Week 44: VFR over and back into the books

This week I met a significant milestone with my training, having completed my VFR competency assurance flight. As I mentioned many moons ago, VFR means 'visual flight rules', and is in essence flying the aircraft by outside reference using the horizon and depth perception to navigate the aircraft. The C/A wasn't perfect and I did have a few brainfarts, but thankfully I passed and can move on to IFR.

This is about to take on a new level of importance

Modern airline operations are rarely conducted under VFR conditions, and the C/A signifies the start of the more challenging element of the course, Instrument flight rules (IFR). During the visual phrase the required weather minima were massively restrictive, with both cloud and visibilty regularly halting flights as their values were less than the amount the law requires. However, with instrument flight the aircraft is flown by reference to information on the panel, information which commonly receives input from ground based facilities to aid navigation, so the flights can happen in significantly worse conditions. The Cessna's Garmin panel now takes on a new level of importance, and to really force us to use only the instruments we'll be using a hood which effectively blocks our view out the window. Rather fetching...

In preparation for our first instrument flight, the MPL course have 8 sessions conducted in the Twinstar simulator. Chances are i'll only get through the first few this week which focus on holding, so after a briefing on Saturday i've been back at my desk attempting to get some of the information to stick! We've all been on board an aircraft when the pilot happily informs us there'll be 10 minutes (or more) of holding before conducting an approach to the destination. This hold can be for a variety of reasons, from insufficient capacity at the airfield to bad weather on the approach, or even equipment failure in either the aircraft or on the airfield. In essence the hold is there to delay the onward movement of the flight, so it's important we can do it properly as we'll pretty much have to do it on every flight! 

The hold itself is a racetrack pattern, with two straight legs and two 180degree turns. Each of these parts should take one minute, so simple maths says one hold takes 4 minutes. What we will learn in the sim is how to get into the hold, what headings to fly within the hold to remain within it's protected airspace, and how to manage the aircraft in preparation for an instrument approach. What we do here in New Zealand is really an introduction to instrument flight as we will really get into it in the Airbus back in Southampton, but for the moment there's lots to learn and i'm quite excited to learn a completely new skill. Hopefully i'm not awful!

 Pictorial view (Plate) of Hamilton hold in the centre 

with associated instrument approach

Week 43: What a difference a week makes!

After the weather continuing to frustrate the multitude of cadets trying to fly, this week the skies finally cleared and training changed up a gear. Over the past 7 days I have managed 8 flights in total, consisting of 3 solos, 3 Ops routes and 2 night flights. And with that amount of progress I am now in a position to take flight exercise CE042; Ops route VFR Competency Assurance. If I were a wings cadet this would be similar to progress test 1, but as I am flying on the MPL our assessments are slightly different. During training each lesson has basic competencies which are required to be achieved for the lesson to be a success, so strictly speaking the C/A tomorrow is no different to a normal lesson. That said, the fact this is the final VFR flight ensures there is an increased level of stress ahead of the flight!

My flights this week have consisted of three main areas; solo's, duals, and night flying. For the solos I managed to travel quite a few miles, as well as visiting New Zealands busiest uncontrolled aerodrome, Ardmore. This sits just south of the city of Auckland, and with the international airport the area has lot's of restrictive airspace, into which it would be quite easy to stray and get a telling off. During the approach to the aerodrome there are some quite strict procedures to follow designed to keep traffic moving in different direction roughly separated, whilst also continually looking for other aircraft which may be a potential threat. Unfortunately whilst having priority another aircraft cut in front of me so I had to start the approach from scratch, but asides from an elevated workload the visit went without further consequence.

I also experienced a new type of flying this week, Night VFR. As the later sim flights on the MPL course can simulate night flight quite easily, there isn't a great requirement to fly a traditional night rating course. CTC's approach is therefore tailored to our needs, so during the first flight we learnt how town's can look closer at night, approaches and landing are a lot more difficult, and the instruments take on a new level of importance. For the second I took another trip to Ardmore (thankfully with a lot less traffic about), and after watching another cadet take on the circuit, I flew a few circuits, transited back to Hamilton, and did a few more circuits before the fog rolled in. Personally I found the landing the most exciting part of night flight, especially when the landing light was turned off! During the approach you feel like you're descending into a black hole, so to achieve a touchdown on the main wheels the landing attitude is selected and the side lights indicate rate of descent. I quite enjoyed it, but scarily the next time I land a real aircraft at night it will be a 50 ton jet!

Downwind for Tauranga

The final element of my week was the 3 Ops routes I flew with my instructor Scott. I have been incredibly lucky that Scott has made the routes quite challenging, and to simulate the C/A he's only given me the route/scenario an hour before my take off time. They have ranged from picking a passenger up at an aerodrome where he acted as a passenger, to flying around Auckland utilising him as a member of crew that I could delegate tasks to. During the flights I would then be given unusual simulations such as a rough running engine or sick passenger, so that the pressure was kept on throughout the profile. I feel ready for the C/A (which isn't to say i'm not nervous), but have some work to do so Liam and I are going to go through some theory as we both have the C/A tomorrow. 

Hopefully tomorrow goes well and in no time ill be in the sim working through instrument flight. Lot's more fun to come.....

Week 42: New Zealand gets smashed!

This week started with plenty of optimism, as the skies were clear and the flying programme pretty packed. I managed a trip down to New Plymouth on Monday, which took me close to Mount Taranaki (which was used to mimic Mount Fuji in 'The Last Samurai'), as well as close to the central Volcanoes. Unfortunately all the summits were shrouded in cloud, but regardless they were an impressive sight. After getting close, my next nav was a trip south to get a closer look at the North Islands impressive Volcanoes, Ruapehu and Ngauruhoe. The one on the left is Ngauruhoe, and as i'm sure many of you know was Mount Doom in the Lord of the Rings. The day before the crater had in fact been smoking which would have been exciting, but it'd calmed down by the time I got there. 

Following the solo's I was back in the aircraft for a dual nav route, but this time under the guise of an 'Ops route'. Some of you may feel this is purely semantics, but the name change indicates a real difference when compared to a normal dual lesson, effectively making the flight one where the student acts as commander on an operational flight. Initially the strong winds and turbulence did their best to stop the flight happening, but after much deliberation I decided the conditions were satisfactory when considering if the operation could be conducted safely. Yes at times we got a bit of a kicking as there was plenty of mechanical turbulence from the wind flowing over high ground, but the flight was manageable and the decision to proceed was proven correct. 

Another subtle difference with the Ops routes is that the flight contains more scenarios which have to be considered and acted upon. In the case of my first one, my instructor simply said that during a cruise check the carbon monoxide detector was indicating 'caution', and I now had to act with that information. The first concern is that the human body actually has a stronger affinity for carbon monoxide than it does oxygen (about 200 times!), and the CO displaces the oxygen from the blood, effectively suffocating the individual. The longer the CO poisoning continues the higher the likelihood of passing out, so time is of the essence. The most common cause would be a crack in the exhaust manifold, as the hot air to the cabin is heated from the hot exhaust. So the air is shut off, and the windows opened to ventilate the cabin. 

Once you have solved the problem, or at least stopped it getting worse, the best plan is to land as quickly as possible. One of the big issues with CO poisoning is that humans are very poor at recognising the symptoms, and you could have very little knowledge of how close you may be to passing out. Working quickly and being prepared to make fast confident decisions, the next mission is to fly an accurate diversion to an alternate aerodrome. I chose to fly to a small aerodrome called TeKuiti; it is unattended, has no air traffic control, and the runway is tiny, but in an emergency best practice has to be more flexible. 

I managed another flight this week up to Ardmore, which is New Zealand's busiest airport. Normally the traffic pattern is rather intimidating as so many aircraft are trying to fly so close to Aucklands airspace, but as I left Hamilton at 0740 and it was pretty windy, I pretty much snuck in and out without seeing anyone else (at least I hope there was no-one else!!). I was due to fly another solo on Friday, and one today with a night flight, but both days were cancelled due to high winds then low cloud. With four days of good weather ahead there is a real possibility I could finish my VFR phrase by the end of the week, and if that does happen I could in fact get home on time, but there are no guarantees, just hope!

Week 41: the inevitable has happened!

It is with great pain that I have to report that the slow start and poor weather have doomed our departure, our head of training this week confirming our course has been delayed and we will leave 3 weeks later than planned. Consequently I am now missing Alice's Birthday, our holiday to France, as well as an incredibly important family event, so I am rather ticked off. There's no point in my discussing it because ill probably end up crying, and my laptops not waterproof!

After what feels like an age I managed to fly this morning on what was a pretty interesting route. I basically took a solo tour of the Bay of Plenty, calling in at Rotorua and Tauranga during my second solo navigation over here, and with the sun rising in the east and the still conditions, I had a really good 2 hours. I tried getting some pics, but as I was concentrating on flying the aircraft I just said the video running, and grabbed a few stills. Apologies for them being a bit blurry, but it's the best I could manage!

 The Beautiful South Pacific

After my solo I then caught up with Scott and we clattered off on a split flight duty, where I took us northbound to Whitianga, then Dan tracked the east coast back to Hamilton. During my leg I went into New Zealand's busiest airfield Ardmore; the closest description I can offer for the radio chatter during my time in the circuit was 'noise', but it was good to visit a new place. I then took us north and managed a visit to Great Barrier Island, where the aerodrome plate actually says to watch for wild pigs! 

Unfortunately the Weather is due to turn rubbish in a few days so the misery drags on, but hopefully ill manage a couple more flights before i'm cemented to terra firma again. Life's a b*%ch!