The road to my wings
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| Date | 10-02-2009 |
| Location |  |
| Message | (Tuesday 1425) I had my first instrument flight sim today. It went really well and I got quite a few good hints on techniques that make life easier in the cockpit when the weather is crappy. Tonight we'll be going bowling in down-town Moose Jaw. Otherwise not much new from here. The grad party went well and they all graduated even though they didn't manage to finish all flights before the grad day. The Hawks are still grounded unfortunately. It won't surprise me much if I'm on for the next IF sim tomorrow so I better be prepared. /GEA |
| Date | 06-02-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Friday 0755) Tonight the "old" Danish students from Dragon flight graduate. They get their wings. It's a big step in ones carreer, probably the most important one as a pilot. Next on their programme will be that they move to Cold Lake which is about 8 hours drive up North from here. They'll fly on the Hawk 115 for another four months there before returning home for the F16 conversion. In a year it'll hopefully be me in their position. Unfortunately there's been a problem with one of the Hawks from Cold Lake so they're all temporarily grounded until they figure out what the exact problem is. It's rather unfortunate for PLA, as he needed to fly his final test in order to graduate but without a plane to fly it in, the chances of that are odd. Hopefully they'll dispensate and let him graduate anyway. Also, they had planned on doing a seven ship Hawk formation fly-by today but that's cancelled too for obvious reasons... Now it's time to enjoy the weekend. The grad party tonight and I booked myself for a practise sim on Sunday with LOD. I'll probably use my time in there to practise Over-head breaks. /GEA |
| Date | 03-02-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Tuesday 1730) A bit of a crappy day today. First of all, the girl who's renting our apartement in Denmark lost her job and is moving out, so we're stuck with that. And that's not all... In December I had a week where I was grounded because I was ill so I didn't meet the twice a week physical training requirements. As you probably know, we have to train twice a week, which is one of the rules at school. But being sick or on leave is no excuse. So as a "punishment" we, who missed out on sessions in December will have to train twice the amount per week for the whole of February. To be honest I think it's rediculous but that's the way things go here. We had the second test in IFP today and all the Danes except myself got 100%. I got 96% and it's damn frustrating to be the only one who didn't get full points so that put my mood down a bit more. On the good side is that I had a sim today and it went really good so I got another "snake" for it. So now we're all at a stage where we've learned all that we have to learn up to solo check. So on the upcoming sims and flights we won't be doing new stuff until post solo. Now it's all about getting better at what we do so that we can apply it on our first solo flight which is hopefully not too distant in the future. That's it for now. Hopefully things will get better. /GEA |
| Date | 31-01-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Saturday 1130) The sim yesterday started off rather bad I thought but got better along the way. In the end I was doing pretty good. All the things I had to do were new things so I had to get the hang of them. One of the things was the overhead break where you fly 1000 feet over the runway at 220kts, break over the runway with a 60 degree bank turn, pulling 2g all the way and then configure the aircraft for landing when you have turned 180 degrees. After that you start a descending turn towards the "window" which is an imaginary window 3/4 miles from the runway threshold at 250 feet above ground level. It's a military type of approach and the idea is to get you down on the ground quickly without exposing you too much to any potential hazards like enemy fire. It's good fun to do and I can't wait to try it out in the real world. Anyway I managed to keep up the "snake" average grade so I can't complain much. In the evening we all went to the officer's mess for the TGIF beer. It ended up being more than just a beer as we partied and drank until 1230. I must have done an ILS approach back home because weather conditions seemed very foggy, in my head anyway. I do have a bit of a head ache now but I'll get over it. In an hour I have a practise sim and I plan to practise overhead breaks for the most part. Tonight we (just the Danes) might meet up at SAR's place with our laptops for a few hours of gaming. Let's just see what happens. /GEA |
| Date | 29-01-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Thursday 1545) Today's sim was awesome. I enjoyed it and learned a whole bunch at the same time. The instructor gave me a 20kt crosswind so I learned how to crab on finals and then straighten the aircraft down the runway while putting the upwind wing down for landing. It's not as hard as I thought it would be. The instructor must have been having fun too as he must have given me five or six emergencies. All were handled correctly so I'm happy about that. Otherwise I did a few touch and go's, slow flight, stalls and a couple of overshoots. It was like a good workout. When I got out of the sim I was soaked and tired but felt great. I'm on tomorrow's programme again for another sim and there's quite alot of new work on this one, so I have quite a few stuff to read tonight. That's it for now. It's almost 1600 and I'm outta here! /GEA |
| Date | 28-01-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Wednesday 1435) The sim went good and I learned a few new things too. There was no flying today either. In the morning hours it was due to the ramp and the runway being too slippery and later on when they finally cleared that, the weather at the surrounding airports was so bad that we didn't have an alternate if the weather got worse here. So another day with no flying. I'm just happy that the weather was good in the sim. /GEA |
| Date | 27-01-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Tuesday 1520) No sim today but I'm on the programme for tomorrow...and so are all the other Danes. I uploaded a couple of pictures from yesterday's Seaking. Today it's only about -13C but we have strong winds which happened to be right across the runway, so there's no flying once again. /GEA |
| Date | 26-01-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Monday 1340) We have a Canadian S61 Seaking helicopter visiting the base so a bunch of Canadians and myself went to take a close look. I didn't have my camera with me but one of the other guys did so we took a few pictures which I'll probably upload tomorrow when I get them from him. It's still awesome weather but really cold. There hasn't been any flying yet today because of the wind chill of below -40C but they were towing aircraft out when I was looking at the Seaking and it sounds like there's a Hawk with the engine running right now. I had a good weekend otherwise. COM is in doing a sim right now and hopefully it'll be my turn before too long, perhaps tomorrow. /GEA |
| Date | 23-01-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Friday 1305) The winter came back this week. Today there's no flying as the wind chill is colder than -39C. Otherwise not much has happened for us this week apart from IFP theory. News today is that we're going to be doing extra sims just the same way as the Canadians. What it indicates is that flying is is further delayed but it's still good to get extra sims as at least we get to practise cockpit procedures and the stuff that we've learned so far and it's always better than nothing. It'll also help keep us motivated as we've almost been depressed lately. Hopefully it works out fine and we get to real flying before too long. I think I'm off to the gym now and do a work-out. /GEA |
| Date | 20-01-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Tuesday 1810) The weather is awesome at the moment. I cannot believe we're not flying. Even the temperature is actually warm. Yesterday it went above freezing and it felt just great. Nice sunshine, no wind and 4C. I was out flying my F16 model after school and didn't even have gloves on. I really enjoyed it but I would much rather have been in the air myself, with that great view from above. I'm still hopeful that I get at least a flight this week. Otherwise we've been having IFP basically every day lately and we're getting pretty good at reading the approach plates. As a military pilot you have to be able to fly all the civilian approaches but also the military tactical approaches which get you down on the ground faster and with minimal exposure, whatever the weather. I really look forward to do the instrument flying part of the course among other things. But what I look most forward to is definitely formation flying, but there's a long way to go before we get there. Stay tuned! /GEA |
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