From Zero to Forty Five - my PPL Diary

[FlyFreeWbe]

well done

Airlaw was good reading material. I recommend it for insomniacs. It's a shame they had you wait that long though, I'm got all my results straight after. Which one are you going for next?

[SkySista]

No, mazzy, you're not whinging (much ) j/k.... if I had gone to go flying, and couldn't I'd be so disappointed too! Never mind you can 'go another day', it's always not quite as good as going 'today', is it?

(The fact that my chosen airport is a 50min+ drive doesn't help either.....

Congrats Fingers!!! Airlaw is okay I suppose, although it does get a little weird doing Nav., Met., & AGK at the same time.... I keep sitting in class listening to the instructor, going "Hmmmm...... I seem to have heard this somewhere before....."

We are starting Human factors in December. I have to say, it's one of my favorites because a) most of it is common sense and b) I find it really easy, as have done a unit on it in high school!

Sky

[FingersR]

Thanks guys! Ive now passed Human Factors and Air Law. Human factors was interesting stuff and certianly the easier of the two! Im planning to do Met next followed by Nav. Sound like a good plan?

[c-bert]

If you are doing the examsn at the same time as flying I might suggest you do Nav first. That we it frees you up to actually fly some nav. That said, if you are still bashing the circuit may as well stick to Met first. Just my two GB pennies.

[FingersR]

Thanks C-Bert. Now ive got passed airlaw and Human Factors I can solo. The plan is to do that hopefully withinin 2/3 hours (not flown for a while so need to get back into the swing of things!) and then will probably be circuit bashing for a few hours after that 2 I expect. Think I will get Met out of the way and then concentrate on Nav when Im going to be using it practically in the air - apparently makes much more sense then!

[c-bert]

Sounds like a plan...

[Sunfish]

I have just returned with Beth from having an "incident". I now have a large glass of wine in front of me even though its only mid-afternoon.

I'm just finishing up some lessons before taking the general flight proficiency test. Today we left the playpen of the circuit and flew to the aero club's country airstrip to practice precautionary landings as well as an introduction to gravel strips and short takeoffs and landings.

Beth demonstrates the precautionary landing procedure. Inspection upwind at 500 feet, then inspection upwind at 200 feet, then climb back to 500 feet and do a short field landing which involves selecting 40 degrees flap for the last stage of the approach.

So she does a beautiful demonstration and does a touch and go. Full power, flaps up and around again for my turn to have a go.

As we accelerated down the runway I was thinking "Gee this gravel really drags us back, we aren't accelerating very fast, I must remember that."

So we get airborne at about 50 knots which is correct for a short takeoff in a C150. I'm watching a big tree in front of me and a set of major power pylons on the hill in front of us getting bigger - only they are not going "down" the windscreen. They are just getting bigger.

After a second or two I realise something is very wrong, and for some reason I turn and check the flaps - and the flaps are still all the way down!!!. I check the switch which is in the "full up" position - flap malfunction.

I tell Beth we are in trouble and a few seconds later we get a call from the CFI who was watching us asking if we meant to take off with full flaps (Beth says No). Then he asks if we are in trouble (Beth says yes). She is in full "Aviate" mode to keep this thing flying because it does not want to.

At full power we can barely hold altitude at about 100 feet. We can't clear ANYTHING in front of us. Beth makes a 180 degree turn which we made with the stall warning horn screaming at about 40 - 45 knots - and this is with full power!! The only way she got us round was by accepting a descent - AROUND the tree. We made it across the threshold at about ten feet and dumped it on the runway. Once we turned, we could have dropped it into a paddock if necessary and accepted damage to the aircraft.

After coffee we borrowed another airplane and finished the sequence, then headed for home in our original ship with the flaps up - the CFI had fiddled with the switch and it decided to work enough to get the flaps up. I would have chicken ringed the flaps circuit breaker if I could have, but you can't do it with the old Cessna type. I did however made a solemn promise that if the flaps started moving I would flip the master switch come what may.

We were lucky in a number of ways:

1) We had a very light fuel load.

2) The airplane has a brand new motor and prop thanks to the old prop hitting a concrete kerb and busting everything. I don't think the other C150's would have had the performance to survive.

3) Neither Beth nor I tried to cycle the flap switch. If we had, and they moved, we would have stalled and would now possibly be dead.

4) We had a pure 90 degree crosswind of ten knots so we could land back onto the strip without any wind problems

We landed back at the main airport in an uneventful flaps up landing. Beth has to write this up for the regulators. She earned her pay today. Enough exitement for one day.

I've since learned that Cessna flap switches are notorious, as are electric flap systems in general. The "problem" isnt a problem in normal operation if you think about it, just in a touch and go or a go around.

If we had been at our main airport with a 3000 foot strip we would have twigged to the lack of acceleration and landed ahead no worries.

The switch entices you to "set and forget" but you need to check that the bloody things are doing what you want them to!

[SkySista]

Pay attention to Sunfish, all you newbies!!! (inc. me!)

Sunfish! Glad you guys are ok..... 10/10 to Beth (and yourself too if you were as calm as you sounded...!)

Geez well I suppose you were lucky it was while you were flying with an instructor for this - sounds like a two-person job!!! On the bright side, boy are you prepared for that one next time. And we can all learn from that. I am sitting here now writing "Check Flaps AGAIN..." in my book....

The only way she got us round was by accepting a descent - AROUND the tree.

My goodness, top flying from you two then!!! Glad you're still here.

Have another glass, Sunfish......

[c-bert]

@Sunfish - Makes you think doesn't it?

I had a slight (very slight in comparison) incident yesterday as well. Practicing forced landings with instructor when I notice there is bugger all fuel pressure . We switched on the aux fuel pump and up the pressure came *relief all round*. Just to check the problem we tried turning the aux pump off...fuel pressure drops to nothing again. Decided it would be prudent to go home at that point as we didn't want to be practicing a REAL forced landing...

[FingersR]

My word Sunfish! What a "I learned about flying from that"experience to have! Very glad to hear your are okay though. Certianly one for me to take note of on my checklist as I fly the C152.

[MichaelJP59]

Hi Sunfish, I'm about the same stage as you in my PPL and that sounded extremely dodgy!

One question though, you said that you flew right around the tree at the end, low and slow with full flaps. If you'd managed to get around the obstacle (tree) couldn't you just land ahead there and then?

Cheers,
- Michael

[Hampshire Hog]

Mmmm,

Sunfish, I'm sure your instructor made carefully thought out decisions, but turning back, very low, with the stall warner going sounds really dodgy to me.

I'll stop moaning about the manual flap lever in the Warrior now!

Was there no suitable field ahead?

HH

[Sunfish]

No suitable field ahead, you CAN make a low level turn if you have full power as we had. ONce we had turned 180 we could have dumoed it in the paddock easily, but chose to carry on about 100 yeards and dump it on the airstrip.

FingersR, you will find (I think) that the C152 flaps now only go the 30 degrees and apparently this is the reason!! I've since heard anecdotally that this is an "Old" problem, however its not written down anywhere I have found yet.

One bloke confidently said "Yeah I know about the problem so when doing a short field go around or touch and go, I check flaps are moving before applying full power".

A Boeing driver has said that Boeing go around speeds are calculated assuming flaps are full down and won't come up.

I guess the lesson is that if your aircraft won't fly on full flaps and you use them, then if something breakes or jams, you are committed to land.

[FingersR]

Thanks for the info Sunfish!

[mazzy1026]

Sunfish - very scary indeed, glad to see you and Beth are ok. Thanks for making that post, it is a good reminder to the rest of us and may even save a few of us having the same problem in the future.

Keep it up peeps

Lee

[Hampshire Hog]

Sunfish,

Thanks for clarifying the circumstances. I guess even if there had been a suitable field ahead, there would have been hard choices to make. Important thing is, as Mazzy says, you're both ok and ready to keep piling on the hours.

Useful learning for all of us though.

HH

[c-bert]

Flew my practice QXC yesterday. Southampton - Bristol - Exeter and back to SOU. A good trip although I thought £42 to land at Bristol was a bit pricey!
Longest I have flown to date and I got back home absolutely knackered It's amazing the level of concentration that can be required but I had a good instructor who kept me buzy. Shame I didn't get to see many of the sights though.
Now I have to do it all on my own...

[mazzy1026]

RT Oral

Whoever said this was easy must have had about 40 hours in training. As you may well be aware from my diary, I am only on 12 hours. I took the all day, one to one RT course, with the well known RT guy at Liverpool. Let’s just say that the first thing I done when I got home, was go straight out on the ale. What a stressful day.

It started with us going through all the theory, different types of ATSU’s and classifications of airspace etc. This was quite easy as I have studied the reading material a couple of times and was OK with it. This took us right up to about 1400 (we started at 1000). With it being a one-to-one course, I could ask as many questions as I like along the way and this was good because there was never anything that I didn’t understand. So after lunch, we got back and it was decided that we do some practice. I had the northern chart, with a route drawn out on it, which went out of the Liverpool zone and through a MATZ to the south. Seems simple doesn’t it in theory, but when he leaves the room to go next door and you are all on your own, it is only then that all your previous training and knowledge seems to play a vital role. We had a simple two-way intercom device, designed to simulate the real environment, and to be honest, it really does feel real. It is easier however when you have a nice desk in front of you and no aircraft to fly!

Now this is the point where I was struggling. I will detail what I thought was relatively straight forward and what I couldn’t seem to grasp.

Requesting taxi, very straight forward:

1) Who you are talking to
2) Who you are
3) What you want.

No we have established the three ‘W’s. very important indeed. Now at this point it was stressed to ignore the standard phraseology around Liverpool, because usually, when at Kilo requesting taxi, it goes more like this:

Liverpool tower, G-####, is at kilo, with information Charlie (ATIS), QNH1013, ready for departure – or thereabouts with regard to order.

So this meant that requesting taxi was actually less work than I was used to. So after taxi, ready for departure, ATC (I will refer to examiner as ATC from now on) says:

“G-## clearance”

This is my first point of confusion that I seemed to keep screwing up:

“Request clearance G-##”

WRONG! What I was suppose to say is “affirm” or “ready for clearance” or similar, this means that ATC is asking me am I ready to write down all the clearance details. This did slip my mind a few times, but in the end I got it.

Every now and then, ATC would slip in something I wasn’t expecting, like a conditional clearance, which I had done a few of (these are quite regular at Liverpool due to busy traffic). I was ok here, always remember to read back the clearance. This can be an instant fail if you don’t. So now we are airborne, tell ATC you are leaving the zone and request a freq change. Fairly simple, and ATC usually always approve (until the test, the buggar).

Now this is the point that I kept screwing up, and I will tell you why I kept screwing it up later. Ok after a few practice tries, I still didn’t have it in the bag. It was time for the test. Very very nervous indeed, at the thought of failing and having to do it all over again. I think the most important thing for me was the following (which had been established from the start):

Report:

W – who your calling
W – who you are
W – what you want

Another report:

Call sign and type
Departure and destination
Position (overhead ….)
Level
Additional details
Intentions

Another one:

O – overhead
L – level
E – ETA next turning point.

Now with this firmly in mind, back to the test. Left the zone and am approaching a MATZ, so I make the initial call “WWW”. They then ask for my details. This is where it was going wrong. I kept getting confused as to which position report to give? Do I give “OLE”, or the full report? So I kept giving the wrong one and ATC was getting very peeved indeed! I would give the full report twice, maybe not enough and I just couldn’t understand what I was doing.

Let me tell you the very easy method I used to get around this and never make that same mistake again. I simply wrote “1, 2, 3” next to each report. i.e. WWW is one, full report is 2 and OLE is three. THAT’S the order you give to the ATSU/MATZ. When you first make contact, use report number one, when they ask for your details, use report number 2. When they request you to contact them at your next checkpoint, use 3. you only need to give the first and second report ONCE – this establishes that they have your details, so you should now only need to give OLE.

After I realised this, things seemed a lot easier, and I wasn’t making these mistakes any more. The test was a the full works, PAN call, MAYDAY relay, 3 MATZ, 5 turning points, a divert, collect weather from another MATZ, even had to get a True Bearing from another frequency.

To me, this day was a tough one. Lots and lots to take in and mentally tough if you have not had much experience. The thing is, you HAVE to get it right, there is no room for error on the test.

Here’s my two cents worth of advice.

1) When giving a mayday call, or relay, MAKE SURE you give the position, this is the most important part of the call – if you miss that out, you’ve failed. Even if you miss out most of the rest, please remember this.
2) Same for a PAN call.
3) Revise the above, make sure you get the position reports correct and in the right order (like I didn’t at first hehe).
4) Revise what needs reading back and what doest – when confirming landing clearance, don’t read back the weather!
5) Be ready for ATC to throw things in, and listen out. If you don’t understand what is said, request “say again”.
6) Don’t rush to get back to ATC, remember, in reality there could be 20 mins between talking points. Take your time and be clear.
7) Try not to request too many “say again” as I found out. I requested another read back of the landing instructions, and was asked “bloody hell can you read me OK” (or similar words)!
8) Study beforehand, know what you are going to say – in the famous words of Pratt “engage brain before opening mouth”.
9) Don’t forget to change the frequency on the intercom device, ATC will be watching!
10) Have fun.

Having fun is important, although it doesn’t seem like much fun at first, when you get something right, it feels good.

We finished at 1830 – with the words I had wanted to hear “you are successful”. This means that now I can start learning RT – it doesn’t mean I am now a super literate radio operator, it is important to realise this.

Best of luck to anyone who is to take this, and sorry if it seems I am putting you off – just want you to know the necessary points!

Who ever said RT course was easy?

Best regards

Lee



Hour 12

Well, I cant possibly write more here can I – I have already had my share of the pot today, so I will close it with 5 successful circuits with no problems. Got 2 right hand orbits in to give way to Easyjets and made some great approaches.

Safe flying

Lee

[Hampshire Hog]

Well done Mazzy.

Now I have loads of experience on both airband and other radio networks (I hold my marine radio cert too), but you've scared the Cr*p out of me!!! Some useful tips in there though. I'm leaving my radio exam until I'm further through the ppl (and after I've finished my MBA in October!).

Should have been flying today, instead of writing this, but got weathered off. Tried to book further lessons over the next couple of weeks, but my club has an instructor off and the earliest I could get was 30th Sept - now booked several slots!. Arrrrrh! Back to MS Flight Sim for my fix!

HH

[mazzy1026]

Arrrrrh! Back to MS Flight Sim for my fix!

LOL - before yesterday I was the same, because I hadn't flown for 2 weeks, I actually found myself on MS flight sim too - the thing is though, I used to think it was real (that was before I had started training). I just dont see much similarity at all with the flying characteristics, especially if you download the aircraft you are training in. I remember a while back I read a post about the flight sim, and a lot of people said that it was good for instrument training and the like - I see why now! Still good though for a quick 'flying fix'

Sorry if my RT post has scared anyone, that wasn't the intention. Please remember that everyone is different, and what I find difficult, someone else may find easy. A lot of people had actually told me how easy it was prior to me doing it, and that there was nothing to it, so no doubt a lot of people will feel the same!

Cheers,

Lee