The road to my wings
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| Date | 03-05-2009 |
| Location |  |
| Message | (Sunday 2210) The major event of the weekend was that my wife and kid got back from Denmark afte eight weeks away. I hadn't mentioned anything about them being away intentionally... The airshow was nice yesterday, yet the public attendance was much smaller than I had expected. There was a nice variety of aircraft, however all of them were from the Canadian forces. My friend PLA came over from Cold Lake for the weekend as they did a four-ship Hawk mock attack on our base and he got a back seat during the attack. The plan was that the pilot would drink his brains out Saturday night and then PLA could fly the plane back to Cold lake while the pilot slept in the back seat. It's always nice meeting him and hearing about what he's doing over at 419 squadron. This morning we went to take a closer look at the C17 Globemaster III after being invited by one of its pilots. It's quite an awesome plane and the cockpit is quite advanced. HUD (Head Up Display), CMFD's (Colour Multi FunctÃon Displays) and it's flown with a small stick unlike all the other big birds. One of the pilots was an exchange pilot from the USAF. He had flown C5 Galaxy for some years before going over to the C17. He says this one handles like a small jet compared to the other one. It's all FBW (Fly by wire) and handles really nicely. Tomorrow's back to business. I'm not on the flying programme (grrr!) but on for a sim at 0800. I'm starting to hate that sim - well, not really, but I'm dying to fly. /GEA |
| Date | 30-04-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Thursday 1945) The demo CF18 that I uploaded pictures of had trouble with the landing gear so the pilot flew it back to Cold Lake with the hope that they'll get it fixed by Saturday for the airshow. In the mean time he flew back to here in a twin stick and he just flew a practise demo. I watched it from my study room window at my house, which is just outside the base fence. I've seen quite a few F18 demos during the years, Finnish, Spanish and Swiss but this is by far the best I've seen. This pilot is really hardcore. The display ends with a high speed low fly-by from behind the crowd line and after flying over the crowd he pulls to the vertical to do some vertical rolls. Now to get to the crowd line it means that he flies right over my house with full burners. I wish I could say that my house shook when he flew over but I can't. I think the house shifted by a few inches. It was awesome! Hopefully I'll get the opportunity to take some pictures tomorrow, which will also be the Snowbirds (read Slowbirds) acceptance display, meaning that it's their first show of the season and their task is to perform in front of the Air Force bosses to get a "go" for the season. Tomorrow early morning I have another sim at freaking what feels like the middle of the night. It's basically a repetition of what I did today so nothing new on that front. The only thing that's always new is the emergency. You know it's going to come every time but you never know what it's gonna be. /GEA |
| Date | 30-04-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Thursday 0950) The weather was terrible yesterday but it cleared up this morning so flying has been resumed. I had a sim both yesterday and this morning with briefing at 0620, so I was up early indeed! Yesterday's sim wasn't too good and I actually got a High Standard instead of the usual snake but I got my "Vitamin S" this morning. This morning's sim was a long one. Did the published local departure, a couple of point to points to holding patterns and then it was time for some vectors for three PAR approaches, also known as GCA. PAR stands for Precision Approach Radar and GCA is Ground Controlled Approach. What you do on a PAR/GCA is bascially let the controller on the ground control your approach. He tells you what headings to fly and whether you're above or below the glidpath. He can clearly see if you're on track and glidepath on his precision radar so he'll give you small corrections during the whole approach and you just follow them carefully down to the minimum altitude, which is at a height of 200 feet AGL (above ground level) at which point you look out the windscreen. If you're still in clouds you then commence an overshoot and if you have runway in sight you transition to land. It's good fun and it really tests how precisely you fly and how good the PAR controller is to keep you where you should be, taking wind drift into consideration. Some of the planes for the airshow have arrived. The F18 Hornet and F86 Sabre are both here... /GEA |
| Date | 28-04-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Tuesday 1125) So the last couting exam is over and all did pretty good. Myself, I had a wrong answer so I got 98.3% which doesn't really change my average grade for ground school. Our SNR (Senior National Representative) aka. our Danish boss was down here to talk to us and mentioned that he has talked to the school about putting us on the same programme as our fellow Canadian students. What that means is that once we start flying, if we don't need to fly all the trips, we won't. It's good news, because that means that we'll skip some of the "boring" repetition kind of flights and go directly to the next step. The best part of it is that the Danish Airforce has paid for our flights in advanced, which means that we'll get the "extra" flights on a later occasion, perhaps a few extra formation flights or a longer cross country. It's great news, really! All flying is cancelled for today. The weather turned out even worse than forecasted. This morning there was snow everywhere and low clouds hanging over the province, so it's far from ideal for flying. It'll just be tomorrow I guess. /GEA |
| Date | 27-04-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Monday 2115) The Viking party went great last Friday. It was quite possibly the best mess night of the year. I had booked a practise sim for Saturday morning as Sunday was unavailable so I decided not to drink too much at the party Friday. Considering that Saturday was one of those "the morning after the night before" kinda deal I wasn't expecting too much of the sim, but it went surprisingly well. The weekend was nice and easy and today I was supposed to fly but the weather turned nasty in the afternoon so all clearhood flights got cancelled. I used the opportunity to take my Hawk model to the flight line and take a few pictures of it with its "big brother," which I now uploaded in the picture gallery - don't hesitate to take a look! Tomorrow we have the final exam in Low level navigation planning and after that I'm on the programme, once again, for CH2. However the weather isn't looking promising at all, which means that tomorrow's programme will get bumped to Wednesday if the forecast is right. I'll fly eventually... This weekend we have the airshow here at Moose Jaw, as you probably know. I look forward to seeing the planes but at the same time I dread the fact that we have to sell freaking hot-dogs on the day. I'll try to sneak out and take some pictures, anyway. At least when the F86 Sabre and the F18 fly... /GEA |
| Date | 24-04-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Friday 1520) The sim was ok but I wasn't as sharp as I wanted to be. Yet I got the "snake" and learned a bunch of new stuff so I'm happy. We've (the Danes) been cleared off so that we can make the last preparations for the Viking party. So after the sim I went to the hangar to put my harness and helmet back in place and after I got out of the hangar I saw a couple of F18's on the apron, starting up and taxiing out. Yeah! So I stood there and watched them taxi to the runway and take-off. In the meantime my flight instructor had just landed and walked by and saw me with a broad smile and a boner so he stopped and said: "Just for the record, we'll be flying the blue one and NOT the grey one on Monday..." Oh well, that's a start I guess. And that brings me to mention that I am on the programme for Monday, yes for a real flight... /GEA |
| Date | 24-04-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Friday 1300) Another week and I didn't make it in the air. But by now I'm so used to it that it doesn't bother me at all. I just had a sim briefing and the sim is in 10 minutes from now. It's another IF trip, which will probably be the last trip from the "Star programme" as we'll be flying the real thing now so there's no point doing the flights in the sim anymore. An Italian instructor came looking for me today because he just finished building a P51 Mustang R/C model and asked me if I could test fly it for him. It's a big model and I'm pretty anxious to try it out, but not before I've checked it inside out a few times. He needs an asphalt runway for it so I'll probably test fly my Hawk the same place, maybe on the same day too. We got the mess decorated for the Viking party yesterday and got all our Viking costumes ready and everything else should be in place too, so I think we're good to go. That's it for now. The sim is up so I better get in an IF mode to be as prepared as possible. /GEA |
| Date | 23-04-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Thursday 1030) I'm on today's schedule but it's at 1640 and at that time I'll be unavailable as we'll be in the process of getting the mess decorated for tomorrow's Viking party. Damn it! However, had I been available I would probably still not have flown as the weather is overcast and not ideal for early Clearhood flights. This morning we had a couple of lessons more in Navigation training. It's all about drawing your route and other necessary information on the map for flying low level navigation. The map has to be done in a "standard" manner so that if another pilot has to fly your mission, he would know exactly where to find the information he needs and how to read your map. It's going to be awesome fun flying the navigation phase of the course. It wasn't my strong side back at flying school as I was pretty impatient between waypoints and I made life harder for myself, but I think I've learned a few things since then, being more patient among others. Low level nav missions on the Harvard II are flown at 240kts ground speed at 500 feet AGL (above ground level). On the Hawk it gets to be double as fun as you'd fly at 450kts at 250 feet AGL. Faster and lower must make it much more fun. I really hope I get a flight tomorrow. This week was a good one for TOP as he flew the first three week days in a row and has a sim today, and maybe another flight tomorrow. I hope it gets just as stable for the rest of us before too long. /GEA |
| Date | 21-04-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Tuesday 1915) I'm still grounded but will most probably get ungrounded tomorrow morning. We're finally flying, with the exception of me of course, but that's how it goes when you're sick. The Viking party on Friday is approaching fast and the final preparations are on the way. It's more than just a party. During an event like that, we'll be ambassadors representing our country, so it's not for no reason that we put such an effort into it. This week there's night flying at the base too so there's flying until about 0100, which makes it hard to fall asleep at times. Anyway, I'll let you know as soon as I'm airborne. /GEA |
| Date | 19-04-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Sunday 1315) So I didn't get to fly this week but having grounded myself last Friday wasn't going to increase my chances of getting airborne. I had been feeling bad and it got worse. None of us Danes got to fly actually, but tomorrow half of us are on the flying schedule and the rest on the sim schedule, myself on the sim one. I'll see how I feel before I go to the doc to unground myself. If I'm as bad as today I'll stay grounded. Now I'm off to hamster's place to see the F1 race from China which was on last night. We agreed not to check any results to keep it interesting. I'll try to update you tomorrow on whether any of got to fly. /GEA |
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