Navs, PFLS, and other fun stuff.

Navs, PFLS, and other fun stuff. 

For the past few months, I've been rather quiet. 

No point in reporting on one of millions of navs, trying to master the art of flying and navigating visually is initially challenging. 

Once instructors were happy with my progress, I was sent on a solo nav to Tandregee , Ballynahinch and back to Comber and Newtownards. 

For some reason, I was very nervous during the whole thing - hoping I won't get uncertain of my position. The day was a bit hazy, albeit not a cloud in the sky. 

Climbed off to Comber, and - despite everyone saying I won't get it, getting zone transit over Southern Belfast zone. I turned onto my first leg - towards Tandregee. Not even a minute went past, and controller asked me to track towards Lisburn and 'expedite' (meaning, give it all you got mate). 

I happily obliged. After all, when in the zone do what the controllers tell you to do. 

Reported south of Lisburn, at which stage controller asked me to resume navigation. Funny.. Lisburn was way off my track anyway, so all my calculations, and ETAs were out of the window. Did some mental calc, and decided to correct for Tandregee. 

Then I was asked to switch to Aldergrove, who were very very busy. By the time I could squeeze word in - I was already closer to portadown. One correction, and back on track again. 

When I got closer to Tandregee, I noticed some traffic below me - and silly as I am sometimes, requested from Aldergrove altitude change. To which he responded, 'you are in the uncontrolled airspace, change altitude at your own discretion' . Doh, I got so used to asking for altitude change… 

There's a microlight site close to my turning point, hence the traffic. I decided to go up to 2500 ft, to avoid any possible risk of running into those guys. Microlight drivers have a tendency to not use radio too much and I wasn't even close to their ATZ, so decided not to switch frequencies. 

I ended up bit north of my target, and had to do few orbits around to make sure this is indeed Tandregee. As I looked afterwards on the GPS track - it turns out I went a bit south and back north again, whilst trying to look around to confirm where Tandregee is. Also, even tho I've been there few times already - picture is far different when you're up 1000ft higher then usual. 

The return leg towards Ballynahinch was rather uneventful, bar maybe issues I always seem to have with wondering compass and DI getting misaligned a lot. In moments of doubt I'd use some local knowledge mixed with experience , i.e. knowing where I should see Mourne mountains. 

Landing straight in on long finals, 'no known traffic to effect', runway 04, and that's it. Solo nav done. 

This was then followed by few lessons on PFLs, which are much harder to grasp then I imagined. I mean, nothing's easy when it comes to flying - but the temptation to look ahead and flight straight into a field was very strong in this one.

Once that got sorted, I went and did the instrument flight with my instructor. It was a serious hard work really. Again, not something I expected. I spent quite a long time in my youth playing games, and I'm not so bad in the whole hand-visual coordination business. But it's completely different when your brain tells you something, your instrument tell you different thing, and then you are trying to ignore brain and go with instruments. 

The instructor was nice enough, to let me do more then just two 180 deg turns required on the skills test. It was pretty cool - taking off the 'hat' and being already on base leg :-) 

Next exciting item - low level nav. Basically - making sure you'd be able to find somewhere to land precautionary in case clouds got bit low. So that's exactly what we trained. First a nav at 600-700ft agl, following roads. I cocked up one of the roads, as some junctions are not depicted on charts. So I ended up following A road, which I thought was a B road - coming out of a town, towards another town. What was missing on the chart, was the fact that there's a junction, and the road I wanted to follow goes in slightly different direction. 

The temptation was to confirm visually what I saw with the chart - but things weren't just lining up. The forest was too small, the town was a village. Nah, wrong place. Looked around, and instructor confirmed that we're indeed south of my intended destination. Lesson learned. 

We then went over the loch, and did practice precautionary landings on a wee island in the middle of nowhere - in respect of rule 5. 

Going back over water far lower then usual was pretty cool too. 

Instructor then asked me to prepare for dual long cross country next. Which I did. Two cancellations, due to weather, and then an accident happened. One of the Tecnams had an engine failure on finals, and both Tecnams at the club got grounded. 

So now, picking up afterwards - I decided to switch over to C172. There's 3 of those in the club, and as far as I know - there never has been any engine failure in the air on any of the club aircraft. 

Scary thing is, the accident aircraft (G-UFCM) is the aircraft I did virtually all of my Tecnam solo flying in. It already had one engine failure previously (but on the ground). I'm eagerly awaiting the accident report (still probably quite few months away). 

I flew C172 few times in the past - but it was in my early stages, and I never had a chance to land it. 

So just to give me a bit of workout, first lesson was circuits. Since I had many hours already in C152, high wing was no stranger to me. But I forgot how massive the cockpit is, by comparison to Tecnam or C152 indeed. Took me also quite some time to find out all the knobs switches and cocks. As expected, things are different, bar the sixpack. 

We did 3 circuits, and called it a day. Instructor complimented on my landings, but I'm not sure I did so well. I felt I was behind the aircraft most times. It's totally different beast from Tecnams. Massive engine, climbs like a jet, outside pic is totally different. Hard work in the circuit, but all manageable.

Today I arrived to the club thinking that maybe I should go in Tecnam again (the other one got a green light), but instructors suggested I should stick to C172. This will cost me even more in hours (I'm already way past the required 35 dual), but I was hoping to switch to Cessna after the PPL anyway. 

We did some basic handing, I was asked to climb, descent, turn, all the usual stuff. Then we did few stalls, which was surprisingly unexciting. By comparison, Tecnam feels like a racing car when you throw anything at it. C172, is very slow to respond to some inputs, almost like if there was a committee behind it voting each time if aircraft should or shouldn't react to the input.  

Day was gusty, and the wind picked up towards the end. Flying the base leg, I could literally see the wind blowing us away from the airfield. On few occasions I had to use quite a bit of aerlieron to keep us level, and speed of reaction wasn't anywhere close to that of Tecnam. 

For the landing, instructor took over - as the wind was quite strong, and not always right down the runway. 

All in all, pretty nice day, and I'm starting to get some handle on C172. 

Because of the power, it needs trimmed far more often. And also trimming technique is much different. For instance, one must resist temptation to trim it in high power configuration, as the input force required afterwards - once power is reduced would be quite substantial. 

Next lesson tomorrow, some circuits. I hope I'll be able to go back on track, as soon as I get some solo circuits done. 

My current contract is coming to an end (waiting on, unlikely second extension on it). So my progress will also depend on me getting another contract in NI, or whether I'll have to move back to England. Will see :-) Move to England would certainly be nice but that would make me stop flying for next few months completely, until I settle down in a new place.