Dual Long Cross Country

I was hoping for some solo circuits Today. But instructor suggested that I should plan long cross country anyway - and see what we could do once I'm at the airfield.
So I went ahead and did that. Phoned up Enniskillen and Aldergrove (in that order, just in case) - and everything was fine. In the end, I decided to go ahead with the cross country - after all, it means progress !

We took off 04, right hand. Departed circuit to the south via Comber. Belfast Approach were rather quiet, and we got the requested zone transit to Aldergrove to land. I got the zone transit (yay), and they were nice enough to pass my details over to Aldergrove.

Instructor in the mean time went on to tell me how to lean the mixture - to save up a bit of fuel. Not that I pay for the fuel, the hourly fee is the same regardless of how much fuel I use. But more fuel means more safety up in the air, and more options. That's priceless.

Once closer to Aldergrove, I tuned in to the ATIS. Apparently they are happy for people coming over in small aircraft without the 'information', but I wanted to be professional here.

Aldergrove told me that I'm the number 2 to land - runway 25. The approach and landing were rather uneventful. Big deal for me - second landing away from Newtownards. Papi showed were were a bit low, but we were on stable path - instructor seconded.

The Aldergrove Tower voice was very fast and rather hard to understand, but I managed somehow with help of the instructor to repeat the instructions. Names of the taxi ways were very hard to read on the airport chart, especially since I had to shrink it down to fit on a single page. Lesson learned.

Parked at the GA apron, and went to settle the landing fee. Then back to the aircraft, and set on our way to Enniskillen. We were both a bit hungry and Enniskillen has a little cafe on site, where we could have some lunch.

Next leg was suppose to be long (27 minutes, afair) - and rather dull in terms of features.

Once I got started up, pen ready - first contact with the ground is usually where you get loads of info. But I was just told to just taxy to A1 hold. On our way there, we observed Easy Jet landing, with a nice landing - bit of a smoke from tyres. But I'm guessing for such a large airplane its normal.

I did my power checks, and then said 'holding short A1 runway 25, ready for departure'.
This is where we got a mouthful to repeat, but not as much as I thought. 'Lineup 25, after departure turn north west, not above 2000 ft'.

Once up in the air, approach told us about aircraft that was over head us, but we couldn't see it. Once clear of it, I resumed the climb to 1500, towards Toome. That place is clearly visible, with distinguishable Lough edge, and bridge right over it.

Once over it, I reported it - where our service was reduced to Basic, and we set our way towards Enniskillen.

The leg to Enniskillen was rather uneventful. The views are stunning - quite a lot of windfarms, makes it bit confusing - but high ground and sparse towns - make for easy features.

When we were closer to Omagh - I noticed we were a bit off track, decided to correct it about 7+7 to the left. We were already past the half way point, but by not much - so I thought this will work too. And it did !.
I think this was because of DI alignment earlier on. I'm sure mistake was my own, plus a bit of a wind from rain and such maybe. On this leg we had few clouds here and there, and some rain in the area. Luckily our path was rather clear.

Closer to Enniskillen and in sight of the Lough - I started looking for the airfield. Which as it turned out was right over the nose - one place over which the visibility is rather poor ;). Also, the airfield is perpendicular to the path - covered by trees and such. Hard to spot. If I couldn't spot it on my own I'd climb to 2000ft and join overhead. Safety and such !

The runway 33 was active. I looked around, and we joined cross wind for 33, with a heli taking off underneath us - but clearance was sufficient and I made a call to let him know that I'm overhead and can see him. The circuit takes you over some really nice scenery, so this and the unfamiliarity with the airfield made me want to extend the circuit a bit.

The approach is over some higher ground - with a church on the left hand side. I decided to take a bit of an S turn around that church and the hill - to keep it on the safe side. Again, the runway was huge - and landing was rather nice. At least as far as student standards are concerned.

We decided to go for some lunch first, before settling the landing fee. Lunch was pretty good. Not often do you get a chance to talk to the instructor about things other then your upcoming lesson, or things you just did wrong :-) I settled the bill, to pay for all the problems I caused ever before to this particular Instructor.

Landing fee at the Enniskillen is half of that at Aldergrove, with a cafe - it makes a very nice place to go for a bimble.

Next, the longest leg yet - and one that takes us home. Again, rather uneventful - once past Dromore, we were passed over to Belfast Approach, again not much happening there. Closer to Ballynahinch we decided to dive down to 1400 ft, just to make sure we're not busting the zone - there's a small extension down to 1500ft over there.

Ballynahich was very clearly visible - so once overhead, I turned towards Comber - again, very nice visibility, uneventful leg. Comber, overhead join for 04 RH at Newtownards, and down - for what was the worse landing of the day. And that's at an airfield I know very well. I blamed it on a gust picking me up at the last minute - but we all know I could have done better. Nevertheless we got on the ground in one piece and without much drama.

Instructor did not have much to say about my flying, he said that I pretty much done everything by myself and apart from few things on the radio that he suggested - it was all good. One of these times where I don't fsck up anything. Amazing. Rare event.

2.5h of flying, rather huge bill to settle - but overall - I'm pretty pleased with myself here.

I actually felt pretty well, usually I'm very tired after an hour of a nav. But I think what helped here, was that the instructor let me do things myself, and didn't say much. If anything, he was very positive, and never took over from me.
It is stressful when instructor has to take over, or sits there - letting steam out of his ears - so to speak.
And trust me, when it comes to testing the boundaries - I practically have PHD in it .

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Circuits :-)

I was late. The instructor had called me whilst I was on my way. He was obviously unhappy about it. I was too. 30 minutes late. Didn't plan my nav upfront, another issue. Horrible stuff on my part.

Once I'm through the training, few instructors really should expect some expressions of gratitude for their patience. I am sometimes a massive pain in the arse. :-|

Whilst I was planning the long cross country nav, instructor started phoning up the destinations. Turned out there's an event of some sort at Enniskillen airfield. So no go.

Next on the plan is circuits. Day looked nice, I don't have enough solo circuits anyway in C172 to be sent solo for long QXC - so it made sense.

Went out, to prefly the aircraft. Sitting inside at the end, crash alarm sounded. Turned out, one of the arriving aircraft overshoot the runway. In the end everything was ok, nothing big - but it was nice to see the fire cover guys being scrambled very fast and arriving at the opposite end of the airfield in just over a minute. Impressive.

The runway for the day was 33, with approach over the sea wall. Haven't done that in a while, circuit wise. At least as far as I remember.

The circuit is pretty nice, takes you around Scrabo hill.

Rather uneventful (apart from some people using 22 instead of 33, and bitching about others on the radio..). First two normal, another two flapless. However instructor for some reason decided not to send me solo, even tho I haven't done so bad according to him. There was a changing cross wind - runway 33 is tricky as it is and the incident with someone overshooting the runway a bit.

All in all, rather short lesson - 0.8, circuits in C172.

Tomorrow more coming, hopefully I'll be let out of my leash - I need to do at least few circuits in C172 solo.

Gps trace, as always.

Nav theory exam passed

Le misurabile 76%, but that's a pass.
My brain is fried, and I feel mentally challenged afterwards.

To anyone who is going to approach this - pickup south of England chart - and have a good look. Because there's an airfield on an airfield in there. Quite a busy airspace.

First Nav in 172

Quite an odd day weather wise. Showers in vicinity, gusty strong wind changing direction every minute (at least on the ground).

I was also late, slept in. Blamed in my birthday, truth is - haven't had a party or nothing - just stayed up late night before. Folks at the club were suppose to go on a flyout, and I thought - chances are - there won't be any aircraft to fly in anyway, so I won't have to get up.

I was wrong.

Luckily the instructor was nice enough to accommodate me. We spent quite a bit of time talking about what to do - but in the end we settled on a nav. At some stage, radio navigation was also mentioned, and I stupidly said something like "I'ver heard its easy". But in the end we didn't do any of that. I guess the instructor thought I was busy enough as it is, without a position fix being thrown at me.

Comber->Rathfriland->Clough->Comber.

Did my preflight prematurely, before lunch. For some reason I thought instructor said 12:30 not 13:30, doh !

After lunch it rained briefly so we stayed in, and chatted about options even more. But we settled back on a nav that I already planned.

So off we went, take off from 22 - the climbout was interesting - I managed to stay next to the runway's centreline on climb out (could see the runway on the left) - but it was quite a workout. Once over 1000ft, and fair distance away from the Scrabo Hill - the air was far more stable. Still, bumpy as hell. And wind was very strong indeed.

Switched over to Belfast Approach, and gave them the usual call.

Time, turn, and all that done. It was nice to be able to use a DI Bug on 172. Tecnam's one doesn't have it. Bummer - it makes things easier.

First freeda was ok. But looking around on the map and outside - I noticed my altitude keeping wasn't great. Blame it on the weather, but also plenty of bad habits on my side. I really need to concentrate on this bit more.

Once we were away from the D Class Belfast City airspace stub (we were flying undeneeth, below 1500ft) - I climbed up to 2000ft. But that didn't last long, I think I was up and down between 1700 and 2100. Obvious fail on a test, but this was me looking out the window. Had to be prompted few times to keep my heading too. Funny thing, this was all because I looked outside a lot. And on the chart few times. ! doh !

I managed to find Rathfriland fine, altho it didn't pop up Today as much as it did previous times. Perhaps it was to do with me being up at 2000ft not usual 1500. Dunno. Maybe the murky day did that. Need to fly at 2000ft or higher bit more, and get used to the different picture. So far the impression is - everything is so effin green ! Dunno what the environmentalists are all about - they need to get up some more !

Turned towards Clough - and made a position call, even tho controller didn't ask. The instructor then told me, he will throw a diversion at me. Closer to the Clough I was told to divert us to Ballywalter, I asked where is it - and drew a line to it. Instructor helped me with some mental calculations, giving me some options - and it was obvious to me that not having wind arrow on the chart was a mistake.

I was also shown how to keep the aircraft straight using just rudder pedals. For some reason this felt much safer in C172 then it did in Tecnam.

Once over Clough (which is easily identifiable from the air - because there's some weird steel shiny statue in the middle of it's main round about) - I turned towards Ballwalter - and in a minute or so it was obvious my wind calculations were rubbish. So correction 10 deg to left, and off we went.

Funny thing is, I checked 214 before leaving - 260/25, local Metars were saying 260/15, and so was SkyDemon. However the wind turned out to be even stronger then 214 have said. I was under impression that 214 is suppose to be the worse source of wind information, but in the ballpark. Oh well..

Ballywalters appeared very nicely in front of us, so I was given a quick debrief about number of screw ups on the way - such as maintaining altitude and what I did wrong with the diversion. I need to practice doing that mental calculation on the ground first - even more then I did in the past, and perhaps using one of these diversion spreadsheets I was given by one of my instructors.

Switched back to Newtownards, and was told to join overhead for 22.

The OHJ was ok, for once - but it started to be very busy on finals. Thermals over Ards and the Scrabo Hill make it interesting. At some stage instructor just said 'Let me know if its too much and you want me to take over'. I was obviously struggling with the approach.

But I decided to carry on - I knew instructor would take over if I did something stupid. Keeping the speed was very hard, gust and cross wind. I ended up bit lowish, with still a trickle of power when I attempted to flare. Took the power off, but we ballooned a bit, and landed on the left wheel first. Cross wind landing with a balloon - not recommended, but that's what happens when you got too much energy on flare. It was then that I realised that I actually preferred the stick over yoke. Just a thought.

There was another aircraft on finals behind us, so I exited nicely via triangle, and once he landed, checked the finals for anything - and assuring there's nobody there - taxied back to the apron.

The instructor asked me actually during landing, if I wanted to do few more circuits - but I had enough. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to do some challenging circuits and landings, and wasn't even close to exhaustion that I encountered at the end of few flights in the past - but I wanted to stay out of that if possible. He also asked me if I'd be happy to do some solo Today, of course with a tad of sarcasm.

Well, to be fair - if I had to land in conditions like these - I probably would, but the safety margin was very low there. It's one thing to do it by myself, but with instructor sitting by with his hands folded, and another thing to be by myself without any backup to fall onto if something goes wrong.

At least as far as I can remember, I've never done a nav in 172. Done one in 152 once before, and then it was Tecnam.

So this was one of these firsts, where workload is huge - because of new things. Good. Keeps me on my toes !.

Also the landing conditions were interesting.
Good experience overall, and glad I did it.

I keep on booking for dual long cross country every weekend, but the weather doesn't want to play ball.
Booked it for next week again, but they moved the fly out.

So I won't do it either way it seems. If the weather is crap, or if it's good. Oh well, there's always time in December…

Instrument work and PFLs

The score so far: 

   Solo: 4.6   (0.0)

   Dual: 60.9 (1.8)

Another day, another lesson. Or actually two :-) 

First slot of the day - we went out and did some additional instrument flying. The requirement is to do 1.0h and I've done only 0.5 so far. 

The instructor thrown at me all sorts of things, plus we got a chance to fly into a real cloud - to feel a difference. Could be better but with 0.5h experience flying under the hood - its hard to do better :-) Also different aircraft then last time. Same experiences tho - Trust the instruments - not what you 'feel'. 

Following the instrument flying - which I actually find very interesting and fun - it was time to do some PFLs. 

I pretty much did all of them wrong - not accounting for the wind (or rather  for wind from correct direction). It seems that the best way to get idea of the wind - is to idle out and look out of the window. C172 gets blown by the wind like a steel feather.

Once I messed up two PFLs, we got back to the airfield - where I reported my position incorrectly (reported I was over Maghee island, instead of Mount Steward). Doh ! 

With a bit of a rain getting close - and wind, I had a go at OHJ, and PFL. Ended up waaaay to high. So go around and second attempt was much better. I felt I was way too low, but instructor told me to keep going. We ended up landing dead on actually, but I feel in a real emergency - there would be much more drag, and I'd have to aim for fields or bay - instead of the field. Basically we ended up bit far away from airfield following my go around, and I did a very shallow turn to base/finals.

Second slot - the only aircraft available was a C172 with G1000 (glass cockpit). I flew it only once before, ages ago. As always, the issue is - how do you go through the checklist without knowing where things are. But no bother, that's what instructors are for !. Ask instructor millions of simple questions, such as - "Where's the ball", and things are clearer :-) 

This time we did few more PFLs, they went much much better. Turns out, somehow in my mind I was picturing the circuit over field in the wrong direction (doh !). Once sorted, things were much better. 

Back at the airfield we did one landing in a cross wind. Not perfect, but we ended up in one piece. After that, instructor asked me to take off, join base for runway 26. A runway that is seldom used for landings, and g/a are not possible (high ground behind the field, scrabo hill). Having to nail the approach (speed!) and landing, I was concentrating much harder. G1000 displays speed differently from analogue gauge (cpt. obvious), so getting used to that was bit tricky - not sure I prefere 'steam' over glass at this point, but it's just different. Needless to say, landing and approach were as good as I could make them. 

Once back at the club, I was asked to book next slot for dual long cross country - so we're back to the same point I was in before CM's accident. Only few hundred quid later…

I might need to cancel few lessons in the future tho - as I might be moving places, perhaps even doing next contract in England. This is going to get interesting :-|

The score so far: 

   Solo: 4.6

   Dual: 60.9

More Circuits and First solo in C172

More Circuits and First solo in C172

During briefing, we discussed different types of circuits in C172, flap-less, glide, go-around, powerplant failure after take off, etc. 

Did my preflight nicely, very confident about things I should be looking for. This is mainly due to the fact, that I asked my instructor day before to do one with me - instead of just going on bravely on my own and spending 30 minutes looking for everything. 

The airfield seemed busy in the morning, but most people just departed away - so for first few circuits - we were the only aircraft in the circuit. 

First circuit was uneventful, on the climb-out from the second, instructor pulled the power on me - and walked me through the procedure as I was doing it myself. The only criticism there was the bank angle, I should keep it to really minimal if engine did indeed quit on me, and land straight ahead. 

Next few circuits were flap-less, with more or less success. The wind was strong 100ft+ above the runway, with virtually no wind on the ground, which made for tricky landings - as close to the ground indicated speed would all of the sudden drop below required. Also C172 doesn't seem to be so bad in terms of gliding abilities (albeit with milling prop and no flaps to drag us down). Few go arounds, thrown in for practice - when we were too high. 

Another thing dully noted, on touch-and-go, it is necessary to wait for flaps to go up all the way. Otherwise, there's bit of a asymmetric tendency there in controls, and aircraft starts to lift off too early. 

At the end of the last circuit, instructor asked me if I'd be happy to do one solo - the answer was obvious :-) 

I felt ok, this time I was ahead of the aircraft most the times. So decided to give it a go. "It will give you a bit of a confidence boost too!" - well, that's a good remark :-) 

Since my balance on the account is down to 0 now, every bit of confidence boost helps. 

I had to wait a bit to get airborne, quite few aircraft backtracking, on finals, or wanting to go up again in front of me. 

But once sorted, off we went. Going solo, one thing I noticed even more - is that I have this habit from flying Tecnams to use rudder at the same time I use aerlierons. 

That doesn't work in C172. The committee behind yoke has to make the decision to turn first, and then you gradually have to add more rudder into the turn. I'll get that with practice. 

Landing was rather nice. I did watch my speed, made small changes, and waited for aircraft to settle before trimming or doing any further adjustments. Of course that's much different from Tecnam which basically does what you told it to - straight away. 

Landing was pretty nice, I was too slow closer to the ground - but that was down to the same issue with the wind I noticed before. 

One thing I registered and learned Today - is that you have to resist the temptation to push the nose down when you're already too fast, and you think you're too high. 

Turns out, actually sorting out the speed (yoke aft) will actually sort out the height too - and get you down nicely. 

All in all, very enjoyable 1.2h (out of which 0.3 were solo, mostly due to the wait on the apron). 

This went quicker then I thought. I was given this sort of a Hobson's choice by CFI Yesterday - thinking it will take me another 5-6h before I go solo. But there you go, I was wrong. Of course there's still bit work to be done before I can do my QXC, but maybe not as much as I thought. 

One happy, albeit completely broke, Greg. 

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.