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The road to my wings
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Name	Stephen
Date	26-10-2009
Location
Message	(Monday 1745) No flying for me today. I was on the sched but my instructor got grounded. The word is that I'll do the rest of my Nav phase (two more flights) and then probably some CH and Form and then go on the long awaited cross country when JØR and COM have finished their 2A Form phase, which is the only thing they need in order to complete 2A. Then we'll all go for the cross country together. It'll probably be a week or so and then we're off! Let's hope the weather cooperates. /GEA

Name	Stephen
Date	23-10-2009
Location
Message	(Friday 2205) I got a flight done today! The weather was just stunning. Beautiful sunshine and not a breeze. I did my first low level nav trip for 2B and enjoyed every second of it. I was on the schedule with a new instructor who has a thing for badly trimmed aircraft. I didn't know that myself but before the flight, two instructors came over and told me that I had to do my flight out of trim just to piss him off. I was reluctant at first but then I thought what the hell. So I took off and started my trip and as soon as I got settled, I slowly, but surely got the aircraft out of trim. I had the rudder so out of trim that I had to constantly fly with 5 degrees of bank to keep it going straight. I made it very obvious but he never mentioned anything. I basically side slipped for about half an hour until I figured out that he wasn't going to say anything. Hmmm, maybe he was trying to be nice or something?! Anyway, after about half an hour he gave me a new task and I figured that I had done my share for pissing him off and it hadn't worked. The new task was to fly way off track until he told me to and then when he said so I had to turn towards the target, skipping a couple of legs of the trip, and get us on target on time. If you use the GPS correctly and do the right calculations and adjustments it can be done quite easily and I ended up hitting the target just one second off, so I was happy indeed. Then after the flight we went to the mess for TGIF beer and the new instructor came over laughing his ass out. Apparently the other guys had told him what we'd been up to. I might not get the best grade for the flight, but it was alot of fun indeed! Have a good weekend /GEA

Name	Stephen
Date	22-10-2009
Location
Message	(Thursday 1730) I got ungrounded this morning so I'm back in business. I'm not on the schedule for tomorrow which means that this has been my worst week in a very long time without any flying whatsoever. The good thing is that now we have a new scheduler in Bandit flight. He's Danish and he's doing his best to prioritize us. I'm the Dane with lowest priority since I'm the only one who's finished 2A so far but I'll still be on the schedule often by the looks of it. If I can finish 2B by December it would be awesome. Then I can just relax and enjoy a nice and long Christmas holiday before I can start thinking about the Hawk, while the other Danes get their course done and get ready to start on the Hawk. Tomorrow, Major "Frosty" is getting mugged out at the mess, meaning that it's his last night at the mess. Normally it's because the person is going on pension or moving on to another job or getting posted somewhere else. Well, Frosty is the only remaining pilot in Moose Jaw who did service on the F101 Voodoo. He also flew the T33, the F5 and for a preiod he was an exchange pilot with the USAF, flying F15's in Alaska. What an exchange and what a carreer indeed! I had the pleasure of exchanging a few words with him when we flew to Saskatoon and stayed there overnight. I was mostly interested in his F15 time but also the Voodoo time. The "century" jets are my favorite era jets, possibly even more than the "teen" series of jets which are closer to my generation. Everything, good or bad, has to come to an end eventually. I look forward to his speech tomorrow... /GEA

Name	Stephen
Date	20-10-2009
Location
Message	(Tuesday 1735) Still grounded and will probably be so the rest of the week. I'm not feeling any better so I'm still here at home. My little boy is having a blast in the meantime. No daycare and I've been home for a few days now. He has a Eurofighter Typhoon die-cast model which is his "new best toy" and I have to watch him fly it around the room all the time. The only problem is that instead of calling it Typhoon, he calls it "Thai-fool." He'll learn eventually... /GEA

Name	Stephen
Date	17-10-2009
Location
Message	(Saturday 1800) This place is a freak show. Just before we went to Toronto we had a small blizzard with a windchill of -14C. Today we had +20C. It was really nice and it's expected to be rather mild tomorrow too. This place just keeps suprising me. My kid and I went to the playground and enjoyed the weather. You have to enjoy it while it lasts here... /GEA

Name	Stephen
Date	15-10-2009
Location
Message	(Thursday 1135) Back to business. I went to see the doc this morning because I caught a bad cold and he grounded me for the rest of the week. It's ok as the weather is all crappy and nobody's flying anyway. In a few minutes, I'll pack my stuff and go home for the rest of the day. I had some stuff to do which I got done this morning and now ther's no point in being here and risking of contaminating the other guys. The cross country which was supposed to start today has been postponed (nothing to do with me being grounded). We might go next week or the week after, all depending on when the next two Danes finish their 2A course. With the weather the way it is, it might take a while to get them through. Otherwise we got more bad news. Because of all of these delays, we won't start the Hawk course until January 30th, which in turn means that we'll graduate and get our wings in July or August instead of June. You never know, I might end up being in Canada for the next 10 years or so if things keep going this way. Now I'm taking off, picking my little boy up from the day care and go home and rest for the remainder of the day - right! With my little boy at home, resting is not an option... /GEA

Name	Stephen
Date	14-10-2009
Location
Message	(Wednesday 1850) I apologise for being so long in writing in here. Friday the weather was crappy once again so I didn't get my form trip with hamster. However I got my 2B low level nav sim. It was the same map and same route as the sim we had on 2A. I couldn't find my old map so I borrowed one from a buddy of mine. That's the advantage of NATO standard maps. The difference between this sim and all the other nav stuff I've done so far was that I had to programme the waypoints and target into the GPS this time, meaning that you use much less time reading the map and you can actually predict when you'll be over the turnpoints and target way in advance - and dead accurately. Nav flying was easy before, but now it's almost stupid easy. All we need now is the information from the GPS on a HUD and then you almost never need to look down in the cockpit again. At the end of the sim he gave me an engine failure where I had to do an emergency landing on a small airfield. I got the plane down on the 2900 foot runway and only just managed to stop at the end of the runway with litteraly just feet to spare. But that's all good. You just make it happen and whether you have 10 or 10,000 feet of runway remaining when you stop, it doesn't really matter. Saturday we went to Toronto, as I had written before, and visited my second cousin who has lived there his whole life. We got back this afternoon from one great holiday. Even the weather was better there. Getting back to this nasty cold weather wasn't fun at all. Anyway, they took us to Niagara falls, we went up the CN tower and saw a bunch of other tourist stuff. I have a thing for tall buildings and CN tower is one impressive piece of engineering. Until recently it was the world's tallest building and you have to see it to believe it. It looks awesome too and the view over the city that you get from the top is just stunning. The best part about the holiday, however, was catching up with my family, who I hadn't seen for almost 13 years. Last time we had met was at his dad's funeral in Malta. Both his parent were born and grew up in Malta and immigrated to Canada in their young years. He's married to a woman whose parents also immigrated to Canada , but from Italy. It was great to meet the whole family and somehow I felt like I was in the middle of a movie, "Goodfellas" or so. Eveyrone was fantastic and so hospitable and everyone was talking loud with an Italian accent. Martin's son has a Mustang GT almost like mine, just alot louder and a bit newer. He was showing me the car when his cell phone rang and he said that his uncle Gino was coming over because he wanted to meet me. So he came over - in his Ferrari 360 Spider. What a car! He told me he'd come by again the next day and let me take it for a spin but the next day we had rain and that car had never been out in the rain before so it stayed indoors. That's just my luck. Anyway, we flew back this morning and it's good to be back home but it just confirms that I'm a city boy. Moose Jaw is a dump compared to Toronto, which really is a superb and huge city. The food we had was just great. Both the home made stuff and the Italian restaurants we ate at. When you go to a small Italian restaurant with room for 20 people and you can hear them speak (shout) Italian in the kitchen, you know you're getting good food. And it didn't disappoint. I ate the best pizza ever. One of those where you could taste every ingerdient individually and everything had just so much taste in it. Toronto was great. So much to see. So little time. Tomorrow it's back to business. /GEA

Name	Stephen
Date	08-10-2009
Location
Message	(Thursday 1855) I got back home - and only just. The weather was good along the route but by the time we got to Moose Jaw it was detiriorating rapidly from the West. I did the hi approach which was great fun. You descend like a rocket on that approach! From 20,000 feet to 4,300 in less than 4 minutes, since you're descending at just over 4,000 feet per minute. On the way to Fargo we flew over Minot AFB and could clearly see the B52's on the ramp from 27,000 feet up. I must admit that I do have a soft spot for those big, eight engined bad boys. I was on for a form flight this afternoon but I was simply too tired to feel comfortable flying in formation, so I asked to get cancelled. We would have probably not flown anyway but I didn't want to take the chance. Tomorrow I'm on for that same form flight, this time with my friend "Hamster" on my wing. The weather isn't looking too promising though. The winter is surely approaching. This afternoon it snowed heavily and it looks like we'll have crappy weather again tomorrow. Then in the afternoon I'm on the schedule for a low level navigation sim. At least the good thing about sims is that you know it won't get cancelled due to weather... /GEA

Name	Stephen
Date	08-10-2009
Location
Message	(Thursday 0630) Yesterday's plan got changed completely. The form flight got cancelled due to weather and instead of going to Spokane, we decided to go to Fargo, North Dakota. We did a formation take off and then on top of the clouds we went our seperate ways as two individual aircraft. The take off was rather "sporty" with winds gusting up to 35kt. And shortly after we got airborne we entered clouds and it takes alot of getting used to when flying formation in clouds. So we got to Fargo and got vectors for an ILS approach and then had a rough night downtown. This morning I got up at 0430 to start planning and all is set now. The plan is to fly back home in an hour or so. When we get back home I'll try my first Hi approach, which I've only done in the sim so far. The good thing about 2B is that the student always sits in the front seat, no matter what type of flight it is. As you can probably recall from 2A, the student always sat in the back seat for IF trips. See you back in Canada. /GEA

Name	Stephen
Date	06-10-2009
Location
Message	(Tuesday 1950) The plane for tomorrow got changed. I'm still on for FM9 but then in the afternoon I'll be flying to the States as preparation for next week's cross country. We'll be flying to Spokane in Washington state, stay there overnight and then fly back the next morning - all weather permitting of course. I've had alot of reading tonight in order to prepare myself for flying South of the border. The Americans have quite a few different rules compared to the Canadian ones and I want to be as prepared as can be. I also got the necessary approach plates and enroute charts for the trip this afternoon and had a good look at them for a few hours, just to familiarize myself with the procedures among other things. It's going to be fun - my fingers are crossed for the weather. One new thing I learned today in the form flight that I forgot to mention before, was the drop landing. It's where both planes fly a straight in approach and then at about 200 feet AGL, lead starts an overshoot while you continue down to land. It's funny how you change your attention from lead to the runway. For the whole flight, all that mattered was staying on lead's wing, and then suddenly you have to force yourself to look away from him and look ahead, and the runway is right there ahead of you. The plane is very slobby when configured for landing and it takes some getting used to. It reacts slowly and you therefore have to anticipate it quite alot. I'll keep you updated... /GEA

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