DeanoI think this thread has gone as far as it can now 🙂
Deano1335, got cheesed off with it after 10 minutes 😀
Deano1335, got cheesed off with it after 10 minutes 😀
DeanoCheck your PMs Blue
DeanoThanks Ian
The CFI has said that I should “first time pass” with ease, and that the things that are wrong right now are only things that put “gloss” on the flying, but I still keep telling myself my standards arn’t good enough, which I guess is ok because it keeps me on my toes.
Day 5 Fri 13th
Well the MET office got it right today, fog & low cloud for most of the day, I got to Staverton to find the cloudbase at 400ft & Vis down to 3km, so not great, but this was ok, we could do some more Instrument flying, so this time there was no brief, we are to go up and do full panel, partial panel followed by a half mile SRA approach.
We had a rwy27 departure, straight behind the screens at 150ft, and virtually straight into cloud, not that I could notice behind the screens, our IFR departure was to the NW and to climb to FL45, so up we went, the CFI said we had broken through the cloud layer now and was VFR on top, I could only get a glimpse of the spectacular views that greated the CFI out the right hand side window, well that’s just great, Mr CFI get’s to sit there and enjoy the view, and I have to fly the aeroplane, life just isn’t fair 😉 , but anyway we did a few turns, climbs & descents on full panel, then turns at 30deg angle of bank instead of the normal rate 1, these were a tad ropey, I was fluctuating on the altitude a tad, 50ft either way, CFI said my scan was not working well, and that I had to keep an eye on the AI a bit more as opposed to chasing the Altimeter, so in the turn, kept the balance ball in the middle as well, kept the scan going on the AI and perfect, 2 x 360 deg turns at 30deg prevailed, just a little technical adjustment was all that was needed, next came the position fix whilst trying to maintain straight & level, so out with the VORTRACK, tuned the Nav1 radio and waited for the ident, all the while whilst trying to keep straight & level, then my VOR morse idents are underneath my kneeboard so I had to faff about trying to get them so I could positively ident the beacon, CFI said I am a little pedestrian trying to get it done, I guess it’s the whole multitask thing, ok position fix went ok from Daventry VOR, we were on the 265 radial at 47DME which put us around the Malverns, good, next we had a VAC pump failure, so I lost my AI & DI, we’re now partial panel, and I know what’s coming now, it’s the dreaded recovery from unusual attitudes, the ones that make my head feel like I’ve downed 10 pints of Brandy, but before that we had some turns to do on the compass only, the compass is prone to acceleration & turning errors, so you can’t just roll out on a heading because it “leads & lags” dependant on what pole you are turning through, so the way to do it is, let’s say I am heading 270 deg, and I want to turn onto a hdg of 160, this is a difference of 110deg, a rate 1 turn is 3deg per second, so we enter the turn and start the stopwatch for 37 seconds, rolling out the turn by 35 seconds, we check the compass and adjust as necessary, again the CFI said I was a tad pedestrian on setting all this up, but the simple maths becomes quite difficult to to whilst flying IFR, again, the multitask issue, but it’ll get better, by the time we did 3-4 I had it spot on, we then did some climbs & descents on partial panel, which is very satisfying getting it right, next came the unusual attitude recovery, we started with just the steep turn to the left & right, then we did a spiral dive recovery, this was ok, head felt a tad funny but ok, next was the overbanked climb recovery, now this felt real baaad, I did it okish, but because my head felt like I was very drunk it could have been a tad better, we did another one (great), this time my head felt REALLY funny, usually “the leans” gives you a sense of turning in the opposite direction to what you are actually doing but on this occasion the instrument panel was moving side to side quite rapidly, this made the recovery more difficult but I still managed it ok, afterwards I was given the AI back which helped straighten my head out, it certainly was not as bad as when I did it Monday.
Now it was time for the SRA down to half a mile, this should be good, it checks decent profiles and sees if you can obey ATC as well as fly the aeroplane, the only descent profile you have is that you know you have to maintain a 3 deg glide path angle to touchdown, and ATC tells you what point you are at and what altitude you should be, so it’s a case of increasing or decreasing the ROD according to whether you are too high or low at that point, anyway we get our clearance to land, we break out the mire at 700ft (so the CFI says), he took the screens down at 200ft and there is the runway lights, now that is what I call satisfying flying, it makes it all worth while, and not once during that whole flight did the CFI have to intervene, so great, I was happy with that, but was the CFI? well during the debrief there were only the minor points discussed here so yes, thumbs up from him.
In the afternoon we were due to do another Nav, Glouc – Knighton – Shobdon for a touch & go – Unplanned diversion – Glouc, but the weather was remaining bad, cloud base was sitting at 1200ft most of the afternoon, we decided to knock it on the head about 3:45pm, then on the way back down the motorway it turned out glorious, that is just typical, if I had stayed another 30 minutes it probably would have been ok, never mind, I did what alot of pilots didn’t do today and that was witness those spectacular views out the cockpit earlier, even if it it was a short glance, and you can’t beat that, so until Monday, have a great weekend 😉
Dean
DeanoStill, we have Blue Robin – a man with a [edited out].
can we add our own captions to that? 
DeanoFantastic shots PIK, love number 3
DeanoDay 4 Thurs 12th
Today is the dreaded nav day, I wake up to find a decent cloudbase out the window with the odd fog patch, looks like I’m not going to get away with it for a 3rd day on the trot, something is bound to go wrong today, it generally does considering it’s all gone well so far.
I get to the airport early, check the plane out, make sure we have enough fuel, finalise the flight plan which is Gloucester – Grove – Unplanned diversion, this includes a Class D zone transit through Brize Norton, last time I did this ATC were not very helpful, they had me go all over the place, I really do not need this today, this has to go well.
The departure from Rwy 22 at Glouc does not allow a turn to the left until you have passed Chosen Hill located at 1.2DME to the left of the extending centreline, right where I need to turn on track, so we elect for a “commercial” departure, which means adding 2 minutes onto the first leg of the route, and turning to within 30deg of track, i.e. track is 123deg, so we will turn heading 093deg until the airport is 30deg off the tail, then we take up our heading. So off we go, past Chosen Hill, turn left hdg 093deg, contact Glouc App to report outbound, top of climb checks done, had to level at 2300ft due to cloud, airport 30deg off tail, round we go to 123 deg, wind is 245/20tks.
first waypoint is Chedworth disused aerodrome, easy to spot, but the glare is coming through the windscreen, I check the time, 2 minutes to run, I should be seeing it now but I’m not, and we really need to be calling Brize for the zone transit, because in the Arrow we will get to the zone “pretty damn quick”, anyway Chedworth is just off to the right and below us, so great, but why are we left of track? 2nd mistake of the day, for some bizarre reason I flew the planned track and not the planned heading allowing for drift, first mistake was the fact that I did not weave the nose to have a good look out on climb out, something I always do, but why not today?
Anyway I contact Brize, and surprisingly they give me the zone transit with no restrictions, well saying that I mean I could continue at 2500ft and remain VMC (obviously), anyway I found Grove ok, CFI left it VERY late to tell me the diversion, divert to Shipston On Stour please, ok, should be easy enough, plenty of landmarks on the way to keep me good, so I give him a heading and time, I fly the heading, request another zone transit on the way back north, which is granted, eventually find Shipston off to the right so that worked really well, now it’s time to divert back to Gloucester, so again, I plan the heading & ETA, visability was not great here, a few mist patches haning around, then Brize handed me off to Glouc App, so I do the tuning of the radios, get my call in to Glouc, look up and we just entered a bit of cloud, **** it, power off, drop the nose, come out the cloud, I said to the CFI that this would be a failure on the test and he confirmed yes, bloody marvellous, I dind’t dwell on this too much because I knew what I did wrong, Aviate – Navigate – Communicate, in that order, I was too busy with the radios and tuning etc that I neglected the lookout, ok, we can put that one to bed.
Came back to Glouc for some circuits, on finals to land, and yes you guessed it, first landing was back to square one, I don’t believe this, this is not going to happen, round we go again, same thing again, I am so cheesed off with myself now that I feel like giving it up, then the CFI had another suggestion, on the next landing, do NOT touch down, fly at 3ft above the rwy without touching, so in we come, flared, remained off the tarmac, then when I flew level we didn’t touch down until the plane sank, down we went, he then commented, “perfect”, what we concluded was that my perspective of what “straight and level” is, is not correct, at my straight & level we are still “nosing” in, so I have to look for a higher attitude, the next 2 landings got the thumbs up, I think we have DEFINATELY sorted it this time, now I feel much better.
In the afternoon I had another Nav to do, Glouc – Avebury – Unplanned diversion, now this leg I was not happy about, I Knew after we had transited Lynham Class D we would be diverted to the NE straight through Brize class D, this is going to present some problems, can I get the radio calls in quick enough before I hit the airspace? time will tell.
Rwy 22 departure, same procedure applies this time regarding the 30deg etc, this time I remembered to weave the nose to get a good lookout, top of climb, FREDA check complete, tune Kemble as this is my first waypoint, 2nm east abeam Kemble but inside their ATZ so I have to call them, so I estimated Kemble at time 45, I gave them a call, they said to report in their overhead, WILCO blah blah etc, well at time 43 I passed what I though was Kemble off to my right, looked on my map, confirmed that must be Kemble, it’s quite large, lots of aircraft around, gave them a call, FT29 is 2 miles east abeam your overhead. then I looked up, and there was an aerodrome right on the nose, oh great, I can now see a 747 or 2, THIS is Kemble, what I just passed was Aston Down Gliding site, a few curses prevailed because I had got it wrong, you generally associate gliding sites with grass strips, hence the confusion, no excuse, I should have known Kemble as the 747’s parked up, I’ve been overhead often enough, again I put this to bed, no real big issue, just don’t make the picture “fit”.
We transited through Lynham, asked for another transit north, our diversion was Burford right on the northern tip of Brize Norton, ok no worries, give Brize a call for their transit, then came the call, FT29, can you route direct Farringdon VRP no higher than 1,000ft on 1013, and squawk xxxx, can you comply? WILCO blah blah, next thing, FT29 can you make that Altitude 1500ft on 1013, and sqawk xxxx, er ok, another squawk code and a new assigned level? anyway WILCO blah blah, then, FT29, can you squawk xxxx and route direct to the overhead of Brize, another squawk? it’s the same squawk you gave first time, but ok for sure, by this time the CFI was going a bit mad, bloody ATC etc etc, I won’t repeat the rest 😉
The diversion went ok, no thanks to ATC, then it was on to General Handling, steep turns went real well, stalls went well, few minor points, don’t thrust the nose down and the power on when recovering, do it nice and smooth, point taken, then a spiral dive recovery, this went well, then a PFL, I found what looked a nice long field in the distance, we were at 3000ft so had plenty of time to get in, CFI asked if I had a plan, I said yes I have a plan, if I’m too high I’ll sideslip in, if I am still too high I’ll extend my track to the side to lose height in the turns etc, anyway we made the field but it wasn’t good enough, we tried another one, this time I turned downwind straight away, this gives the picture then of landing in the circuit on a glide approach, I picked a field and this was much better, the on climb out we had another engine failure at low alt, this was much more difficult to find a decent field due to our lack of height, away we went for circuits back at Glouc, this will test out whether I have sorted the landings, to cut a long story short, we seem to have mastered the landings thanks to the CFI totally disecting them and rebuilding from scratch, tops to Mr CFI there. Had a brief chat afterwards, he said everything was ahead of the game still, I should breeze the test with a first time pass, let’s see what happens 🙂
DeanoHi Ian, so true, this is a good read, from Ken who responded again to my post I made, Ken is a truely wonderful and knowledgable guy, when he talks you tend to listen, that’s the impact he has, he teaches PoF & MET and is the best out there
Hi Dean
I have had a look at the Pprune forum and read some of the posts. There is nothing new there, except that some of the posts appear to think that all the lift stops at Bernoulli
There is nothing wrong with Bernoulli, as long as you don’t think that it is the only reason for lift, as I said in my previous post.
Yes, some books do take the simplistic explanation and do not go into detail, but that does not trash the whole concept, it is just not complete.
I suppose you could compare it to electricity. Do you really know exactly how a current flows through a wire? As long as you have the basics you can apply it to systems (instruments, radio, etc) The exact science is better left to electrical engineers.
A lot of the posts are trashing the questions on lift in various exam systems, (FAA and JAA) but the real blame should be laid at the multiple choice system for testing knowledge.
In the old system you would have written me an essay, and I would be able to see from your explanation if you understood the principle.
With multiple choice it is virtually impossible to set one question, that can test a whole learning objective. Provided there are sufficient questions, in a question bank, that tests different parts of the learning objective, and they collectively ensure that you understand the concept, then that’s the best the multiple choice system can offer.
A question on Pprune from the FAA question bank, refers :
Which statement relates to Bernoulli’s principle
(a) For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction
(b) An additional upward force is generated as the lower surface of the wing deflects air downwards
(c) Air travelling faster over the curved upper surface of an airfoil causes a lower pressure on the top surface
This question is trashed because in the writers opinion there is no correct answer because “lift is not a function of the curvature”
The question did not say anything about lift. It said what relates to Bernoulli’s principle. If it wanted to test more about lift it would have had to specify cambered or symmetrical and angle of attack.
It was just testing a fraction of the learning objective of lift.
I could go on and on. The point as I made in the first post, is that the production of lift is extremely complex. It is not required that you know it all.
Bernoulli definitely applies, as does the momentum theory. At different phases of flight the relationship of which one is producing the biggest part of the lift changes.
If you look as NASA’s “Incorrect theory #1” the third bullet point after the Foilsim says Bernoulli in that context is correct.
The same applies in NASA’s “Incorrect theory #2” the fourth bullet point and the last paragraph says that part of the momentum theory is also correct.
If you look at a flat plate. At zero degrees angle of attack it will produce no lift, but if you give it a positive angle of attack then the deflection of the airflow (momentum theory) will provide some lift. We can’t say that Bernoulli will play no part, because there is no curvature, but it will be a very small part in this case. (There will be some acceleration of the airflow over the top surface because the airflow has changed direction) However you would need a lot of thrust to fly the flat plate, because the airflow separation would be well forward on the plate, hence high drag.
If we look at a symmetrical aerofoil, now there is some curvature, but Bernoulli will do nothing at zero degrees angle of attack as the top and bottom surface pressure changes will cancel each other out. At a positive angle of attack you will have some momentum theory lift and a lot more Bernoulli than the flat plate.
With the cambered aerofoil the extra curvature means Bernoulli gets even more prominence.
So you see each aerofoil shape will make different use of the different factors that produce lift, and at different angles of attack that relationship will also change.
Hope that helps a bit more.
DeanoThanks Paul, read on to find out 😉
Day 3
After a night up with the 2 girls (yes both of them awake) from 03:30 til 05:10 I woke up (reluctantly) to find the rain as forecast, hmm, Nav seems out the question this morning at least, I guess I had better head up to the airport anyway, so I wish the wife a happy birthday and buzzed off for the day, at least I can check the plane out and get up together incase we do go out and do anything, I check the Metoffice forecast with METARs & TAFs and they read ok, the cold front should pass just after midday, so hopefully we can get the nav done then, not sure I like the 25kt wind forecast though, well as long as it’s accurate that’s the main thing with a wind this strong, it can really throw off your planned headings if it’s different from the forecast, so, plane checked out, pulled out the hangar (in the rain), time to start the planning, this should burn up 30 minutes.
CFI came in about 9:30am, and was greeted with the usual “hmm weather’s a bit of a bummer today” which was becoming almost obligatory this week, tell you what we can do, we can go up in the circuit and sort out your landings, okaaaay I thought, still not confident I am going to get them right, runway 18 active, with a dead straight headwind of 8kts, hopefully the turbulence will be ok for this, it just makes life easier when you are trying to fix something rather than battle that as well. So off we went, in the circuit, I got the final call in which was met with the usual xxx cleared touch & go rwy18, left hand circuit, surface wind xxx/xx, so full flap, 75kts and bringing the speed back to 65kts, holding it steady, picture is looking good, down we come over the threshold and then I round out, and touch down nicely, this is met by a “no it’s still not right, you are still too flat, flare earlier, let’s do a low level circuit and get back on it again”, so again round we go, set up on finals, full flap, picture looks great, over the threshold again, round out, touch down nicely, again, CFI says not good enough, still too low, I can see he may be a tad furstrated now, I am getting a little flustered and thinking I am never going to nail this, no matter what I do, if I round out higher it feels like we are too high and then a balloon will prevail, round we go again, CFI is going to demo one now, I’ll hold the controls lightly and follow him through, down we go, smooth as you like and a nice touchdown, damn he makes it look so bloody easy, this frustrates even more, so round we go again, and I prevail to do exactly the same as before, flare too low, but it feels like I am higher, so what the hell am I doing wrong? he tells me that when we get to the Arrow & the Seneca I will end up nosing them in using my technique, this has GOT to be sorted, I am in the Arrow in 10hrs flying time, ok he said, i “think” I might have spotted what you are doing, we’ll make this a flapless approach, so round we go, set up on finals, no flaps, 75kts and slowing to 70kts over the threshold, a higher nose attitude due to no flaps is evident, then I touch down ok to be met with a congratulations, that was near perfect, he says all it is, is perspective, when I come over the threshold and flre my eyes are fixed in front the plane, they should be looking right up the other end of the runway, obviously the higher nose attitude of the flapless approach meant I had to look further up, so round we go again, a normal approach this time, we cross the threshold, I flare nice and early, but it seems a bit high so I am a bit forward & back with the controls, but then when I am straight & level I look down the other end of the runway and touch down, he says that was a marked improvement, but don’t be so forward and back with the controls as it does nothing, follow through with whatever it is you were going to do, and be smooth about it, so round we go again, now the cold front is approaching, the wind has veered quite sharply to 240degs and is blowing at 15kts, cool, not only am I trying to get my landings right, I now have to deal with a crosswind and possible turbulence, so in we come, crabbing in, I fight the rough air with aileron & rudder, kick her straight with rudder whilst flaring and stopping the adverse aileron roll due to rudder effect by using opposite aileron, and focus up the runway and touch down nicely, this one was to land, weather was aweful now, but a marked improvement during the second ½ of the flight, that coupled with a crosswind to contend with too, well it isn’t “perfect” but it’s something to work on.
Back in the clubhouse, CFI is reasonably happy we have cracked the problem, something as simple as where your eyes are looking, seems almost unbelievable that something that simple can have such a profound effect, great spot there Mr CFI 😀 , afterall he did promise me we’d sort it, even if it took some time, all we have to do now is practice practice practice.
Well, the weather didn’t clear, but I had some reading to do, then it was up to the CFI’s office for a question & answer session for ½hr, ohhh great, let’s see what goes wrong here then, a few tech questions followed by lots of procedural questions, what is the maintainance schedule for light aircraft? errrrr, ummmmm, 50hr check? annual?, not quite, 50hr check, 50hr check, 150hr check, annual, annual and star annual.
In what document will we find what privilages a CPL holder can exercise?
errr, ummmm, errr (not really having a clue) JAR OPS 1? no, the ANO schedule 8.
Anyway you get the general pattern, I answered most right, just a few like this I got wrong, cmon Mr CFI, it was 5 months ago that did THE most tedious subjects on the planet in my ATPLs which was Air Law & Ops Procedures, time to get the manuals out again me thinks.
Anyway, tomorrow promises better weather, which means we MUST get that nav trip done, surely? doesn’t it? how lucky we are to be blessed with the good ol’ English weather, time will tell 😉
Dean
DeanoThe Etihad 340 & the EL AL 744 are just sexual 😀
Great pics
DeanoIan
Thanks for the info, a nice insight into the workings of the 340, appreciated.
I posted in my ATPL provider’s forum regarding this subject, and this is what 2 instructors had to say, don’t know what one does but the other has thousands of hrs in the military and flying 727s in SA.
A mathematically and physically rigorous description of the way lift is generated would be extremely complex. This is why it is only now that airfoil behaviour can be accurately predicted from computer calculations. Until recently the best you could do was to make a wing and then test it.
Nevertheless, there are several ways of looking at the problem; all are incomplete, most offer some guidance. The most complete is the momentum theory, called the Physical Theory in your reference. This says that lift is generated by imparting a downward velocity to the air, and for more lift you either have to push a lot of air down or push a little air down a lot faster. Nothing wrong with that.
A flat plate will do this if given an angle of attack, but it is not very efficient. It relies almost entirely on air being forced down by the bottom surface of the plate. Cambered or symmetrical airfoils work better. Why?
This is because the airflow, up to a critical point, will follow the downward curve of the rear section of the airfoil, giving extra downward velocity to the air. It does so because the boundary layer drag slows the layer closest to the airfoil and the higher speed free stream air turns downward over the boundary layer.
So the on the bottom surface air is pushing the wing up and on the top surface air is pulling the wing up. Bernoulli reminds you that the effective reduction of cross section of the streamlines will increase the speed of the air going over the top and therefore drop the pressure, further increasing lift.
If the boundary layer separates you lose some of these lifting effects, but not all. Remember, at the stall lift does not disappear; it only stops increasing with increasing angle of attack.
In an attempt to give a simple explanation of what actually results from these complex interacting effects most gurus chose to use a Bernoulli based theory – the one you are familiar with. The actual behaviour we describe, the stall, induced drag and so on are actual empirical observations of what happens. Bernoulli is just there to make you feel happy. To my mind the standard teaching does not clearly explain why wing tip vortices exist, and why they increase in strength at low speed in level flight and with increasing lift in manoeuvre. But that is for another time. Just remember that if there is no downwash there is no lift, and that after an aircraft has flown through a block of air it will be going down because of lift, going forward because of drag and revolving because of the vortices
Dick W
And the other instructor
Hi Deano
Sorry I have been on leave for a week as we had a break between courses.
I have not had a chance to read Pprune yet, as I have a back log of 140+ e-mails to answer first, the joys of some leave, so I will add to the post later when I have read it.
For the moment I will try to simplify Dick’s explanation a bit more.
There are a number of reasons why an aerofoil produces lift. As Dick said Bernoulli is the easiest, and then secondly the momentum theory. The others get very complex and thankfully are not required by the learning objectives for ATPL.
In normal flight (small angles of attack) 80% to 85% (depending on the design – symmetrical or cambered) of the lift is produced by Bernoulli, so a lot of the learning objectives, and exam questions, are based on that.
The second greatest part of lift is caused by the momentum theory (changing the direction of the airflow) and a few exam questions touch on the basics of this.
As you increase angle of attack the ratio changes, and by critical alpha (the stall) Bernoulli has a marked decrease in the amount of lift produced because of the separation of the airflow.
The increase in drag, because of the flow separation, means most aircraft can’t fly much past critical alpha.
However if you have sufficient brute force (thrust), like the Mig’s and SU’s that do the Cobra manouvre, then the momentum theory will give sufficient lift to maintain level flight for a while.
Ken
DeanoIan
There’s a new concept on the market now called the VORTRACK, it’s a great device that enables you to position fix within seconds (after the ident of course), basically you “stud” all the VORs on the map and use the plotter shown which gives you magnetic track and distance within an instance, generally only good if you have a DME fitted as well as the VOR in the aircraft, check the link here
Day 2
Not having to go in so early today was a blessing, I could actually spend a few hrs with the kids, something I had not done for weeks, then I remembered the wife’s birthday tomorrow, damn, have to go out and shop now.
Anyway, weather was pretty grim all morning, lot’s of low stratus formed after the early morning fog that lifted, well, I can’t get away with it, I still have to do the flight planning for my nav trip, today is going to be a navigation exercise with an unplanned diversion, and after everything going well so far something has to go wrong, well today is the day surely, my navigation is ok, but will it be up to standard? because one day I can be deadly accurate, then the next time I fly it could be pretty grim, so a little inconsistent maybe.
Planned route over with, Gloucester – Grove – Gloucester, this will include a zone tranzit through Brize Norton class D, oooh great, like I haven’t got enough to do, now I have to do extra radio work as well, sometimes I wish I was a woman so I could multitask alot better, I start looking on my map for places that the CFI may divert me to to try and build up a picture, this is a total waste of time and defeats the object, the diversion is supposed to be unplanned, ok put down the map and forget about the diversion.
I get to the flying centre, the CFI is on his way back from an IR skill test, to which a young lady gained a first time pass, well done you, the weather is still marginal, I don’t think we’re going anywhere to be honest, cloud is SCT016 & BKN021, we have a 1,000ft hill to get over en-route, so this cloud base put’s us below MSA, it’s a no go, but what we’ll do instead is some Instrument flying, partial panel work, so the debrief consisted of the airwork and airmanship, the AI is going to fail, along with the DI, so we have a vacuum pump failure, I’ve lost the gyro instruments, all I have now to navigate and keep us alive is the turn co-ordinator, the ASI, the Altimeter and the VSI, we’re not going to reference the VSI so try and ignore it, the turn co-ordinator is going to be our main instrument here, referencing airspeed and altimeter, so if your wings are level, and your airspeed is steady, you shouldn’t be climbing or descending, what we’re going to do is turns onto headings, climbs, descents and then some unusual attitudes, I didn’t like the sound of these and didn’t feel confident of a recovery, to recover from a spiral dive on partial panel in IMC you set the power, roll the wings level and then stop the altimeter from changing, so close the throttle, roll level, pull the nose up until the airspeed stops accelerating, then raise the nose to stop the altimeter from sinking, then reset power, sounds easy peasy.
We had a nice smooth departure under the screens, climbed to 5,000ft full panel, then he sticks a sheet of paper over the failed AI & DI, ooo here we go then, ok turn onto a heading of xxx please, ahh but the DI is missing, ok set the present heading on the VOR indicator, then count the degrees I have to turn, ok it’s 80 degrees, a rate 1 is 3deg per second, so I need to turn for 26 seconds, so into the turn then hit the stopwatch straight away, at 23 seconds start rolling level, check the compass, bang on, marvellous when it all works, so after a few more turns like this it’s time for another position fix, awww Mr CFI you’re all heart thanks, Nav1 radio to Daventry VOR, ident it, but I don’t know morse yet, and I’ve written the ident on my flight plan for the Nav trip which is now at the bottom of the kneeboard, after a bit of faffing bit by bit to ensure I maintain alt & hdg I find it and ident it, then I have to ident the DME, in the meantime I fix my VORTRACK to the pin emanating from DTY VOR, after the ident I get a track of 260deg FROM the VOR & 39DME, I set the VORTRACK up for this radial and measure 39DME and it puts me just north of the Malverns, wow, that beats trying to use my pen, find the radial on the map and measure the distance, it was done in an instance.
Next was the unusual attitudes, we started with steep angles of banks both ways, that went well, then time for the spiral dive, he demonstrated one first without the screens, great fun, but boy did that make me feel bad, time for the screens to go back up, we did the spiral dive ok, I felt ok (ish), but recovered well, now time for the steep climb at a high angle of bank and a rapid decreasing airspeed, now when I rolled the wings level from this it felt like we were upside down, and my head felt like it was going to explode, if felt aweful and made me feel real sick, I don’t really want to do another unless you want to see the contents of my lunch.
Time to head back, but this time we’ll do an SAR, a Surveilance Radar Approach, basically it’s to get VFR pilots out of trouble, ATC passes you a RIS (Radar Information Service), gives you headings and altitudes to be at and talks you down to final approach to within 2 miles of touchdown, so obviously following ATC instructions we turned finals, with a 3 degree descent rate to remain on the PAPIs, took the screens away and there’s the runway in front, wow, that works too 😀 , time to land, it felt rather funny to come out from behind the screens into good visability, it throws you a bit, but anyway, my landing was no better than yesterday, bloody great, am I going to get the hang of this? I’d better start learning fast.
After the shutdown we went in for a debrief, and I was quite surprised by his comments, there weren’t any, apart from when we get to TOC (top of climb) I need to nail the altitude spot on and not +/- 30ft etc, and then came the real surprise, he said this is the best start to the CPL course he had seen in a number of years, my IF was top notch for someone who hasn’t flown more than 3hrs pre-CPL, (thanks flightsim 😀 knew you had a use somewhere), so anyway this was really pleasing to hear.
Tomorrow it’s the nav trip, so I think he is going to change his mind on how good he thinks I am tomorrow I’m sure, if the nav goes well I’ll be very surprised, but hey here’s hoping, the weather is looking dodgy for tomorrow, so it looks like a day off for the wife’s birthday.
Dean
DeanoTartan
Absolutely love the EL AL 744 in the first set, not that the others are any less great of course 😉
DeanoNo worries 🙂
Ahh the edit, what a fantastic shot at the top Paul, glad I rechecked the thread, that is a top shot I must say
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