The road to my wings
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| Date | 27-06-2009 |
| Location |  |
| Message | (Saturday 2255) My visit to the mess got cut short yesterday. I don't know if I mentioned this before but I met this old Canadian guy who owns a Mooney and who had promised me a flight in it. Anyway, he called saying that he had sold the plane but it was still in his possession, so if I wanted that flight he had promised me it had to be Friday or Saturday. The weather was great Friday and I had not made it to the mess by then so I was still up for another flight. I asked him if my wife and kid could come along and he said it was ok. I was so excited! I was taking my kid up in a small plane for the first time and couldn't wait to see his reaction. To cut a long story short he enjoyed it quite alot and I would have paid a fortune just to see that look on his face anyway. The Mooney is quite a good performer compared to other single piston engined aircraft of the same category. It has retractable gear among other things but man when you're used to the T6, this thing was sooo slow. The T6 has about 9 times as much horsepower compared to the Mooney. We were climbing at 250 feet/min where I'm normally used to 2500 feet/min on a bad day. Anyway I enjoyed it and got a new flight experience. Now it's time to head to bed. On Monday I have the IIT pre-test and I suppose Tuesday will be the actual test so I have some work to do tomorrow to be as prepared as can be. JØR did his test Friday and snaked it. Well done! I hope to join in the IIT snake pit... /GEA |
| Date | 26-06-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Friday 1600) Got my second mission (CH14) flown for the day and I'm now at home ready for the weekend. The flight went well. I did Rolls, Loops, Clover Leafs, Cuban Eights and a slow flight and stall sequence. Then it was RTB (Return to base) for PFL's, closed patterns, a couple of flapless landings and overhead breaks. It was a good mission with lots of action so I was tired afterwards. Before you do any aerobatics you always do a g-awarness check where you pull 3 g's to one side, then unload at 0.5g for 5 seconds and pull 4 g's to the other side to check how tolerant you are as tolerance to g's changes from day to day depending on many factors. My tolerance was ok during the check but during some of the manoeuvrs I got a bit of tunnel vision so I had to strain a bit to keep the vision clear as the mission progressed. Tonight I'll be going to the mess for a well deserved cold beer as I haven't been there for a month or so. Hamster will be there too and we have to start planning what we're going to do about Minot airshow in North Dakota which is just three weeks from now. It's a five and a half hour drive from here so we'll probably drive Friday after school, stay at a hotel in Minot and then drive back Saturday after the show. That's it for now. Have a good weekend! /GEA |
| Date | 26-06-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Friday 0955) Just landed from IF9. It was a good solid flight according to the instructor, so my next IF trip will be the pre-test and if that goes well I'm on for the IIT (Initial instrument test). The conditions were great this morning so that made life a bit easier too. I booked some leave for the beginning og August. Apart from that I also booked flight tickets and a hotel in Hawaii. I even taught my kid how to say Honolulu but he's still struggling with that. I need a holiday as I haven't really had any since I got here in September. So a week in August will be nice. Going to Hawaii is also one of those "once in a lifetime" chances now that we're here. First of all it would be much more expensive to go from back home but also I wouldn't even bother to sit in a plane for 24 hours each way just to go for a holiday. Not to mention all the jet lag connected with such long distance flights. I might make it on the schedule again today but I don't know yet. There are 18 planes on the flight line so the chances of winning one of them on a later wave are pretty good. In that case it'll be CH14, where I'll be doing Clover Leafs and Cuban Eights for the first time among other things. Aloha! /GEA |
| Date | 26-06-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Friday 0710) Yesterday was a very hot day with temperatures in the mid 30's. Then suddenly in the evening, the sky turned black to the South. I switched the TV on and on the weather channel there was a weather warning that stated something like this: "A thunderstorm has been observed about 10km South of Moose Jaw, moving North. Stay out of its path as it is of destructive charachter with wind gusts of well over 100km/h." So I went out in our back yard and took the garden furniture inside the shed as I didn't want some chair to fly around and land on my car or somebody elses car for that matter... In the few minutes that I was out there the wind picked up really fast and there were lightnings all over the place. It was a terrific storm which lasted about an hour, giving us some heavy rain among other things. And back to business. This morning I'm on for IF9 with an istructor that I haven't flown with before. The weather is really nice so it's almost a shame to fly an IF mission with your head dug well inside the cockpit. But it's always better than nothing. That's it for now. If I don't update again today - Have a great weekend! /GEA |
| Date | 25-06-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Thursday 1105) I had my solo flight yesterday afternoon and it was great fun. I flew out to the area, did a couple of loops, some slow flight and a few stalls and then headed home with 5% torque, which simulates a dead engine with the propellor feathered. So I got on a good glide profile, did a PFL (Practise Forced Landing) and did a touch and go. All the time I didn't touch the PCL (throttle) which is the whole idea with a PFL, simulating that your engine is dead. After that I did a few patterns with overhead breaks, straight ins and a couple of closed patterns directly to high key which puts me in a good position for a PFL. Time just flew by. It was also great fun in the area. The aircraft is approved for 7g so I made sure to get as close to that limit as possible without exceeding it. I went up to just over 6.5g in order to leave a buffer in case the g meter was off or whatever. A solo flight like that is such a great confidence builder and I clearly see the importance of such flights on a course like this. Just the fact that there's nobody to point out my mistakes makes me work harder to pick them up, preferably before they happen. This morning I had IF8. The trip went ok but wasn't as good as I normally fly. I was tired and had a hard time doing calculations etc. so I did a few errors and was inaccurate at times. I asked to stay off the schedule for the rest of the day and so far it looks like it's going to happen but you never know. /GEA |
| Date | 24-06-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Wednesday 1420) The Danish defence budget for the next five years has been done. The military will get 3.5 billion kroners more but unfortunately that's where the good news ends for us here in Canada. They have decided that the number of F16's will be cut down from the present 48 to a number in the region of 30-36 which is a drastic cut. It also reflects how many new fighters will be bought to replace the F16 when the time comes. The fact that they need helicopter and transport pilots in the Air Force and that the fighter squadrons are almost full makes things even worse. Putting two and two together it doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out that they will not need us as fighter pilots once we're done with the course. If they have other plans for us already, they won't tell us until we're almost done with this course in just over a year's time from now, in order for us to keep doing our best throughout the whole course. Only time will tell but I'm more realistic than optimistic about it. However, if I could get the fighter pilot wings on the Hawk I'll be happy that I got that far and then whatever happens will happen. We'll get a great carreer no matter what we get to fly. It just sucks to have got this far and then not reaching the goal after all. But nothing is sure yet. Hopefully I'm wrong about my assumptions... As always, I hope for the best but expect the worst. That way I never get disappointed. /GEA |
| Date | 24-06-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Wednesday 1355) Monday's flight went bad and I also got a bad grade (Marginal) for it. To make things worse, yesterday I was up doing CH13, which includes spin and aerobatics and I got air sick again after a month without any problems. The flight had gone really well up until I started feeling bad, at which point the IP took over control and took us back for an ILS approach. So this morning I went to see the doc and I was hoping that he'd say I should fly on and see him again if I get air sick again. At the same time I was fearing the worst - being put on the "spin" programme, where you sit in a kind of centrifuge, twice a day, including weekends, for four weeks or however necessary. During those four weeks you're off the flying programme and even worse: You're not allowed to consume any alcohol. At the moment one of the Danish students is on the course because the air sickness pills didn't do the job for him and I was really hoping not to join him. But anyway, the doc said that since I had flown for almost a month without problems after having taken the pills, I should just go fly and see him again if it happens again. So I delivered my "ungrounded" chit to the scheduler and five minutes later I was back on the schedule. So we did the remainder of CH13, which was loops, PFL and some pattern work including flap-less landings and got a snake. Later on today I'll be flying CH13A, which is the first solo where you fly to the area and do aerobatics on your own. /GEA |
| Date | 22-06-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Monday 1345) Friday's flight went well. The weened was good except that the weather was terrible yesterday. Today I'm on for CH12 at 1620 but I don't know whether we'll actually end up flying IF8 because the weather is starting to close in on us. On CH12 you do spins which require an entry altitude of about 15,000 feet and the clouds seem to be getting lower than that by the time we'll be taking off. I'm prepared for both flights so it's not such a big deal if I get thrown on one or the other. /GEA |
| Date | 18-06-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Thursday 1115) Had IF6 this morning on the first wave. It was nice and smooth up there and all went really well. It was really about fine polishing my techniques for IF. The weather is nice but they're expecting some pretty nasty thunderstorms to come in. And the thunderstorms here are quite violent compared to the ones we have back at home. One thing that worries me a bit it the hail storms that they get. It won't be pretty looking at the car out of the window from the house and seeing the hail falling on that sweet paint. The same counts for the other Danes with the sports cars. None of us have a garage and as far as I know, the Corvettes have a fiber glass body... I'm not on the schedule for the rest of the day (yet) so I'll go home for lunch with my little boy now that I'm not flying at lunch time. /GEA |
| Date | 17-06-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Wednesday 1220) IF5 went well yesterday. We did IF12 stuff which is actually the pre-test for the IIT (Initial Instrument Test), which comes on IF13. I'm ready for the test but I want to get a bit more practise and exposure to IF flying before going for the actual pre-test and test. I'm still at the stage where I encounter new things on every flight, so even though my flying is good, I don't want to get down-graded on the test because I encounter a new situation because we've rushed through the initial flights to get the test done. The other Danes are all at about IF8 or IF9 so I want to have the same amount of "practise" before going for the test too. Then it'll be most fair to compare our grades at the test. I was on the schedule to fly IF6 right now but I got scratched off due to aircraft unavailability. We only have 13 Harvards on the flight line today and I was one of the unlucky ones to get cancelled. Otherwise we've been in the fast lane lately with about 18 airframes every day doing 5 flights each. It feels strange to not fly for a day now that we've gotten so used to flying. I had time to do all kinds of studying, write the school magazine article for Bandit flight and even go pay some bills. I just had a look at tomorrow's schedule and I'm on for IF6 at 0810. I'm not too keen on those early morning ones as I have to be in for the 0700 weather briefing and then directly to flight brief and flying. Not the end of the world though... /GEA |
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