Michael’s Flight Training Diary

Flown today: 1.0

Polish circuits. Must do pre-takeoff checks in exactly the order specified in the book.

Crosswind takeoff: into-wind aileron, then on reaching rotate speed, neutralise aileron before lifting off. Go straight to climb attitude, don’t level out too much to “gain speed”. Alter heading into the crosswind to maintain a straight track. For a 01 circuit, turn immediately after passing the chimney.

Normal approaches are generally good. For flapless approach, keep speed 5kts higher on approach and fly a shallower approach, using PAPIs if available, to ensure you’re not too high on short final. For glide approach, fly circuit pattern remaining at circuit height until sure the middle of the runway can be made, then ask the instructor to cut the throttle and adjust speed. Once established in the descent and certain it can be made, add flaps as required.

Failing to flare properly on landing. Once the flare has started, continue pulling back until flying level, by which time there should be no power on. Look to the end of the runway, judge the height changes in peripheral vision, and for each bit of height loss, pull back further until gentle touchdown is achieved.

For the crosswind, resist the temptation to apply out-of-wind aileron to straighten the aircraft, or bring it back to the centreline since it’s probably drifted upwind during the flare due to windshear. Any movements to bring it downwind must be achieved using rudder, so that a constant into-wind aileron can be held.

Here is a pictorial guide to the new Bendix-King AV8OR. It’s very simple to use - the entire user interface is via the touch screen. It’s parked on my living room table, the GPS antenna can see the window. Let’s see what we can see.

This

Oh look. My house is just inside Brize Zone.

 

Touch the screen, and the soft buttons appear. 

If you touch the map, it goes into “pointer mode”: a pointer appears, and if the pointer is on anything of significance, it tells you what it is and pops up a “More info” button. Press the “More info” button…

It’s an airport, too much info for one page: let’s see the next page:

OK, clear the airport info. What does it say about Brize Zone?

More info…

What’s that obstacle?

More info…

Oh look, a MATZ.

More info…

Weston-on-the-Green Danger Area:

There’s a city:

There’s more info even about that:

Right, let’s go and make a flight plan. Go into Flight Plan mode, select “New FP”, and add my home airport:

Now, let’s track down a random tiny village in rural Herefordshire. Start typing, and it auto-completes:

Let’s check the details:

OK, let’s go there! OK it to add to the flight plan…

Switch from data view to map view:

Oh, that town to the north must be Hereford. Let’s go there: touch the map, goes into pointer mode…

That’s right. Add it to the flight plan as a waypoint:

Let’s look at the data. The data fields in the table are customisable, and there’s a large selection of fields that can be chosen from.

OK, let’s end the flight at Shobdon. Select the end of the FP and hit “Insert”, and start to type the destination:

A number of items match Shobdon - yes, it’s the “airport” I want.

Let’s check the data, press “More info”:

OK, there’s the data. 71.3nm, and it’ll take 45 minutes at the airspeed configured in the main settings.

Save the flight plan, and it’s ready to fly alongside my other plans…

Now, I haven’t yet taken my new toy for a cross-country sortie, but there’s a “Demo Mode” that demonstrates what it’s like in-flight:

Right, I understand that I’m not flying just north of Plymouth.

Turn on the Vertical Profile view, and it shows the terrain and airspace ahead on the current track. There’s a particularly good illustration of it in the final picture further below.

You can toggle the map into relative terrain height mode:

Or turn the terrain off completely.

The data fields on the left side are customisable from a huge range, and there’s actually nine of them active at once, of which four are visible. They’re arranged as a nine-high vertical ribbon, and to view the others, just run your finger up or down to move the selection.

You can zoom in. Oh look, there’s a VRP:

Zoom out…

I left the demo running for an hour or so and forgot about it. Oh look, I’m just approaching north Wales, and the terrain and airspace ahead is looking much more interesting, even though the main map view is zoomed too far out for airspace boundaries to be displayed. (Ignore the white blob, it’s the reflection of a light). Looks like I’m going to have to climb to avoid some high ground ahead, whilst simultaneously descending to avoid airspace. Hmm, time to consider my options…

Flown today: 2h 15m

Total time to date:  59h 10m

Today, I passed my skills test. With the QXC and RT Practical under my belt, that’s it - I’m going to get my PPL.

Life has made it somewhat difficult to keep the blog up to date over the last couple of months. I’ve been writing brief notes after each revision lesson to capture the learning points, but I didn’t turn them into prose. Well, to hell with it - I’ll put them all live now, and go back and prosify them when I get round to it in the near future.

It was a beautiful day this morning, quite unexpected given the previous weather forecasts, and the flight over the Wiltshire Downs was quite spectacular. It’s so exciting, thinking what I’ll soon be able to do with my PPL. So many places I want to visit with Laura, my girlfriend: Herefordshire, the Brecon Beacons, Caernafon, Land’s End, northern England on a trip to Carlisle, western Scotland… they’re all waiting for us.

The immediate future? Finish this glass of champagne. Ponder which GPS I’m going to buy - currently contemplating the new Bendix-King AV8OR. Book a session of circuits to keep my hand in while I wait for my license to come from the CAA. Plan the route of my first flight under my inbound license - down over Oxford, along the Ridgeway to Devizes, up and across the Severn Estuary, up Hereford past my mum’s house, to Shobdon - sounds like a plan. Laura suggests I should re-read The Killing Zone, which seems sensible. Practice some PFLs, which are possibly my weakest point.

So many things to do.