CPL Diary?

[Keygrip]

Loud shirt?? Loud shirt?? Cheeky bugga - that one was almost asleep.

Loud shirt indeed!! Humphh.

[No. 2]

Excellent post FFF.

Please tell me though, why do you normally keep the gear up for an emergency landing?

No. 2

[Keygrip]

Oi - FFF - it's gone dark already - where's the update?

You said "No more days off" - people are waiting for this. C'mon.

[FlyingForFun]

Wow, people are actually waiting for my update now?

No. 2 - the subject of where to leave the gear for an emergency landing is open for debate. In fact, it has been debated several times in the Private Flying forum, and I was discussing it with Keygrip this morning. Basically, you have two options. If you land with the gear up, the landing roll will be very much shorter, which may be the difference between going into the trees at the end of the field or not - and that might mean the difference between walking away uninjured or not. If the field is boggy, the gear can dig in and tip the aircraft over, which again may mean the difference between being uninjured or not. That is the argument for leaving the gear up. (On water, it's been pretty much proven than the aircraft is far more likely to stay upright with the gear up, and I don't think there's any debate about this.)

The argument for putting the gear down is based on preserving the aircraft. With the gear up, you will almost certainly cause damage to the underside of the aircraft, the prop, and the engine. If the problem can be easilly fixed, you won't be able to fly the aircraft out of the field, or even taxy it to somewhere that it can be more easilly recovered from. So there's a good argument for getting the gear down to look after the aircraft.

Personally, I'd rather look after myself and my pax than the aircraft. But I can see the other side of the argument too. You won't fail any test, whichever method you use, as far as I'm aware.

Anyway, so much for "no more days off" - here's today's entry:

Day 14 - Sunday 23 November

No flying today. The tyres on the Arrow were worn to the limit, and by the time they were changed there wouldn't be enough daylight left. I had noticed yesterday that the tyres were very worn, but the tread was still discernable, and I was expecting it to last until after my skills test. But there had been a couple of flights between yesterday and today, and I was wrong - there were patches on the main wheels where I couldn't detect any more tread.

So where does this leave me? Well, our plan allowed time for weather delays, tech delays and so on, so we should still be ok. What's more, my instructor tells me that I've done nearly everything now, which I find quite scary, as I thought I had quite a few more flights still to do! I have two more things I haven't done in the Arrow yet - stalls and navigation. Normally this would be two flights, one covering stalls and one navigation exercise, but we might combine these into one longer flight. I have to do a practice test, ideally with a different instructor although it doesn't have to be, and then I may need to fly once more if any issues come up during the practice test. And that's it! If all goes according to plan, there's still no reason why I shouldn't be able to take the skills test, with enough time to spare for a re-test if I don't manage to pass first time. So I'm only getting a little bit stressed about lack of time!

I have just re-read what I wrote yesterday, and realised something that I didn't realise as I was writing it. I think I've just about got this "captaincy" thing now! Reading through yesterday's entry, I realised that the word I was using to describe the guy sitting next to me flicked between "instructor" and "passenger", and that's pretty much exactly how I thought of him during the flight. And that, I think, is what it's all about.

I had a similar experience today, after pre-flighting the Arrow - although I didn't handle it quite as well, it still shows the difference in the way I'm thinking. My instructor asked if I was ready, and I said that I'm "not completely happy about the tyres." I have to admit I was waiting for him to make the call, but when he asked if we were going or not, I knew that it was my choice. I thought about it for a second, and then said "No." And that was it. I was in charge, and it was my call. As I've said before, this is nothing new - every time I fly my own aircraft, I make the decisions about whether any problems are going to stop me flying or not. But most low-hours pilots will act differently when they fly with an instructor - or with an examiner. And the examiner wants to see how you will act around a non-pilot passenger. What I think the course teaches you to do is behave as if the person sitting next to you really is just a passenger - purely so that he can mark your ability to act properly in that situation.

Ok - that's enough for tonight about the philosophy of the course! Tomorrow morning, I expect to be doing the last few things on the course, in an Arrow with nice new tyres.

FFF
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[Tinstaafl]

A forced landing (erm...... crash) with the gear down gives additional structure between you & terra firma to absorb & dissipate the energy. Something to consider.


FF, I agree with your thoughts about their navigation technique. I'll stick with using what's available, when it's available - especially in remote/featureless places. And what about all the other nav. techniques? Deliberate track error and funnel, line, boundary & lead-in features, track crawling (yes, it can be appropriate) etc etc? Mandating 1/4, 1/2 & 3/4 ONLY checks forces a navigational error to persist that could have been corrected sooner. It also relies on there being a feature at exactly those points. What if you want to regain track at a particular place? Or have an airspace avoidance issue that requires the deviation to corrected immediately?

Hmmm......How would you recognise that this was the case if you're only allowed to consult your chart 2 mins prior to the 1/4, 1/2 & 3/4 points? Oh, that's what the self drawn mud-map is about. How stupid. There's already a much better drawing available. It's called a 'chart'.

[Flying Farmer]

Great stuff FFF,brings back a few memories,
Not that it's a lot of use with a HSI but use 4T's ie: turn, time, talk, twist(align DI).
Here's to a first time pass, have fun and enjoy the checkflight.

Flying F

[mad_jock]

I am pretty sure that keygrip was actually the inventor of the original hi viz jacket airside.

Nothing like sitting in a bar, outside in the middle of winter.

Keep it up FFF

MJ

[FlyingForFun]

@ MJ!!!

Day 15 - Monday 24 November

Arrived this morning to find the Arrow back on the line, with two new tyres. (And four new brake pads, too!)

Just one flight today, but it was a much longer flight than normal. The aim was to finish everything on the syllabus which we still needed to do, and I think we were pretty successful. But for me, the best bit was that I have finally completed a navigation exercise which I was happy with!

The navigation was to yet another private strip - this time it was Lykes Brighton, just to the west of Lake Okeechobee. I did my gross error check, set my heading, got a traffic advisory service from Miami Centre, ran through all the other checks I needed to run through, and waited for the 1/4-way point to arrive. Part of the route was parallel to a road, so I could see we were roughly on track. The 1/4-way point was adjacent to a corner in the canal system, and sure enough the corner was just off my left wingtip exactly on time. It seemed a little closer than I expeted, so I made some small heading corrections. We passed a large mound a little before the half-way point slightly early, and since there was no way of identifying the half-way point I used this mound to adjust my ETA slightly. I cancelled the radar service when we reached Miami's radio blackspot (the one I discovered a couple of weeks ago), and called up Okeechobee to let them know I'd be overflying their airfield. Okeechobee appeared exactly where it was supposed to, and then there weren't very many more features, except for some canals, until the destination. The vis was good enough to be able to see the canal all the way into the distance, and spot a junction which was roughly abeam my destination, so I had plenty of time to find the strip - but I still didn't see it. But I had positively identified two roads and a canal, so when the stopwatch said that we were there I knew we were in the right place. I circled twice, and then saw the grass strip - my first VFR navigation using this technique which has gone exactly according to plan!

The diversion was interesting. My passenger wanted to go to another private airfield to the east of Lake Okeechobee. The direct route would take us right over the lake - something I wasn't going to do without survival equipment. (The locals here don't like flying over the lake even when they have life-jackets and so on. The chances of becoming crocodile-dinner if the engine quits are a little too high!) So it would have to be a two-leg diversion, first of all to the northern corner of the lake, and then turning en-route.

I put the foggles on and did the necessary checks. My first position fix showed me being slightly right of track, which I corrected for, and my second position fix showed me being back on track, so I took half of the correction out. I had set the second OBS to the radial at which I would need to turn. I got another position fix, which showed me being a couple of miles from my turning point... but both the stopwatch and the OBS told me I was there already. Two against one - I figured that the position fix was wrong, since both the stopwatch and the OBS were contradicting it. I turned onto the second leg, got several more position fixes, and "popped out of the cloud" with the airifled about a mile in front of me, just off to the right of the nose!

I later asked my instructor why my position fix appeared wrong. He told me that it wasn't wrong - but that it took me a minute to plot it, and in that minutes we'd travelled two miles. In future, when I plot a position fix, I must say to my passenger (as well as myself) that "this is where we were a minute ago" (or two minutes ago, or whatever), rather than "this is where we are". And that really was the only thing wrong with the whole navigation. I am extremely happy about that - I just hope it goes this well on the test!

We still hadn't done any stalls in the Arrow, so that was the next thing on the agenda. The clean stall was very easy - the standard technique, with the standard recovery - the only difference being to remember to fine the prop below 100kts. The other two (incipient) stalls were a little bit tricky. Not the stalls themselves - entering the incipient stall and recovering from it are standard, and not difficult. But the procedure for entering the stall is a little more complex than on the Cessna, since you have to integrate the lowering of the gear and flaps, and the fining of the prop, into the lookout and the stall entry. There really isn't anything hard here, it's just a case of remembering which levers to pull, how far to pull them, and in what order. After two or three goes they were acceptable - not perfect, but with a bit of thought put into it away from the aeroplane they will be fine.

The rest of the lesson was a recap of things like steep turns, just to make sure I'm happy with all the general handling. And then I had an engine fire.

I quickly pitched for 80kts, nearly but not quite forgot to coarsen the prop, and shut the engine down. The fire hadn't gone out, so I entered an emergency descent. During the emergency descent, one large green field to the north stood out as an emergency landing sight, so after the fire went out and I'd set up Vg and re-coarsened the prop, I planned the approach to that field. I was too low to make the high-key point, but if I flew straight across the field I should reach the low-key point at around 1500'. That worked out pretty well, and I turned downwind and then base. I had turned base too early - I knew it, and my instructor knew it. I had the option of S-turns, flaps and gear to get the Arrow down... but the field I had picked was right in the middle of the green bit, so the easiest thing to do was to re-plan, and head for the next field instead. I overflew the edge of the field at exactly the right height to flare for a wheels-down forced landing (wheels down to help get me down quicker, and also because the field was long enough that I wasn't worried about going off the end), and then went around. During the de-brief, my instructor told me what I already - that my choice of field was what made the PFL easy, because I've finally learnt to fly towards the biggest greenest area I can see! This is the first time that I've chosen the field that he had in mind when he pulled the power on me.

We headed back for a couple of circuits, which were ok but not fantastic. On the last one, we were downwind for runway 9, when my instructor contacted ATC and asked for a short approach (i.e. glide approach) to runway 14. We were given permission to do that, cutting in front of the traffic on base for runway 9. I had one of those incidents where you hear what you expect to hear, rather than what is actually said, and when my instructor cut the power I began to position for the threshold of runway 9. Oops! Once my instructor realised what I was doing, and pointed out my mistake, I repositioned (and my instructor very kindly gave me a short burst of power, since I had been planning the descent for the wrong place!) and landed safely on 14. But there were two lessons. Number one - if the instructor or examiner asks ATC for something, listen to what he's saying! And number two - if you're downwind for runway 9, and you have a real engine failure, you're not commited to runway 9 - runway 14 may be the better option!

I felt pretty good about today's flight. I don't feel ready for the test, but I feel good. My instructor disagrees, though - he thinks I'm ready. Tomorrow morning, I'm doing the practice test. Keygrip will be my examiner for the real test (so I'll remember to bring my sunglasses!) and he's free to do that either on Wednesday, or, if I need to brush up on anything after the practice test, the real test will be on Thursday. That's weather-permitting, of course - there's a little bit of weather forecast for Wednesday - it looks like it won't be bad enough to cause me any trouble, but I'm still keeping my fingers crossed!

FFF
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[Keygrip]

...and he won't be a happy bunny if you call it "Runway 9".

Idle American-speak barsteward. JAA test = Runway 09. Three weeks in Florida and Cap413 is out of the window. Sigh.

PS - the MIA blackspot isn't there if you go over 3,000 feet amsl. - and then you don't need to talk to the mutants at Okeechobee (because you'll be way above their [by JAA definition] ATZ that would be....... what - with runways that length....2nm radius and 2,000 feet agl [because they have an R/T frequency]).

MJ - is there no end to this abuse?? Will have to trawl the wardrobe for something extra colourful. Watch for Wednesday's post from FFF - hope he does it BEFORE the hitting the hotel bar. Thursday's post will likely be slurred.

S'funny - shiny shoes, black trousers, white shirt, black tie and four silly gold bars when I test for Oxford. Pile on the intimidation.

[Tinstaafl]

FFF, my 3 word plan to choosing forced landing fields:


BIG... the biggest one(s) in range

OPEN... Emptier the better

FLAT... If you can see a slope on it you're pretty much going to have to land uphill. If gullies then parallel to the gullies.

[FlyingForFun]

Ok - runway 09 it is then. Now, if you'll excuse me, I left my flashlight in the trunk of my car. And I may as well as well open the hood and check the oil, and put in some gas, while I'm there....

Day 16 - Tuesday 25 November

My "passenger" for my practice test today was a photographer, working for The Sun (aka one of the school's managers). He'd heard that Fergie was sun-bathing topless on the runway at Tailwinds, which is a private airfield a few miles north of West Palm Beach, and he wanted me to take him there.

The flight to Tailwinds is fairly short, so I planned it with just a half-way point, no 1/4-way points. Today, I had to do more than just produce a plog. I had to produce a folder which contained all of the documentation for the flight - the plog, weather and Notam information, copies of my license and the aircraft's insurance documents, weight+balance and performance calculations, and so on. Most of this is just a photo-copy of a master copy which EFT keep for that purpose, but obviously the weather, perforance, route and so on will be specific to the flight.

After take-off, we set heading for Tailwinds. At the half-way point I made a small heading and ETA correction. Shortly after that, my passenger told me that he'd just received a phone-call - Fergie is not at Tailwinds any more, but she's been spotted at Okeechobee, so he'd like me to take him there instead.

This was a change from the previous diversions I've had. Until now, I've had to plan the diversion whilst completing the flight to the original destination. But today, we didn't need to carry on to Tailwinds - we just had to head directly for Okeechobee. I chose a nearby road junction as a set heading point, and began planning. Once the planning was done, I manoevred (not very elegantly, it has to be said!) to overhead the junction, and turned in roughly the right direction. Then I looked at the instrument panel to check the heading... but wait, something's not right. Why has the AI toppled??? I checked the vacuum guage, it was reading zero. I checked the annunciator lights, and the vacuum light was on.

I quickly scanned the entire aircraft to see what my instructor had done to disable the vacuum pump. But he hadn't done anything - we had experienced a genuine vacuum failure.

The attitude indicator was now useless, so we covered it up. The RMI and HSI are vacuum-driven, too, but they are electrically slaved off of the flux detectors in the wingtip. Given time, they will find the correct heading automatically - the gyro is only there to keep them reading correctly during a turn. So I was still able to use them, but only with extra caution, especially during turns.

I started heading for Okeechobee, and got some way before inadvertantly entering IMC. I was wondering if my instructor would do this to me, given the vacuum failure - but he did, and I had to work with it. I ran through all the standard checks, and continued the flight under the foggles, partial panel. I got several fixes, made appropriate heading corrections, and when I took the foggles off I could see Okeechobee a few miles ahead of me.

So far so good! We moved on to an engine fire (I forgot to check the heater/defroster was off, but it was ok apart from that), and then stalls, steep turns, unusual attitudes, VOR tracking and so on. Then I had another engine fire. This time, after running through the checks, my instructor started coughing, as if he was breathing in thick smoke! I got the hint then - once again I'd forgotten the heater/defroster. But he'd made his point, and I recovered from the emergency descent without having to do the PFL.

We headed home, and did a normal and a flapless landing, before taking the Arrow to maintenance to have the vacuum pump fixed.

During the de-brief, the instructor only had very minor points to make. His main comment was that he could see that I was in charge, which is exactly what he wanted to see. I only let my captaincy slip once, he said, and that was on the steep descending turns. He asked me to reduce the power to idle, set up a glide descent, and then turn at 30 degrees of bank. So I did exactly what he said. But he didn't say it needed to be done immediately - as captain, he wanted me to clear the area ahead and below me first by making a couple of small turns. Other than that, I did everything at my own speed, and did everything pretty much correctly.

I think I'm ready for the test tomorrow. It still seems only a very short while ago that I was really struggling. But today's flight, although not perfect, was very close. The vacuum pump should be fixed by tomorrow, and hopefully, as long as the weather holds out just a little longer (there's some crap to the north-west right now that I'm hoping doesn't come this way) tomorrow will also be the day that I peak.

FFF
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PS - In case anyone else was wondering what I did on my day off, I'll tell you that this afternoon, after the practice check-ride, I went to finish what I'd started. And, as of this afternoon, I now have an Airplane (sic) Single Engine Sea class rating on my FAA PPL

[fonawah]

Fingers crossed for tomorrow FFF! Lets hope the bad wx stays away!
Good luck and many thanks for your CPL diary. This has been a fantastic read. Well done
Fonawah

[strafer]

Good luck for your test (today?) FFF. You better do your IR soon so that we've got something else to read

[pa28biggles]

FFF,
I think this thread is absolutely brilliant! We all make mistakes sometimes - its all part of the learning curve, and you've been down to earth enough to tell us all that. I think sometimes I beat myself up too much when I do something wrong!

[Tinstaafl]

Good luck for tomorrow!

[NinjaBill]

I guess youre test will be starting about now.... so best of luck.

This is definately one of the more interesting threads, so i'm awaiting the FFF does IR with baited breath.

One question though, if you knew what you now know, before you started, what would you do differently in your preparation for this course?

NB

[FlyingForFun]

I PASSED!!!

Thanks to everyone who has either posted here or sent me PMs to wish me luck, or to say that this diary has been helpful. Although I've tried to answer all the questions, I haven't been able to reply to every message - but I did appreciate every single one of them.

A full report of the flight test will appear here within the next couple of days. Right now, though, I'm going to get drunk!

FFF
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[Tinstaafl]

Well done!!!


Now you can go back to using the most appropriate nav. technique for the circumstances...

[My names Turkish]

Flying for Fun, Perhaps a name change is in order now? May I make a suggestion "Flying For Cash"? And Personal title "Why do it if its not for a wheelbarrow load of dosh"

[QNH 1013]

Congratulations !! Well done, and thank you for finding the time during your course to give us such interesting (and useful) feedback. I'm also interested in what you would do differently in your preparation with hindsight; I start my course in two months time.
I look forward to hearing about the test, post-celebration.