The road to my wings
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| Date | 19-04-2010 |
| Location |  |
| Message | (Monday 1830) The Viking party last Friday was a great success once again. This morning we had some more IF ground school and then we didn't have much to do as none of us were on the schedule. I'm on for CH5 tomorrow morning so you bet I look forward to it. I want to try out some of the advanced stuff tomorrow if I have the time. With that I mean some of the BFM (Basic fighter manoeuvering) stuff like hard turn, pitchback and slice, even though they're post solo things. I guess you can never start too early. After CH5 I'll probably get IF1 and then it's time for the solo check so if all goes without too much delay I'll get my first solo in this week. This afternoon Hamster and I went to the hangar to practise some cockpit drills but all the jets were out flying so we went to the control tower instead and just watched planes do overhead brakes, PFL's, take off and land from up there and talked with the controllers who are always willing to answer any questions. And I actually had alot of them since I moved over to the Hawk. Having a good understanding of how they flow the traffic from their perspective gives you a better idea of what to expect from them when you're flying, which in turn gives you better SA (Situational Awareness) so it's definitely not a waste of time to watch stuff happening from the tower once every while. That long awaited first solo in a fast jet is almost here, so stay tuned... /GEA |
| Date | 16-04-2010 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Friday 1405) I finally got my vitamin F after 10 days without flying, mostly due to bad weather. It was a great flight even though I found myself busy dodging birds at times. You're busy in the first place in the traffic pattern, so you don't want to use too much of your energy on the birds but sometimes it's just necessary. Just to give you an idea of an overhead break in the Hawk in chronological order. You fly over the runway at 300kt at 3500 feet MSL which is about 1500 feet AGL. Half way down the runway you break at 70 degress of bank and pull 3g's. Shortly after you pull the throttle to idle and start trimming as the speed changes. About half way through the turn you select speed brake and you roll out when you've completed 180 degrees of turn. There you should be below 250kt so you select half flaps and check your spacing from the runway and start adjusting it, all depending on the wind speed and direction. When the speed is below 200kt you drop the landing gear and select 80% RPM to catch 160kt. At this point you're still flying at 3500ft MSL. Then you do your pre-landing check where you confirm that you have three greens (all gears down and locked), flap 1/2 down position, speed brake retracted and you work out what your threshold speed is going to be. The way to do it is by adding 1kt for every 200lb of fuel and stores weight that you have to your base speed of 115kt. So if you for instance have an empty centerline tank with 1600lb of fuel left in the internal tanks you add 9kt, so your threshold speed will be 124kt. That due to the tank weighing 200lb and 1600lb of fuel giving a total "excess" weight of 1800lb. Then when the runway threshold is 45 degrees behind you, you select full flaps, put 45 degrees of bank on, select about 77% RPM and put on 9 degrees nose down angle. Half way through the turn you call tower and get your landing clearance. During the turn you want to be at 3 degrees AoA. Once the turn is completed you should be at 3/4 of a mile from the end of the runway, on the 3 degree glidepath. Then you transition to 5.5 AoA by bringing the power back and pulling back on the stick until you reach your pre-calculated threshold speed and then you maintain it until touchdown. Just as you cross the runway threshold you kick the aircraft straight (rudder pedals) to eliminate any drift, select idle power and check the stick back slightly to reduce the break of descent, but you don't round out or flare the plane. All the above mentioned happens in less than a minute. And that's not to mention other traffic doing the same thing, weather conditions etc. So it can get pretty busy at times but it's all good fun. By the looks of it I'll be flying CH5 this Sunday. The weather looks like it's going to be really nice for a while now so I should go solo next week if all goes well. It's going to be sweeeet! Tonight is the viking night at the mess. We got OPS to make a call on the PA system with a PIREP stating that Viking ships have been spotted on a Lake South of here, heading North. If you didn't know a PIREP stands for a Pilot report. Sometimes when you're flying and encounter something of interest for other aircraft or ATC you call ATC and give them a PIREP. For instance today we made a PIREP about a big flock of birds just North of the airfield, which is something of great interest for other aircraft... /GEA |
| Date | 15-04-2010 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Thursday 1120) We didn't have fighter evolution for ground school but something even more interesting. It's called Advanced aerodynamics which is basically an explenation to why you fly a fighter the way you do in order to get the most out of it and beat the other guy. It's all about energy management, transferring your kinetic energy into potential energy and vice versa without wasting any of it. You look at the aircraft flight envelope charts and basically learn it by heart and use it to the optimum. The chart is a set of graphs showing you your turn radius and g's available as a function of Mach number and turn radius. By reading it you'll know what your corner velocity is (the slowest speed at which you can pull max g's) and things such as how many g's your aircraft can sustain without bleeding off any energy. It's all very technical but really is key to winning a dogfight. We also had some self study exercises about high speed aerodynamics, more precisely about how aerodynamics work at transonic, supersonic and hypersonic speeds. That's that for now. The weather is improving but I'm not on the flight schedule today. Tomorrow perhaps... /GEA |
| Date | 14-04-2010 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Wednesday 1120) After the windy weekend we got rain. Lots of rain actually and it's still very cloudy so there's very little flying going on at the base. But it's better than the last few days where there was no flying whatsoever. Yesterday we started meteorology classes which really is a refresh crash course of what we did a year and a half ago. The instructor started off with a threshold test to see how much we could remember from when we actually had met classes. Let's just say that there were alot of things we had forgotten. This afternoon we have a couple of more met classes and after that we have some fighter evlution theory which I look forward to. Other than that, on bad weather days we get briefed on a number of things. All the instructors here in Dragon flight are experienced fighter pilots so they have alot to teach us. Yesterday we had a briefing about air to ground weapons and today we had a briefing about lookout techniques in the fighter world. It's more than just stickng your eyes out of the cockpit and looking around randomly. Anyway, I'm off for lunch. /GEA |
| Date | 09-04-2010 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Friday 1220) It's a windy day today, I mean crazy windy. We have gusts of up over 50kt. One of the houses in the neighbourhood is falling apart with panels flying off the side. One of the guys who taught us ground school this week had flown for the RAF and was the Red Arrows leader at one point in his carreer, so he's quite acquainted with the Hawk. He also flew Buccaneers during the (first) Gulf War and flew A10's during an exchange with the USAF. One cannot help envying careers like those. The electricity went out a couple of hours ago. Probably it's some high tension cable that broke due to the high winds but hopefully they'll fix it before too long. At least the most essential equipment is still working here at the base. With that I mean internet. I mean can you imagine if there's nothing to do and the internet isn't working? People would start riots and start picking on eachother and vandalising the building and the aircraft. The only problem is that our lap-tops will only last for so long on battery power. So if I never update this blog again you know that I got hit and killed by a lap-top that ran out of power and was thrown randomly accross the room. Wish me luck...and have a good weekend! /GEA |
| Date | 08-04-2010 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Thursday 1555) I had my first instrument flight sim this morning, which went really well. I was pretty nervous about it as I hadn't done any IF stuff for a long time and the Hawk kit is somewhat different than the Haravard so it takes some getting used to. I was supposed to fly CH4 too but the wind has been out of limits all day. Now it's within limits but I still doubt if I'll go fly. Otherwise I'm on for IF1 tomorrow. It's good that they keep us busy as it gives us a good flow and continuity in the training instead of forgetting things between flights because they're so far apart. Later... /GEA |
| Date | 06-04-2010 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Tuesday 1820) I'm stil high from today's flight. That Hawk is just so much fun to fly. It's smooth, fast and the feeling that you're sitting on the tip of a rocket, with no windmill in front of you, is just so great. Thinking back about the holiday in the Rockies: When we were in Jasper, my kid got tired of driving around in the car so he went "Let's go back home to Canada, daddy." Oh well, I knew what he meant so I didn't bother telling him that we were still in Canada and that we had only just scratched the surface with regards to travelling in Canada. At one point on the way home he asked me to stop the car because he needed to go to the bathroom, so I found a McDonalds along the highway and pulled over and took him to the bathroom where he had a nasty smile on his face and went: "I didn't really need to go, hehe." I explained that he couldn't just bullshit his dad like that. I can only imagine what he'll do when he's 18 if he does that right now. /GEA |
| Date | 06-04-2010 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Tuesday 1540) Got my CH3 flight done this morning. It was with my Danish boss, who's a Lieutenant Colonel with background on the Draken and F16. It was a good flight. Nice weather and a tightly packed programme with lots of items to be done. We went out to the area, did some slow flight and a couple of stalls, then some aerobatics and climbed up to about 27,000 ft for a spin. On most jets you don't intentionally go and do the spin but the Hawk, being so stable as it is, you do one spin during the training just to see what it's like so that if you screw up badly on a solo you know what it looks like. From the area we finished off with a simulated emergency which led to a PFL and a bit of pattern work. On the last landing I used the drag chute as it was one of the items to be done on this flight. The chute gives quite a tuck when deployed and if you should use the wheelbrakes with it, you would stop really quickly indeed. Tomorrow we have some more ground school both in the morning and afternoon so I don't think that any of us will actually fly. On another note, the trip in the mountains was lots of fun. Easter Sunday we decided to drive all the way from Jasper to home. It was about 12 hours of driving plus the break and food stops along the way. We got home close to midnight but then we just slept in on Monday and it was great to wake up in my own bed. The weather was much better Sunday than it was Saturday so we really enjoyed the drive through the mountains even though it went relatively fast. /GEA |
| Date | 04-04-2010 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Saturday 2145) We're in Jasper, Alberta, which is in the Canadian Rockies. Yesterday we drove from home to Calgary and on to Canmore where we spent the night. As soon as I saw the mountains I dropped my jaw in awe and I haven't been able to pick it up just yet. They are truly awesome! This morning I got up before susnet in order to get a few picture of the first rays on the mountains. It was worth getting up early for. There were no people to be seen anywhere. The atmoshpere was so serene and I enjoyed every moment of it - and got a few great pictures too. Then by the time I got back to the hotel, the lazy ones had got up and after breakfast we drove on to Banff, which is a very popular ski resort area, Lake Louise, Athabasca glacier, which we couldn't see due to clouds and snow and then on to Athabasca falls and finally Jasper, which is also a popular ski resort area. So all in all we've driven 1100km. We're not sure about which way to head tomorrow. It all really depends on the weather and how everyone feels. Driving for so many hours two days in a row has been hard but we all agree that it's been well worth it. Unfortunately we haven't seen much wildlife. We were really hoping for a bear but we've had no luck yet. Happy Easter! /GEA |
| Date | 01-04-2010 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Thursday 1700) This morning I had my second flight in the jet and then this afternoon I had yet another sim. So that adds up to four X's done in two days which is the way it should be if we have to get done in time. This morning I did the takeoff, climbed to the area, did some slow flight and stalls and did the high angle stall for the first time. The high angle stall is different from all the other stalls since you point the nose up at about 70 degrees, select throttle to idle and let the aircraft drop through. Then once the nose is pointing down you select combat flaps at 150kt and pull up at 10AoA which gives you light airframe buffet. Light buffet is Alpha and Omega in the Hawk. Wheteher you're doing aerobatics, overhead break or recovering from a stall, you always go to light buffet, feel the plane shaking slightly, and keep it that way until you've finished the manoeuvr. With light buffet the plane is telling you that you're getting max lift from the wings, but if you overdo it you'll go into medium and heavy buffet and the plane will stall. So whatever you do, you always want to go close to the stall limit but keep it under control. It's just the way you fly high performance jets. After the stalls the IP gave me som unusual attitude recoveries and then it was time to play a bit before heading home so I did a few aerobatics and took us home for some pattern work. The wind was calm today and it was a true joy to land the plane every time so it went really well. In the sim, today's list of items were upgrades of what I've done so far and then a spin and PFL's (Practise forced landings) where you simulate gliding the aircraft and landing it without an engine. I made it down safely every time so hopefully it stays like that in the future. The hard part about the Forced landings is that if your engine should quit, your generator goes offline, meaning that you lose all the nice electronics like the HUD and other displays meaning that you suddenly have to fly off the standby instruments. That makes it pretty hard. Another thing is that the gear speed limit is 200kt, meaning that if you fly above 200kt with the gear down, you overspeed and damage the gear. Now when your engine is dead you want to glide at about 190kt, which is the speed that gives you the best glide ratio on the Hawk, so your margin for error is very small indeed, especially when your HUD is not there for you. Oh well, now it's time for four days away from work and I really look forward to it. Happy Easter if I don't write before then. /GEA |
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