My Trial Instruction Flight: Impressions
 

I've been toying with the idea of pursuing a career as a pilot (like many), and today I completed my Trial Instruction Flight (TIF) at the local airport in a Cessna 150 Aerobat.

It was a typical calm, clear skies winter morning here in Queensland Australia, so it was a smooth flight and landing. I got the feel for controlling the aircraft with a couple of turns, climbs and descents. I also got to practice maintaining level flight whilst idling the throttle and then bringing it back up, countering the slipstream with the rudder.

All in all, it was a great experience, but there was a couple of things I wasn't too sure about:

- I was first flight of the day, and when we got out to the aircraft we jumped straight in and didn't check the exterior of the plane or do a fuel check. I asked if its usual practice to do this and he said that he'd done it earlier that morning.

- When we landed, the C150 AB had a notcieable amount of shudder in the nose-wheel, and the pilot said that he had to pull back on the stick a bit to take some of the weight off the nose-wheel until we had slowed down.

I'm not sure if these things are pretty normal or not. The instructor was excellent, informative, personable and handled the aircraft flawlessly (to my untrained eye).

I'm pretty sure I am going to pursue the CPL (commercial pilot licence), but am in two minds as to where to do it. I live in a small town, and the Aero-Club that conducted the TIF with me cannot offer all the ratings that I require to be employable Eg: Instructor Rating.

Is it a bad idea to do my PPL with the local club and then move to a city that offers all the ratings and CPL I need?

Going to the city will get me a better price on my training, and maybe a better training quality overall, as well as being able to train from go-to-woah with the one school.

There are some schools in Australia that offer a TAFE (tertiary education below a degree level) course in "Transport and Distribution Systems" along with the CPL, is this worth the effort, or an un-necessary expense?

Thanks for any comments and replies,
Jazz

Can't comment on where to get your licence's/ratings, I'm just about to sit my PPL test as well so I'm not a great fountain of knowlege, but I can tell you that (a) at my school if the instructors know that they're going to have a fairly tight turn between a TIF and a student later they'll preflight the A/C before a TIF student arrives so that they can get away relatively quickly and (b) the shimmy is normal as well if you haven't yet slowed down enough - if it continued to be uncomforatble in the taxi I'd then be worried. ;D

Glad to hear you enjoyed your first flying lesson, and good luck, sounds like you've got some big decisions to make.

~ QF5

The Shimmy stopped as the aircraft slowed, so all was normal I guess. Thx :)

Also, we encountered some negative G's when doing some quick nose-down maneuvers. I can't say I was very used-to or comfortable with the negative G sensation. Is this normal, do you get used to that?

I loved the feeling of positve G's :)

lol, you love your positive G's now... wait till your first session of steep turns and see how comfortable you really are with them then ;D (jokes, I was uncomfortable for the first couple but you'll get to love it pretty quickly.)

I don't know what you mean by "quick, nose down manouvres", and someone else out here might have more of an idea about what an instruvtor might be doing in a TIF, but I can tell you that you're going to run into slight momentary negative G situations all through your flying. Even slight turbulence can cause negative G... and somedays it'll be pretty rough. Seat belts low and tight work wonders, and you'll get used to it all pretty quick.

(Older and Wiser: Correct me if I'm wrong, Again, Pre-PPL so not an expert by any means)

Most trial lesson students don't go on to further their flying and hence aren't really interested in the pre-flight inspection so the instructor would have done that first in order not to waste your time. Unless he knew (or you had asked) that you wanted to go through the check, then it was perfectly reasonable that he did it before you arrived, just as he would have checked the weather, NOTAMs, etc.

If this local school offers a fair price for training, is professional and you have confidence in them, then do your PPL there! It's only at the CPL stage (and subsequent) that employers do not want to see too many schools on a CV (and even then, that's debatable).

Cheers

Whirls