Friday 8 April 2011

RT practical passed

RT practical exam passed.

Some of the calls I did actually rather poorly, but still managed to get enough right to pass.
The examiner have said, that he heard me doing much better during earlier sessions.


Now only if I had enough cash to fly this month :/

Monday 4 April 2011

Lessons 31 and 32. More circuits


Lesson: 31 and 32


02,03/IV/2011

  • Lessons time: dual - 1.7h (0.9, 0.8) solo - 0.0.

  • Total time: 27.9h (1.1h solo)

  • Location: EGAD

  • Aircraft: G-BNKR (C152)



(And) Yet another two lessons in circuit.

Booked two lessons for the weekend. Both with Gavin. Its been a bit since I last flew with him.

Basically circuits were in order. He assured me that if I do well and gods of weather are cooperating I will be sent solo. To save you the time, I wasn't sent solo.

On Saturday my flying was terrible, to say the least. We did few circuits, and attempted to do few glide approaches, but there was always someone in the way (ie , in front of us, or one occasion

backtracking the active when I was about to land. Had to go around. ) . As always I blamed the winds, but as always I'm to blame. Devil's in the details, and I seem to notice a lot of those little things. Probably too many to handle.

On Saturday we seemed to have quite a thermal over the city (on finals). Which blew me up. Trying to correct it was a nightmare. Gavin wanted to see me going around once or twice, and also pulled the power on the climb out once to see what would I do. I think in general he was satisfied with my reaction to that.

One thing that set him aside (and makes few other instructors rather unhappy), is the fact that he likes to apply some safety measures that others don't seem to approve of. Namely, on climb out, level out at 500 ft, to check the blind spot - just a push and pull on the yoke really. Reasons being, that the circuit is a climb, and as in any climb you would do 500 ft checks, you need to do them in the circuit as well. Other relatively novel thing, which others don't teach - is to only set the 'drag' flap (30 deg in the G-BNKR) whilst being on very close final. This is due to the fact that you don't want that drag when over the city, in case your engine quits.

Now, I knew he likes that sort of circuit before, but never asked him about the reasons - thus I couldn't argue with other instructors about it. To be honest, I was very angry (mainly due to my poor performance) on Saturday, and started to wonder whether it is due to the instructor. But had a nice debrief with Gavin, where I basically lied down all my frustrations and observations, and he was very good at explaining reasons behind his way of things, and also promised me to talk to other instructors about it.

Sunday flying was much better, but meanwhile I had quite few expenses and instead of flying 4-5 lessons this month the Sunday one is probably going to be my last one (this month at least). We were promised a bonus at work, but it kind of didn't happened (yet). If it will, I'll most certainly spend it on the flying. Ever since I started this, I have no savings, and my finances are shattered. Doesn't help also that my gf is out of work. But anyway, enough ranting -  back to flying.

Sunday was way much better. Weather wasn't still good enough for me to go solo ( strong winds, as they do happen at this time of the year ) - but at least my circuits were much better. Unfortunately due to my own stupidity (dead battery in gps) - I have no gps track for Sunday. Basically I did few picture perfect circuits, apart from the approach. This time, there was no thermal over the city, so I was ending up too low. Started too add too much power, ended up too high, then turned it into the speed, etc, etc. But I started to get a feel of that too. Gavin wanted me to go around twice, and also we did this time two glide approaches. First one was dead on, on the second one he started to tell me about setting up the speed first - which blew me too far out, and I would in reality end up somewhere in bushes before the runway. Luckily the engine was running fine.

One nice thing about this weekend, my RT was dead on - apparently. This obviously isn't a miracle. I invested in an RT course. It pays off to do it. There's a guy next door (in the aero-heli) who's doing it, and he is brilliant. Not only very patient with my - frankly annoying - personality. But also very capable. It looks like I'm going to be able to pass my practical RT this month too.

That's indeed a boost for me, especially since its been a while since I've been solo. This is mostly due to the weather not being on my side. I feel like more I fly with instructor on board worse I get. I probably need to do few solo circuits to boost my confidence in flying, and move over to my Nav exercises. I'll most likely take about a month break (or perhaps even two) to repair my finances, in the mean time - doing the RT and perhaps the Nav theory too.



Saturday's GPS track:



  • Route: T/O RWY22 circuits, cross winds, wind-shears, and of course go arounds .

  • Milestones: hmm, none.

  • Exercises covered: circuits.

  • Weather: quite a gust, bit cloudy but clearing up.