The road to my wings
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| Date | 21-05-2009 |
| Location |  |
| Message | (Thursday 2115) Finally I got airborne and by the looks of it I'll be flying every day or almost every day from now on. The runway that we normally use for CH (Clearhood) flying was closed for maintenance so we had to do an IF(Instrument Flying) trip instead. That means that I flew from the back seat as it would give the instructor a good view to keep an lookout for other aircraft while I'm dug in the cockpit concentrating on the instruments. The flight itself went great even though we did stuff from flights which are further ahead in the syllabus. All those sim flights really paid off I guess. The instructor didn't have anything to debrief which is a good sign. From what I've heard he's a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to flying which is a great thing when you're a student. That way you get used to flying precisely and not be satisfied with flying "at almost" the assigned altitude, heading or airspeed but strive to be right on. The biggest difference than in the sim is really the turbulence. Today there was quite a deal of thermal activity so it was very bumpy at low level. It's expected that the plane bumps around and is hard to control but one thing I had to concentrate on was actually reading the instruments. When your head is moving around all the time it's sometimes hard to see what your exact heading is. On the way home I got airsick and filled my puke-bag but it really doesn't worry me. After such a long time without flying it's very normal to get sick. /GEA |
| Date | 20-05-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Wednesday 1100) Yeah you've guessed it. I got cancelled. This really sucks. This part of my pilot training should have been the best time of my life, yet it has exceeded all of my worst expectations. The only thing that could make things worse now is that I get the helicopter spot in 4-5 weeks. Today's actually our original course end date which means that if all had gone after the original plan we'd be done with Phase IIA today, the 20th of May. But after almost nine months here I've still only had one flight. Our class will probably do a course-end party sometime this week to celebrate our imaginary IIA gradutaion. I guess I'm naive to keep thinking that I'll "fly tomorrow" having been here so long, but sooner or later I do have to start flying as I'm way behind now. What I fear is that I'll be having 2-3 flights a day and the quality will be terrible as I won't have time to summon over the flights and prepare myself properly among other things. Yet it's still better than not flying. /GEA |
| Date | 19-05-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Tuesday 1645) It was a great long weekend where we did a whole bunch of small things which also made time go really fast. Saturday we spent most of the day in Regina, looking around, doing some shopping and relaxing. Sunday I had a practise sim and so did I on Monday. Then Sunday afternoon we had a birthday party at one of the Danish instructor's as his little boy turned three. It was a nice afternoon where I enjoyed a long chat with one of the German Hawk instructors who flew Tornados back in Germany before being sent to Canada. I also met a middle aged Canadian guy who owns a Mooney (single engine private aircraft) and he asked me to give him a call so that we could go for a flight one of these days. I've never flown a Mooney before and compared to other aircraft in its class, it has a pretty good performance and includes retractable landing gear. Monday afternoon we visited the Museum of Western development here in Moose Jaw which was actually pretty good! Today I wasn't even on the programme but I am on tomorrow's at 1020. I'm ready to go - the question is whether everything else in the equation will add up... /GEA |
| Date | 14-05-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Thursday 2235) Today I found the Bandit flight scheduler and asked him, out of curiosity, why they're not flying me while everyone else, including all the Danes, is flying. He mentioned that this particular week my instructor is away so that's the simple reason but otherwise it's because of some of the many rules we have. When a senior student finishes his course, one of us gets put into his place. Now once they start flying you they have to keep you going because if you don't fly for more than nine days in a row, then you have to do a review of your last flight, meaning that alot of slots will go "wasted" that way. Now the weather's been very crappy lately among other things. That meant that the last few senior students from 0805 couldn't get their last flights done and it also meant that the new students were approaching their nine-day limit so they got prioritized...and me, well, I just had to wait again and again. So when the scheduler told me that next week I'll fly for sure, my reply was "Yeah, I've heard that a few times before." He smiled because he knew I got a point there but weather depending, I will start flying on Tuesday. For some reason, Monday is a public holiday here so we have a long weekend. But that doesn't mean we have a four day week next week. It just means that we'll work Saturday or Sunday. The weather seems like it's going to improve over the weekend and hopefully it'll get even better during the early days of next week. I WANT TO FLY! /GEA |
| Date | 13-05-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Wednesday 0850) I'll never get used to the Saskatchewan weather. Yesterday the temperature was over 20C and right now it's snowing heavily. It's mid May for crying out loud! Anyway I have nothing on today's programme so I'll just do some reading and refreshing of some of the aircraft systems and flying techniques. Now I'm off to the daily morning briefing to hear about how crappy the weather is - this time from a Meteorologist. As if I couldn't figure it out on my own... /GEA |
| Date | 11-05-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Monday 1405) You've guessed it. I haven't been in the air still. This morning I had CH4-EFTD, which stands for Clearhood 4 Emergency Flight Training Device. In plain English it's a sim where you go through as many emergencies as possible. You'd normally do this sim just prior to going solo so that they make sure that you know how to handle any emergency in the case that it happens when you're out on a solo flight. Anyway, it went really well and I learned quite a few good things which I hadn't even thought of before. Nothing new has happened otherwise. We've had alot of model flying in the weekend. We're probably staring a club called the Bushell Park RC club with myself in the lead taking the initiative to get it going. Then we can organise events and maybe competitions. Now it's time to have a look at the aircraft manual and confirm some of the things I learned today. /GEA |
| Date | 07-05-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Thursday 1535) Had a relatively busy day today. This morning I had a sim, later on I had the monthly egress training and in the afternoon I had another sim. Both sims went really well. I got a snake for the first one and I'm pretty sure I got one for the second one too but I haven't received the prog card yet. The weather's really nice and the planes got ungrounded this morning while I was doing my first sim so there's been quite alot of flying going on. Tomorrow all of us Danes are on the flying programme. Whether we actually get to fly is unknown... Our SNR talked to us about our fate today. He'll be going to Denmark soon to have a talk with the Danish Tactical Air Command about us. He has been told that the "6th" guy has to be found by (latest) 1st of July. That means that in less than two months, one of us will get the bad news and five of us will know that they'll be staying here as planned. The 6th guy has a 99.9% probability of going to Alabama for helicopter training, instead of the usual transport training. Since our boss has so little to judge us on, due to the low amount of flying that we've done so far, he'll include the subjective view of the RDAF Flying school as the ground base for the selection. They'll do a write up about every one of us and then he'll decide who it's going to be from whatever ground he has at that point. That's it for now. Cross your fingers for me! /GEA |
| Date | 06-05-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Wednesday 2125) First of all I uploaded the Hawk test flight video which you can find on my new Youtube channel (the old one got hacked and removed). The new channel is called dkF16GEA. Today after school we went to Regina to a steak house with COM and Ida. It was a great supper and sometimes it's nice just to get away from the base and actually realise that there's a life on the other side of the fence too. The Harvard fleet has been ungrounded. Having said that the day will start with 11 aircraft tomorrow and the number will increase to the usual 14-15 as the last few planes get inspected. Myself I'm on the programme for two sims tomorrow but no flying. It's SO frustrating to be here and see some of the others fly but not fly yourself. On Friday we've been here for eight months and I only logged one flight in December. When I do start flying, on the other hand, I should be pretty comfortable with the aircraft and its systems because of all the sim rides we've been having. But that's not how it should be. Our original end of course date for Phase IIA, which is what we're doing, is on the 20th of this month! Obviously we won't make it and that's why our course has been extended by a good chunk of time. I did some preparations for tomorrow's sims but most of it is repetition and applied IF stuff so nothing new. /GEA |
| Date | 06-05-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Wednesday 1245) Had a sim this morning and it was great. I was sharp and I was turned on so it couldn't have been much better. I flew three approaches, a couple of VOR/DME and a PAR. The instructor modified basically all of my plans throughout the trip to challenge me and that kept me going and made it more interesting instead of sticking to your plan and just plain sail along as briefed. I flew the Hawk yesterday and it's still in one piece. It flies pretty nicely, however it has a rather high wing-loading the way I see it. Also the power system is just adequate. I'll move its CG (centre of gravity) back a tad next time I fly it and change the flying stab throws to make them move more than they do. On a first flight I always have the CG a bit more foreward than suggested just in case that the suggested one is wrong. Having the CG foreward on a plane makes it more pitch stable up to the point where the elevators cannot lift the nose off the ground. The more aft the CG, the more pitch manoevrable the plane will be, up to the point where elevator control loses authority over the pitch. The CG "normal" position values are 25-33% MAC (Mean aerodynamic chord) and all my models fly happily at around 28% MAC. If only RC model aicraft had Fly-by-wire... Enough aerodynamics! I also have some bad news today. The Harvard fleet is grounded due to a rudder issue which I cannot elaborate on just yet. Hopefully they'll be flying again by the end of the week. /GEA |
| Date | 05-05-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Tuesday 1350) Yestrday's sim was terrible. I got a High Standard and learned a few new techniques so I guess it could have been worse, but it could certainly have been better too. I wasn't sharp at all. I'm on tomorrow's programme but the weather doesn't seem to be very promising. Chances of rain and rather windy conditions. The good thing is that I'm on the first wave at 0800 anf the weather is supposed to worsen during the day so perhaps it'll be good enough for my flight in the morning. Later on today I plan to test fly my Hawk model. I'll let you know if I left the flying site with a model or a plastic bag full of parts... /GEA |
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