Day 16 Monday 30th

I worked a nightshift on Sunday night finishing work at 6am, this gave me about 6hrs sleep before I had to depart for my 170A, I awoke to crap weather, the cloudbase was really low, there is no way I am flying today, so I resigned myself to this, I had better drive up to the airport anyway, so on the way up I was quite happy that I was not going to be flying today, I feel rather weary after the nightshift. Then looking to the West gaps started to appear in the cloud, oooo great, maybe I am going afterall, but it’s still crap, I arrive at the airport, the cloud is breaking all the while but still low, the guy doing my 170A has not come back from a flight yet, so I have to wait over an hour, when he finally arrives we come to the decision that it’s not good enough to fly, and that I should meet him tomorrow at 1:30pm and we’ll try again, the weather for Tues looks better than today.

Day 17 Tues 31st

Today I wake up and again find the cloudbase quite low, I check the METARs & TAFs on the PC and it says cloud is FEW 018 & BKN028, the wind is forecast to be blowing from 310 deg at 20kts gusting 30kts, this will put the wind outside the crosswind limits of the aircraft, again I made my way to the airport as I had to pay the test fee and maybe re-arrange the test if I do not do the 170A today.
I meet up with the instructor conducting the test and we basically agree we’re going to do it tomorrow (wed) so we have to put the actual test back till Thurs, this was done ok, and the weather is looking fantastic for the rest of the week so there is no getting away with it any longer, now my nails really are getting short LOL.
I took the opportunity to read the Flying Order Book which is our FTOs rules & regs, you maybe asked questions on this during the 170A and the test.

So here’s hoping for decent weather tomorrow, fingers crossed.

Dean

Ian

Great news for your pal, I’m really pleased for him, and thanks, hopefully it’ll be the same when BR & myself get in that position.

Darren, can you divulge what airline you work for? I assume you work in the recruitment sector or HR? PM me if you don’t want to divulge.

Day 14 Thursday 26th

Sorry for my lack of updates guys, had a real busy week flying last week and did not feel like writing the report, I just wanted to sleep.

Basically today was going to be circuits & Gen handing in the morning, and a Nav in the afternoon with a touch & go at Wolverhampton.
The weather looked awful this morning, there was no way we were going to fly, so I thought, the winds were 40kts at 2,000ft, with the cloud base varying between 800ft & 2000ft in rain, this is the kind of day you wish you could make a cuppa and sit and watch the other guys fly 😀 but not so, Mr CFI likes to push me to the limits, who am I to compain? he knows what he’s doing.
Anyway without boring you with the departure procedure, we were to do circuits first then some GH, well on climbout the CFI spotted a gap in the clouds, so we cancelled the circuits and went to the SW for GH, we did the obligatory stalls, which went well, I definately got the hang of these, and then steep turns, it was very gusty and bumpy, I found myself fighting the aircraft the whole time, the steep turns are ok, but I have a tendancy to loose 100ft in the left turn, and not in the right turn, I have no idea why, it just seems to happen, it must be perspective, generally you place part of the engine cowling on the horizon and keep it there, but I still seem to lose it in the left turn, no big deal for now.
PFLs were next, I set the heading bug first on the direction of the wind to help me orientate, we were just about at the bends in the River Severn just SW of Gloucester.
So, engine failure, marvellous, I “love” the PFLs (not), so 80kts reached, lower the nose, she glides like a brick so don’t pick a field too far away, anyway I can’t locate a field so I turn downwind and spot a field straight away, all I need to do is fly a circuit pattern, taking into consideration that the strong headwind on final will mean I need to be even closer in, “why” checks now prevail, “fuel on – mags on both – throttle ok – props fully fine – mixture rich – fuel pump on – alternate air check”, engine still not restarted so now it’s the mayday call, “mayday mayday mayday Glouc App, FT29, engine failure by the bends in the river (it’s an unofficial VRP for Glouc), passing 1800ft, attempting to land in a field, 2 POB, then make sure you are happy that they receive what they need before doing the shutdown checks, so once we are established on base leg and we know we are going to make the field we go to Flaps 10, lower the nose to maintain best glide, then flaps 25, lower the nose, then flaps 40 if we are sure to make the field, well this time we more than made the field, the plane is gliding like the Warrior, VERY strange, why are we not falling out the sky?, so I did a full sideslip, we made the field (just), then the CFI called “Go Around” “you know why we were gliding well?” he added, “er nooooo”, “because you didn’t lower the gear”, oh bloody great, how did I forget to lower the gear? and you know the worse thing? the gear horn was flashing and going “beep beep beep beep” and I still didn’t lower the gear, the CFI then said to treat the gear as the first stage of flap, so on base leg if you are definately making the field get the gear down, he calls the lapse “a brain fart”, ok lesson learnt.
Next PFL goes ok, then he says to take us back in for circuits, but track inbound on the NDB a track of 040, no problemo, so radio call first “FT29, at the bends in the river, 1500ft, request direct rejoin for circuits” “FT29 join direct downwind for rwy 22, report 5 miles”, so whilst trying to sort out the ADF tracking I sped back up to 120kts, before I knew it we were downwind for rwy22, wow, and oops, “FT29 downwind rwy 22” “FT29 contact twr 122.90″, arf, I was so busy with the tracking that I forgot to report 5 miles so we can contact the tower, another lapse, never mind, put it behind me and throw it away, CFI said we had a groundspeed of 16kts coming back in, which is about 187mph, I should have set 21” MAP and 2400rpm to give our circuit speed of 105kts instead of the cruise speed. Another lesson learnt.
Circuits went exceptionally well considering the bumpy conditions and it was a hard fight to get the aircraft doing what you wanted it to do.

This afternoon the Nav leg was to Highley, then into Wolverhampton, then an unplanned diversion, the wind was still pretty strong but not as bad as this morning, and the clouds had broken to leave a reasonably pleasant day, I still had a swift 145kts groundspeed which meant I had to be on the ball on the way up, and pretty careful with the diversion planning.
On the way up went well, as flightplan, and spot on was Highley, no issues here, Nav is generally a plus point for me, I haven’t had any issues yet, but there’s still time, and there’s still the test 😮 , when I got to Highley I noticed the CFI had not given me my diversion point, which I thought was a bit off, but he was just having some fun at my expense again, no worries, we joined downwind for runway 28 at Wolverhampton with a 25kt wind with 13 of those across the runway, the touchdown was nice, but my kneeboard was shielding the flap lever, and the runway was kind of running out, I hit the power before retracting the flaps, ooops, no big deal, just be aware, the Arrow is not certified to take off with any flaps extended, better not screw it up or the insurance company won’t pay out hehe.
On climbout the CFI said “take me to Ledbury Airfield”, a quick glance saw this about 7nm SW of Ledbury itself, so I drew a freehand line to start with to get an initial track, then once established in the cruise I can refine it, so ruler comes out, protractor comes out, ok heading is 2xx (can’t remember which), ETA is xxx, so we are going well, I make a correction on the heading as we passed Stourport On Severn, then the Malverns came into view along with Ledbury, I am now looking for this grass strip which is Ledbury airfield, 2 minutes to run on the ETA and I cannot see it, the ETA elapses and I still cannot see it, I tell the CFI this and he says to take a relative bearing from Ledbury town, so I do this and we are on the relative bearing, then the distance is the same, he said, “watch this” he rolled the wings to the left and there it was right underneath us, so the diversion worked bloody well, I just could not identify it, the strip is really narrow and hard to spot.
We now did some PFLs, these worked ok, I can tell the CFI still isn’t “that” happy with them, I don’t think he’s “convinced” but he had no comments, it’s now back for some circuits, and I know these are working well so no issues.
In the debrief he didn;t have much to say, he did comment on my landings and was saying how wonderfully hapy he was with them, he said they were spot on and sweet, which is good considering the issues we had in the Warrior.

With the loss of Wednesday this has pushed my F170A back to Monday, the test is still scheduled for Wednesday weather permitting. Am I feeling nervous already? you betcha 😉