Jimisola.com - keepin’ on

I’m back in Ljungbyhed again after almost ten (10!) days in sweet Malmö. Really enjoyed being home and off school during Easter. I’ve written quite a lot on my thesis on Threat and Error Management. It is not due until the end of August so it feels good that I’ve come this far along already. I will now have my main focus on ATPL block 3 theory (Communications, Flight Planning, Instrumentation, Performance and Principles of Flight)) and, of course, on flying. We have a lot of flying to do and soon we have our four day European tour with three students and one teacher in each airplane. We’ll have layovers in Jersey and Prague.

Then theory exams are in the end of May and flight exam (CPL/ME/IR) is up by the end of June.

During the Easter break I trained with my group and ran quite a lot (8×200m, 6×400m, 3×3x150m hill etc). It felt really good to be back for a “longer” period even though we wrestled with bad weather (snow/rain, 3-5 degress Celsius and windy). I got my training rhythm back and time will tell about a summer season…

Tomorrow I have two exercises. The first one is flight with limited panel (no attitude indicator) and abnormal attitudes (high/low nose) and the second, which includes the “Kodak moment”, contains the following:

1. Instrument take off
2. Demo engine failure above Safe Altitude (1000ft above ground level)
3. Demo engine failure in flight
4. Feather/unfeather procedure
5. Rapid descent
6. Flapless (0° flap) landing

Pay special attention to 4. Feathe/unfeature procedure during this exercise we feather and “shutdown” one of our engine for a few minutes! Then we start it up again (and unfeather). The reason why it is called the “Kodak moment” is because people always takes pictures when the engine is shutdown and the propeller is standing still in air (and hence not windwilling). So will I

Note: On some variable-pitch propellers, the blades can be rotated parallel to the airflow to reduce drag and increase gliding distance in case of an engine failure. This is called feathering.