I also remembered to do, which I hadn’t on the way out, was to look out for possible landing sites should the engine decide to quit. There a quite a few disused airfields in that part of the world and the major landmark on my route was Finningley which is HUGH and can be seen from miles away. Anyway, another good landing and back to the clubhouse after 1.3 hobbs hours and 2hrs in realworld time. :cool:

My instructor wasn’t there when I arrived - she was out on a trial flight, and the bar was empty too, so I had to sit there and grin to myself like an idiot for 30 minutes hoping somebody, anybody, would come in and ask if I’d been flying. Nobody did, which explains this rather long post, I suppose.

So, to sum up; valuable lessons learned and a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon out doing what I now know I love doing most (yes, including that!) Off to East Midlands in a few days to practice the QXC with an instructor (EGCJ-EGNX-EGNJ-EGCJ), and I’ll hopefully have another post to make about my REAL QXC by the end of next week. In August I had faint hopes of being able to fly to the Sywell fly-in to meet some people in person, but it looks like that’ll have to wait until next time now.

[Circuit Basher]

Well done, knobbygb - always a tense moment when you're first out of the circuit on your own!!

Sounds like a little time falling in love with your comms box might not go amiss - of all the 'switch pigs', that's the one that is most common (due to variety of different installations) and also one of the more crucial, as trying to remember whether to do a CW or ACW triangle (now, which way was the wind coming?!), look for lights / flares from the tower, check for circuit traffic and fly a half decent circuit is generally a challenge for even the most experienced pilot, let alone a low hours stude! :)

[Bluebeard]

Well done, the first solo QXC is another one of those milestones in doing your PPL - but if you think the buzz from that is good then you'll be over the moon for your qualifying QXC!

Re intercom boxes, I've always found them to be a bit of a mystery, a classic case of too few controls with far too much functionality ( to use a sad IT phrase). Its normally quite easy to find the correct combination of toggled swithces to achieve the desired result but it is a bit hit and miss and I can imagine it would be unsettling on your first QXC! I think there is a case for better briefing in this area, and possibly to have it examined in the theory papers.

Again well done - you made some mistakes, nothing fatal, no one hurt, probably no laws broken :D , and you've cleary taken some learnings away from the experience.

[bcfc]

I've got a little piece of card with each switch drawn on it, either up or down, depending on which box I want to use. I still need to use it after gawd knows how many flights with it.

[knobbygb]

This box seemed to be the opposite of what Bluebeard suggests actually. Rather than too much functionality with too few controls, there seemed to be far too many buttons for what I assumed was a simple task!

Not sure of the make or model, but it consists of two rows of about eight buttons and a dial on the right with about six positions. It seems the top row controls which outputs are directed to the intercom (speaker), and the bottom row controls the output to the headsets. The dial selects the function of the ptt button and/or hand mike (COM1, COM2, INT and a couple I couldn't work out). The particular aircraft has dual nav/com and adf, which some of the others don't so I guess it has to be more complicated, but why would I want to listen to COM2 over the speaker and COM1 through the headset? Do I need to be able to listen to the ID of both VOR's at the same time? Do I need to be able to talk over the internal speaker in a Pa28?

Point taken about getting to know the kit a bit better. I can honestly say that after 11 flights in this particular aircraft I had never even noticed the intercom box, let alone touched it! I always thought that spreading training across seven different aircraft, each configured slightly differently, was on the whole, a good thing as it'd make it easier for me to get used to new aircraft in the long run. I still do, but I guess, as I said originally, that I'll just have to spend that bit longer on familiarisation each time I climb into one of them.

[FlyingForFun]

Knobby,

I suggest you get your instructor to give you a good briefing on your particular box!

It sounds more complicated than any I've seen before, but not completely different. The PA28s I trained in had 1 row of switches, and 1 dial. The dial selects which radio the mic transmits on. The switches were all 3-position - I think it was up for speaker, middle for off, and down for headset. There was one switch for each VOR, radio, DME and ADF. All of these would normally be in the "off" position. There was another switch, called "Auto", which is normally in the "headset" position - this allows you to hear either Com1 or Com2, depending on the position of the mic switch. Which makes sense, because normally you want to listen and transmit on the same box.

As for listening to multiple things at once, there are lots of scenarios where you might like to do this. For example, talking to once facility while picking up ATIS from a nearby airfield on another box. If you have a VOR and DME tuned to the same frequency, you can ident them both at the same time - the VOR ident is repeated twice, at a medium frequency, then the DME once, at a higher frequency. If you were running a commercial operation, you might wire one of the switches to a tape recorder and switch this to a circuit which your pax can hear, while you're listening to a controller without your pax having to know or care about what you're doing. And the list goes on...

But, generally, knowing where the switches belong for "normal" operation so you can put them back if you knock them is enough! :D

FFF
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[sennadog]

knobbygb, nice one! We'll have to scrape you off the ceiling when you do your QXC if this thread is anything to go by. As you say, there is a moment of sheer panic when things don't go exactly as planned but you sorted it out which is what it's all about.

:D