Hi Blue

Interesting thoughts, the CFI is limiting the “roll over” to 45deg bank so I think this manouvre is out the window. I have this month’s Flyer but haven’t had time to peruse it yet, maybe the weekend.

Day 11 Monday 23rd

Today was another Nav trip, this time to Little Horwood which is just west of the Luton Class D CTA, must be careful here for obvious reasons, I didn’t like the look of this route because the diversion was bound to be over Brize Norton to the SW which would have meant 2 zone transits, one south bound and then again north bound. Zone transits are ok but when you are diverting you have to do all the “flight planning” from the cockpit, as well as holding heading & altitude, you just haven’t got enough hands or eyes to do it all, also if ATC messes you around and denies or put’s a limit on the transit then your workload can increase threefold, but ah well, this is a CPL route so we must fly it.
During the drive up there was some low lying fog hanging around, also the Cotswold Hills had a blanket of fog on them making them look like chocolate cake with cream on the top 😀 , but I’m sure it’ll be ok when we go as it’s quite patchy.
Well, on departure we lifted off rwy 27 to the West and turned north then East for our en-route heading, as soon as we were high enough to look over the cotswolds we could see that the whole South & East of England lay under about 200ft of fog, it certainly was a Kodak moment, all you could see was the odd pylon sticking up and Didcot Power Station pumping out it’s thing, okaaaay, we need to scratch that plan, so we inform ATC and then divert to Long Buckby which is just NW of Northhampton, this is about 45nm from our point, it was made easier due to the fact that it was really calm conditions, so I drew a straight line on the map, calculated it was 45nm away, got a track and then set heading, the ETA was worked out using our TAS which was about 103kts, so that was 10.3nm in 6 minutes (1/10th of our TAS & 60 minutes), this worked out about 27 minutes, so I give the CFI a time. En-route was good, the vis was great (above the fog), our track was to take us south of Gaydon where they build the Aston Martin?, but we were on track to fly overhead, so a heading adjustment was needed, I estimated a 6deg right turn to ensure we reach Long Buckby, we did this ok, now the CFI asked for a diversion to Croft Farm which is in Warwickshire between Evesham & Great Malvern, so again, same technique to calculate a track and ETA, this one worked out even better which was marvellous, next was the Instrument work, screens go up, we’re now in cloud, what do we do? ok first thing is a 180deg turn out of cloud, this didn’t work, we’re still in cloud, what next? ok, the checks, which is are we in icing conditions? so a quick check of the OAT sees +04deg reading, then we check the MSA (Minimum Safe Altitude), we’re above this so great, now we do some climbs, descents, 30deg turns, descents whilst maintaining an airspeed and rate of descent etc, then we have a vacuum pump failure, so it’s now partial panel IF, only the turn co-ordinator, ASI, magnetic compass & Altimeter to fly with, now I had to demonstrate a climb, a descent and some compass turns, remembering on partial panel to make small inputs whilst climbing & descending, and watch the ASI & Altimeter for a trend, now it’s time for UA recovery (Unusual Attitude), these were the ones that made me feel sick a couple of weeks ago, so the (nice) CFI put the plane into a steep descending turn, so check, Speed, rising, so throttle idle, wings level, which will include overbanking in the opposite direction on the turn co-ordinator slightly, then pitch up to stop the speed, once the speed has stopped then pitch again to stop the altimeter unwinding, which will then start the speed decaying back, then when we are within 5kts of our required indicated we reset cruise power. The CFI always does a steep climging turn as well, the procedure is identical except you have to advance the throttle first, then roll the wings level, adjust attitude to stop the speed, then adjust again to stop altimeter, then power up to normal cruise setting whilst remaining level.
Time now for a couple of PFLs, CFI chops the throttle, engine failure, ok, set the best glide speed, then pick a field, now do the “why” checks, fuel – change tanks, magnetos – on both, primer – locked, mixture – full rich, fuel pump – on, carb heat – on, engine still not restarting so we do the MayDay call, then the shutdown checks, doors unlatched, seat fully back and re-tighten harness, and BRACE, good in theory huh? it didn’t quite go like this, if you struggle to locate a field then your checks become disjointed and rushed, doing the PFL is all about being decisive, something I do lack now and again during PFLs, and certainly during this one, “ok go around” was the call, so up we go, back to Glouc for circuits.
Now I cannot remember much about how it went believe it or not, we had a really busy trip here, coupled with 2 more flights yesterday (Monday) as well has frazzled my brain, but basically after the circuits we landed (obviously), and at the debrief the CFI said it went well, it is above test standard, but we need to work on PFLs & Circuits, we have an hr left in the Warrior so we’ll use that to brush up on the said points.
So off we go again for PFLs, just remember the “plan” is what I kept telling myself, and don’t be afraid to pick a field underneath us if necessary, without boring you to tears (if I haven’t already) the upshot of it was that the PFLs went really well, we “made the field” on the 3-4 that we did, all the checks went ok and the plan worked every time, this was pleasing that I seem to be nailing the PFLs now.
Back for circuits, we did about 4, a normal, a flapless, a glide and a low level circuit to land, again, these went well, the landings are really coming on now and I am grasping the technique required, which is great because we have now just dumped the Warrior for the Arrow, woopeee, a real aircraft with retractable undercarraige and a wobbly prop, it seems a bit daunting to say the least and even though I was a tad excited I was a little apprehensive to say the least.
We had a great brief for the Arrow, this included all the speeds we were to use for circuits, gear procedures as well as RPM and MAP (Manifold Pressure) settings, once I was happy it was out to the aircraft to fly, again I won’t bore you with the checklisting of the A Check.
We received our taxi clearance, and off we went, the first thing that is really noticable is how heavy it feels, it felt like a bloody tank to be honest compared to the feather-like Warrior, it really was difficult to turn round corners, the rudder input was very tough. The CFI said I may as well fly everything, and he’ll talk me through rather than demo it. So on our takeoff roll, we’re looking for a rotate speed of 70kts, then climb initially at 77kts, so full power, wow, this bites, and boy does it yaw, that’s the 200hp engine for you, again it was alot of work to keep her straight on the centreline. We hit 70kts, with one hand on the throttle and one on the control yoke I could not pull it off the runway, I had to use 2 hands, as soon as she unsticks she is heavy but stable in the climb, and the climb performance is good, ok, next thing is “insufficient runway left”, dab the brakes (stops wheels rotating for retraction), then positive rate, gear up and locked, then at 300ft AGL set MAP to 25″ and RPM to 2500, then climb at 87kts which is Vy.
It was getting dark so this flight was only going to be a familiarisation flight, I levelled at 3,000ft, then let the speed build, I found her much harder to level off than the Warrior, because the speed has to build further from 87kts to 120kts, constantly pushing the nose down and re-trimming as she sped up. We did a few steep turns, again, she was heavy in the turn, you had to pull back further to maintain level flight in the turn as she is heavy. We then returned to Glouc, the approach was to be flown at 75kts, remembering in the pre-landing checks to put the gear down and check 3 greens, then on finals we check “Blue – Red – Greens”, blue for prop fully fine, red for mixture fully rich and greens for landing gear down & locked, over the threshold we went, 70kts, power back a tad, into the flare, power off, and she falls like a brick, a ncie hold off and touch down, wow that was much better, there is absolutely no float in this aircraft.
Back for a debrief, a hard day’s flying today, 3 trips and about 4hrs of flying is tough, time to go home for a shower and to see the family.

I’ll type Tuesday’s tomorrow because the weather has to be pretty aweful 🙂

Thanks for reading

Dean

Day 10 Friday 20th

Today I was told I could backseat a Seneca flight on someone doing a currency check, this was to be a great insight into flying a twin, I’ve never done this before so I was looking forward to it, I was due at the airport at 11:00am for the flight but received a phone call to say to turn up at 12:30pm, this gave me some more tme to spend with the children again, something you don’t get to do much of during professional flight training so I had to make the most of it.
I got to the airport at 12:30 only to be told that the Seneca flight was not going ahead, and that the CFI was out on an instrument flight and would not be long, the weather was alot calmer than yesterday, the wind at 2000ft was 240/15 which was comfortable, I did enjoy yesterday, I guess the CPL is all about testing yourself and seeing what you can deal with, afterall would I have declined not to fly a passenger in that weather for real? I doubt it, we still would have gone, and it felt great to be able to do it and do it reasonably well. 1:30pm came and went and there was still no sign of the CFI, so I took the opportunity to read the Arrow IV’s POH. 3pm came and went and still no sign of the CFI, again this gave me the opportunity to reflect on the flight we were going on and to go through things in my head, as you can see there is always something to do no matter how small, and utilising the time you have is a great way of improving your understanding and giving yourself a headstart on what you are about to embark on.
The CFI landed at 3:15pm, and came in to apologise prefusely, there was no need, it was quite a relaxing afternoon. The plane we normally fly in was in the maintainance hangar, earlier in the day the CFI took it out and encountered smoke in the cockpit, it was a burning blower fan that was catching fire, he was in the circuit so landed safely, I’d rather that happened in the morning than the afternoon so I am glad he flew that plane when he did 😉 .
PFLs & circuits were to be our focus for today, and today I am going to get the PFLs right, well, I kept telling myself that, the reality may be different. We departed rwy 27 and headed to the NE to just south of Evesham, I levelled at 2300ft due to cloud, and WHAM, the CFI closed the throttle, you now have an engine failure, bloody great, I knew it was coming yet it’s still a horrible feeling when he does it because you now HAVE to sort it out, ok, there was a few fields on our present heading but none “great”, here we go again, I am looking for that perfect field, time to ditch that theory, I turned downwind on a heading of 240deg, and stil couldn’t see a suitable field, CFI said don’t be afraid to weave the nose and have a look underneath me, so I did that and found a nice looking field off to my right, ok I am going in that one, so now I visualise this as a circuit to land, be on base leg by 1000ft, so trimmed at 75kts for the glide, I do my “why” checks, fuel tanks change, mags on both, primer locked, mixture rich, time to warm the engine, so throttle to max then back to idle again smoothly, fuel pump on, carb heat hot, engine still not restarted, time for mayday call, warm the engine again, shutdown checks follows, fuel off, mags off, throttle closed, mixture to idle, and once we’re happy we’ve finished transmitting, master switch off, door unlatched please Mr CFI, and seat fully back and retighten harness and brace on my command, we turn finals, I am definately going to make the field, one stage of flap, lower the nose to manitain speed, we’re still definately going to make it, flaps 25 and lower the nose, we’re still going to make it, flaps 40 and lower the nose, now we’re a bit high, but this is ok because I notice some telephone plylons in the field at the front end, this height means we can land past them, but we are still rather high so a sideslip prevails, we lose height rapidly and are on schedule to touch down well, “go around” came the reply, so off we went for another go, that worked out bloody well I thought, I wonder about the next one, I won’t bore you with the details about the next one as it worked well again using the same technique, we made the field if a little high, then on go-around we had another engine failure in the climb out, there was a field in front so I was to land in that.
Next we did some engine fire drills, the CFI asked me if I knew the checks and what to do for an engine fire in the air, I told him and he said the only thing I missed was to close the vents, which I remembered as soon as he said, then after the checks if the fire still isn’t out we need to take the plane to Vne (Velocity Never Exceed), I got the CFI to demo one first, the best way to do it is to “roll over” he said, so this went well when he did it, now it was my turn, so back up to 2000ft, engine fire was the call, I did the shutdown checks and over we went to Vne, I overbanked the aircraft a tad so the top wing nearly went over, the CFI said to try and roll into the dive using 45deg angle of bank, once the fire is out we need to do the normal PFL which went well.
Now back to Glouc for circuits, and I knew what was coming next, some ADF tracking, “I would like you to track 150deg back please”, ok, so first thing first, FREDA check, this was done, now I need to turn to 150deg heading. Once at 150deg I look at the RBI to see that the NDB is 15deg to the left, so we need to turn right double the error so that’s 30deg right, then once the ADF needle gets to 30deg left we need to turn on track to 150deg and it should be spot on, so I did this and it worked out well, I just need to let the ADF settle a bit more due to “dip” experienced when you are turning.
We did some crosswind circuits, these went well, landings were actually making big improvements which was encouraging, the crosswind landings were good too using the technique showed me yesterday.
So this ended a good flight today, I was really pleased with the PFLs but still a tad concerned that there won’t be a field to land in on the test, the CFI says there WILL be, don’t worry about it, on Monday we are going to do a full test run through which will be about 2hrs, this will leave us about 45mins left on the Warrior to sort out any issues before moving on to the Arrow.
Now here’s hoping for a change in the weather for the coming week.

Dean

Day 9 Thursday 19th

Today the weather was pretty crap, I worked a 14hr nightshift on Wednesday and didn’t go to bed til 7am Thurs morning, I had to be up at 12pm to make my way to the airport.
I rolled out of bed at 12:30pm to be greated by the said weather, I called the flying centre to ask the conditions and was advised not to make the trip, bloody marvellous, I could now either go back to bed or spend some time with the kids, well the kids won which is normal, but after an hour I had a phone call from teh CFI to make my way in, he basically said we would do something no matter what it is because we had not done anything all week.
After arriving at the airport I checked Form 214/215 and it was not pretty reading, winds were 30kts from the SE at 2,000ft, and the showers were pretty widespread, CFI said we’ll try the nav trip with diversion we have been threatening to do over the last few days, hmmm now this is going to be interesting, 41nm to Knighton in the Welsh hills, an MSA of 2220ft meant we will need to be careful of terrain clearance in the event of having to descend due to cloud and showers, this followed by a low approach & go around at Shobdon, Shobdon’s runway lies East West so the SE wind gave a nice hefty gusting crosswind. Then we wer to do an unplanned diversion from Shobdon to a place of the CFIs choice, and going on his past record it’s bound to be taxing, which I guess is the idea.
Departure was from runway 18 at Staverton, with the wind at 140deg at 16kts this gave a crosswind component of about 10kts, which was ok but it was very turbulent, so I am going to give an extra 5kts to the Vr speed, the leg to Knighton is 41nm, and with a stiff tailwind my planned route is going to take 20 minutes, this gives a groundspeed of around 130kts which works out about 150mph, things are going to happen pretty quickly.
On departure we rotate at 65kts, and on climbout we are encountering some pretty nasty turbulence, the stall horn goes off a few times, I just lower the nose a tad, let the speed build up to 5kts past Vy which is best rate of climb speed, again this is a commercial departure, so initially I am heading 180deg for the take off, my track to Knighton is 304deg so I need to turn right heading 334deg until the airport is 30deg off the tail then turn onto a heading of 307deg, during the climb it was pretty evident we were not going to make our cruise altitude of 3,000ft, so I levelled at 1700ft for now, we should pass south of the Malverns so no issues here, I just need to get a bit higher for the last part of the leg. We get to our first waypoint of Ledbury pretty swiftly, and I am slightly right of track, applying the 1/60 rule now to regain track, we were about 4deg right of track outbound and about 3deg off track from our point to destination, this required a 7deg left turn to reach our destination ok, I turned 9deg to compensate for why we drifted in the first place, approaching abeam Leominster I give Shobdon a call, no response, they are only an a/g unit so it all depends on whether someone is manning the radio, I call them for the 3rd time and get a response, I tell them our intentions, they pass the runway in use, circuit direction and the airfield QNH, ryw09 with a LH circuit is active, copied, we now pass to the right of Shobdon to Knighton, which only being 9nm to the NW appears pretty quickly, I identify it, and now it’s to Shobdon for the low approach & go around, I tune SH NDB to give me some indication of where it is, Vis is pretty crap now, cloud is down to 2,000ft, I do not want to be getting any lower here. the approach goes well, as does the go around, now the CFI says “take me to Alcester” which is about 15nm to the East of Worcester, this gives a track of about 095deg from Shobdon, so I calculate the drift from the 30kt wind and the “Max Drift” I would experience with the said wind to come up with a track of 108deg, so this is what I flew, CFI then asked for an ETA, I had to ask him to standby, I’m still working it out, 37nm at a groundspeed of about 78kts, this worked out about 27 minutes, wow that seems an aweful long time to fly 37nm, so I had to work it out again to be sure, ok, second time confirmed, ETA will be time 26, noted.
Our track was about East, and with a strong SE wind I had better give Birmingham Radar a call, we could end up quite close to their zone if I got the calcs wrong, so I got a Flight Information Service from them, they were rather busy so I made the call short. My track should take us just south of North Worcester, great, at least I have the Malverns & Worcester to judge if it’s going well, we arrived overhead Worcester but right on the northern tip, so I thought we were being blown off slightly, I made a corrective turn to the right to compensate, after Worcester had passed I started to look for features to tie in with what was on the map, I could not really find anything, so I thought “that’s ok, I can use the nav aids on the 2nd leg” so a position fix prevailed, I used Daventry VOR, this gave me a radial of about 280deg from the beacon at 35nm, I checked the map, this put me north of track by a fair bit, oh great, Birmingham Zone is just here, better double check, so again it confirmed I was right, I made a turn correction, then started to look out for Alcester to the right of me which would have been to the South, I couldn’t see it anywhere, nothing tied in with the ground and map, hmm, something has gone wrong here, I look left and there is a rather large town, that has to be it? well I identified it, it was indeed Alcester, but how did I end up 5nm South of it? simple answer said the CFI, I was pretty much bang on track, until I did the position fix, DTY VOR was giving at least a 5deg error in it’s radials, and that threw me out, just when you think VORs are pretty solid they are indeed not, or was it our instrument? I tuned Nav1 to DTY and this confirmed our Nav2 box was the culprit, lesson learnt, the CFI said I would get to know which box is “dodgy” when we move up to the Arrow.
Next was PFLs, oh great, my favourite, if I am going to fail on anything on the test, this is it, my downfall is that I try to pick a field that resembles a runway, the reality is, that is not going to happen, with a strong wind today our groudspeed will be quite slow so I can even afford to pick one that is across it’s width if absolutely necessary, at 2,000ft he closes the throttle, carb heat on, best glide speed reached, down we go, I am looking for a field but not having much luck, in reality there are a myriad of fields down there, but I can’t find one that fits my picture, so the next thing I do is get in a flap, my checks go out the window, I find a field but it’s not suitable, I change my mind and attempt to make another one which we would have, this was less than convincing, up we go again, 2000ft, another engine failure, I turn downwind straight away now, the thing about getting into a field is to have a plan, the CFI keeps asking me what my plan is, I say, well, I’m gonna put it in that field, that’s my plan, this isn’t good enough, what we need to do is to try and treat the PFL like a glide approach, so turn downwind, then fly a circuit pattern, be at 1,00ft AGL by the base turn, if you then visualise the glide approach you are more than likely to make it in, if you’re too high then sideslip, if you’re too low then cut in, so we went around, and back to Glouc for a PFL above the airfield, just to see if my picture of the perfect field (i.e. the runway) would make my PFL better, we did the PFL on downwind for 09, this gave us a severe crosswind, the approach went well, I flared ok (:eek: shock horror), now kick straight the CFI said, so I gave a little tentative push on the rudder, this wasn’t enough, he demonstrated a full rudder kick to straighten us which it did, and down we came, gees this guy makes me sick, he makes it look so damn easy ;).
back inside in the warm only a few comments prevailed, a couple about my RT being rather broken at times (which I was aware of), and that for the PFLs, 1 word — plan, simple as that, tomorrow’s flight is going to be PFLs & crosswind circuits.
To top the day off I had a 45 minute ground school lesson on ADF tracking, and I know he’s going to make me do it tomorrow, ah well, here goes 😉

Sorry for the convoluted nature of this post chaps, I tried to go into a little more detail but still only covered about half of it.

Dean