Jimisola.com - keepin’ on

After an intense week of flying, where there was not much time left for training, I made up for lost time by training in Malmö Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I really do need to train to feel good - my body and brain literally needs me to train. I managed to do quite a lot this weekend without the groin complaining - an improvement!

While training I realized that I had a huge smile on my face and that I felt really good, relaxed etc. Even though my groin is not ok and stops me from doing everything that I want track still gives me that special feeling, a feeling that nothing else can give me - at least haven’t been able to give me so far. Not even flying.

Don’t get me wrong. I love to fly and I love track. But, there is obviously passion and there is Passion! The latter is what I have for track.

What an intense week! Haven’t had so many new things introduced in the same week before - and funny things too

I’m somewhat relieved that the week is over and that we have theory next week, so that I can absorb everything.

The night flying was special and, like I wrote before, a cool experience. The last couple of weeks I’ve been flying a lot in our Flight and Navigation Procedures Trainer aka FNPT2. It’s called “the simulator” in daily speech, but is not truly certified as a full-fledged simulator by the CAA. In the simulator I’ve practiced instrument flying such as NDB/VOR holding (see this post for an explanation). Each exercise is 70 minutes long and stacked as the FIs (Flight Instructors) can maximize the time spent on the actual exercise by e.g. moving me around (no need spending minutes to actually fly 10nm when they can move me in just a matter if seconds). After 11 exercises in our simulator it was time for the real deal - VOR Holding at VEDBY (VEY) - in the Cirrus. The exercise went well, very well to be honest. I was surprised that it felt a lot easier to do it in the Cirrus than in the simulator. There are two reasons that I can think of: 1) it was in fact the second time I did it (simulator being the first time) and 2) I’m much more used to the Cirrus cockpit layout than the simulator one. The actual IFR VOR Holding exercise started just before sunset and when I touched down it was dark - sadly I did not have much time to look at the view and the beautiful sunset…

Another new exercise this week was low level flying. The school has permission to have these exercise where we fly at 250ft/75m above ground (the lowest allowed altitude is otherwise 500ft above ground). The introduction exercise was basic navigation (following roads, power lines etc) and some low level turns (flying 8’s as small as possible). It was a whole new experience as the perspective changed dramatically. At higher altitude lakes etc are usually visible from quite long distances whereas now the might only show when you are really close to them (e.g. I did not see a set of powerlines until I had just passed over them). We have another two low level exercises which I’m really looking forward to.

Friday afternoon was spent flying the Diamond DA40 at my local flight club (Ljungbyheds flygklubb), so now I’m able to take friends and family up for a tour (we are not allowed to take non-students or staff with us in the school’s airplanes).

I’m not a poetry-kinda-guy, but I stumbled on a part of Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem “The Colored Soldiers” a while back and it was strong:

Yes, the Blacks enjoy their freedom,

And they won it dearly, too;

For the life blood of their thousands Did the southern fields bedew.

In the darkness of their bondage,

In the depths of slavery’s night,

Their muskets flashed the dawning,

And they fought their way to light.

For more poems by Paul Laurence Dunbar look here.

Tomorrow will be a historical day for me in terms becoming a full-fledged pilot. Thursday’s Flight Program holds an exercise called “IFR - Holding”.

The IFR exercise is a giant leap towards becoming an airline pilot.

IFR is short for Instrument Flight Rules which means that I fly on flight instruments and possibly without outside visual reference. Wikipedia describes it as the following:

“Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) are a set of regulations and procedures for flying aircraft whereby navigation and obstacle clearance is maintained with reference to aircraft instruments only and separation from other aircraft is provided by Air Traffic Control. It is an alternative to visual flight rules (VFR), where the pilot is ultimately responsible for navigation, obstacle clearance and traffic separation using the see-and-avoid concept. The primary benefit of these regulations allow an aircraft to safely fly through clouds, which is not permitted under VFR.”

Holding is a way of delaying aircraft already in flight by having them fly round and round (the flight path is not actually a circle). Holding is commonly used when aircraft has to wait (queue up) before it can land at and airport. Wikipedia describes Holding as:

“a holding (or hold) is an area of airspace used to delay aircraft already in flight. Because fixed-wing aircraft cannot stop in midair, they fly in loops, which keeps them near their destination airport until it is their turn to land.”

This week have had so-so whether, but we have managed to have two night flights so far (Monday and Wednesday). It was a cool experience. It does not matter how well you (think you) know an area - it looks different once its dark! We started with some airwork (turns, descends, climbs etc) around Hässleholm (~30km from Ljungbyhed) and then the rest have been touch-n-go landing with different settings here at Ljungbyhed. Have made landings with everything working and then with differrent abnormal settings such as

• the landing light was out (it lits up the runway as we come in for landing)
• the PFD (our “computer” screen) was out and we had to use standby instrument (airspeed, horizontal gyro and altimeter)
• when our standby instruments had no light (we then use a place a flash light between the headset and the head and have it lit up the instruments)

Today’s exercise ended with a couple of solo landing at night. It was a little cozy - the cockpit light is red…

A busy flying week is coming up after a week full of theory. We have night flying, time table flying (cross country flying with second precision) and perhaps also low flying (we fly down the 250ft AGL). Tomorrow I have to get up at 0700 LT and finish at ~2300LT with a simulator session.

Theory is up and running as well. We all though that this ATPL block would be a little less hectic, but we were wrong.. so wrong. The Aircraft General Knowledge (AGK) subjects - Powerplants, Electrics and Airframes & Systems - are quite extensive and there is a lot of things to grasp. I’ve never really been interested in motors (= powerplants) even though I like technical things. According to the people I know these subjects are very important for general understanding of airplanes and as a base for a, hopefully, coming type-rating.

I sometimes feel like this guy…