Learning to Fly

[TeePee]

Sorry, I have taken some pics, but I've left the cable for my camera at home

I've missed out a few reports, since it's hard to explain the excitement of following a VOR needle... But, yesterday was the best days flyings far!

We started with my first cross country. Or it started with me planning it.. I had to plan a navigation log, then call up the local flight service station (1-800-WXBRIEF) for a weather briefing. A whole string of information delivered at rapid speed by somone who really believes you can understand them. The most important parts of this were that we had VFR conditions (good weather, basically) and the winds aloft, which gave me windspeed and direction at the height I would be flying. This gets plugged into a flight computer (calm it techies, this means 'Slide rule') to give me an estimation of ground speed and a heading to fly. Then I could complete a flight plan, which then gets phoned back to the flight service station.

So, ready to fly, we take off and at about 1000ft get on the radio to the FSS (St. Pete Radio, good abbrevations the have here!) to open our flight plan. We follow my navigation plan and get to our first waypoint on time. The visibility isn't that great but its good enough. We are flying to Gainsville, which is 52 nautical miles from Crystal River. At about 20 miles out we tune in the ATIS frequency for their local weather, again it's hard to understand it al, but at least this is a repeating automated voice, so I can get it all.
Then at 10 miles out we call up the tower who sends us to join downwind on runway 29 and forgets about us. So we join downwind and just keep on going wile she directs other traffic around.. eventually turning us onto left base about 3 miles out! Anyway, we land, taxi back and take off again, heading back to Crystal river, again all straight forward. It felt really good for all the navigation and flying stuff to come together and actually GO somewhere!

Then the afternoon I hitched a ride in the back of a beechcraft bonanza with another student up to Tallahasee. The other student is doing commercial, and the bonanza is a complex aircraft. basically its really fast (compared to a Cessna 172) with variable ptch prop and retractable undercarriage.. very impressive!

Then it was on to night flying. Tere are three hours of night flying required for the FAA licence. The European licence has night flying as a separate rating, another reason to go FAA. We weren't sure if we were going to be able to go ahead, since there were some thunderstorms in the area, but in the end we decided to go. We wanted to do all three hours in one night, so a slightly longer trip was planned, frst up to Gainsville again, then returning via Ocala. Planning and the trip out there were much the same, but night flying is such an alien experience. You really have to use the instruments to verify what you are doing. Landing at gainsville was a trip. The runway was lit up like a christmas tree, but around the edges all you have is the few houses, and its very hard to judge your altitude. Three touch and gos at the well lit and towercontrolled Gainsville and we departed to the south towards Ocala.

At this point we tuned in Jacksonville approach ATC (Jack's Approach) which is basically ATC for the northern part of florida, to request flight following along our route. He gave us a transponder setting so he knew who we were on his radar, and then followed us advising us of when we should have ocala in sight, the heading from there to Crystal River and traffic in the area. It was pretty cool, since we could listen to him directing traffic around thunderstorns, and 747's towards Orlando and Tampa. Arriving back at Crystal River, we called ST Pete Radio again to close our flight plan, but we still needed another hour and a half, so we diverted to another nearby field to practise night landings. Here I discovered the coolest thing ever!

The field is uncontrolled, no tower and noone there. There is a frequency for local traffic to make calls to each other, as at Crystal River. Keying the mike from 5-7 times switches on the runway lights! There ayou are flying over blackness, a green and white beacon flashing to say theres an airfield, and suddenly you switch it on! Fantastic!

So a few practise landings, and my instructor decides to simulate instrument lighting failure.. Landing while having to rely on the lights to keep the attitude right, hearing the engine RPM and having to judge the airspeed between the two was a trip! But then clibout was simply impossible. There were no lights at all beyond the end of the field and with no attitude indication there was no way, but fortunately my instructor switched the lights on again.. I think we were both relieved!

We then decided to head south to another field, but we soon flew into some weather. The cloud itself was invisible, suddenly we went from seeing all the lights accross the ground to total blindness, relying on instruments, with massive turbulence.. A quick U-Turn and we decide to stay local to the field for the last 30 mins or so, listening to Jacks Approach direct another student around the looming thunderstorms from his night cross-country (anoher commercial student).

Anyways, today I reeated that cross-country solo, which was an amazing experience that I may relate tomorrow. I also took and passed the FAA theory test and did a local check flight, so I have only 6 flights to go and I'll be done!

Not sure if many people are still reading this thread. I've tried to explain or gloss over the technical stuff, but if you'd like more details let me know.

[Zak33]

Not sure if many people are still reading this thread.

you kidding?

keep going

[TiG]

yeah, every time there is an update i'm here

Seriously hooked..

TiG

[Tumble]

^^ Ditto ^^

[daverobev]

Yep still reading Looking forward to having you back!! Its lovely and wet here today....hmm there's a silver-grey sided lorry sitting outside the window but the colour of "outside" would be much the same if it wasn't!

Have fun!

[Matt1eD]

No this is gr8, keep going

[wedge22]

This is a great post mate and I look forward to each update.

[TeePee]

OK, then by popular request, yesterday's solo cross country.

Aiming for an 11am start due to being knackered, I staggared into the flight school at about 10am to start planning. I got a weather briefing and planned the same flight to gainsville and back, but obviously with a different wind speed and direction, new headings and flight times had to be calculated. Unfortunately trying to file the flight plan the 'systems were down' so one of the instructorsdecided to fllow my flight (or start phoning around if I don't show up on time) and signed off my log book.

As I started the engine, the rain started , but I decided to go ahead anyway since the visibility was still good. As I took of and turned north I could see the sky was much clearer ahead and from 10 miles north we were in bright sunshine with a few scattered clouds at about 4000ft. I levelled off at 2000ft and started to cruise north, meeting my checkpoints exactly as planned. The area of Florida around Ocala vaires from swamps to horse ranches. It's all very open and you get a great view from 2000ft.

About ten miles south of Gainsville I called up the tower and froze, completely.. I couldn't think what to say or get a single word out. But two seconds later (or two hours) I got it together and reeled off 'Gainsville tower this is 737 Kilo Sierra, student pilot, ten miles south, request landing Gainsville with information November'. Phew. Fortuanately with the magic words 'student pilot' in there he was pretty nice to me, and instructed me to report downwind for 24 (the 'information November' just means I've listened to the weather and traffic info).

Compared to Crystal River, Gainsville is a fairly busy airport so it was a bit scary flying through traffic on my own, especially as the downwind part of the pattern for 24 is over the main runway 29, on which a learjet was taking off. I flew the pattern rigidly and lined up for 24 on the glidepath. Things got a bit bumpy here and my first landing was a bit ropey, and I was a bit annoyed at myself with everyone watching. I taxi'd off the runway and requested a taxi back and takeoff for two more circuits and landings (a requirement of the training). I flew both circuits perfectly and my second landing was one of my smoothest, with my third being OK also. I then departed the airport, thanking the tower profusely and headed back to the south. I ended up a little west of my planned course but corrected my heading and all was fine until I got to about 10 miles north of Crystal River. That little bit of rain was now a full-fledged thunderstorm! I was still in sunshine with a few fluffy clouds but in front of me was a solid black wall!

I orbited a couple of times to the west of Dunnellon and tuned in the AWOS system which gives a weather update for the airport, but that was offline (I later found out due to a lightning strike!) so I called the airport on their UNICOM frequency, which is a kind of general use frequency. You can use it to ask them to call you a taxi before you land. They said that from their viewpoint it looked clear to the Northeast and I should be able to fly in from there. I WAS NORTH EAST! I told them I'd head south and look for a way through, and asked them to let my instructor know what was up.

I flew south from dunnelton and finally saw a ap in the cloud ahead. I could see my way through, just, but it didn't look pretty! faced with a choice of going for it or landing back at Dunnelton, I decided to have a go. In the end it was a bit bumpy, but not too bad. The visibility was much worse than I'd had on the route so far, but i was still able to see the field from about 5 miles out. The rain started then, and I informed crystal river that I would be landing. They replied that there was steady rain and standing water on the runway. In the end it was my best landing of the day. Nice and smooth and dead on the centreline. Total flight time was about 1.7 hours.

The weather cleared up a bit, and later I went for a check ride with an instructor. I was massively more confident in everything after that mornings flight, and had a great time flying around the area. We did a landing at Dunellon and flew over a couple of private fields. One was a 'flying comunity' where the houses had hangars instead of garages (make that 'as well as').

Anyone wanna give me some money?

[daverobev]

Just sent lilith 10 copper


..no not really, what do you think I am, made of money??

Hrm...lear jets are cool, we do some contract work at the Paris and Farnborough Airshows for Bombardier. They said I could have a free lear jet, but I said nah where would I park it?

Sadly most of what I got to do at the airshows was get deafened by the damn things flying overhead!!

Let me see if I can think of a non-stupid, non trivial question.

Ok, how fast does "your plane" go? And how far/long could you go/be up?

What about the rest of your time - are you going out, seeing the locals in their native habitat, getting wrecked at nights?!? What does a Stevie do on his hols??

[TeePee]

Hols? I spent last night planning today's cross-country!

I'm flying a Cessna 172 with a Calibrated Airspeed of 110 Knots cruising speed. Given todays temperature and pressure my flight computer tells me I should get 107 knots True Airspeed at 2000ft on my flight today. Thats about 112mph.

The book says the fuel consumption should be 7.1 Gallons (US) per hour, but it's an old aircraft, so I have to allow 10 GPH. This means an endurance of 3 Hours 50 Minutes. Given the FAA requirement of 30 mins reserve, thats about 350 miles range.

I'm not doing much apart from flying and studying. Hopefully I shall have a week left over at the end of the course to observe the local wildlife .

[Moby-Dick]

I'l break this to you gently...

A fATPL which is the minimum required licence for an airline pilot costs GBP28K-GBP80K. Ryanair will then look at your CV for 100GBP. Then they may let you pay GBP500 for a sim check. They might then offer you a job, beginning with you paying GBP20K for a 737 type rating. Then they will pay you nothing for the first six months, and half pay for the second, making GBP9K income during the first year, while you are paying off that GBP100K training debt..

Why I will not be going commercial....

My (Ex) Lodger has just started with Ryanair.

Its taken him 7 years and a week from when he started flying to get to that position.

In that time he's been a PPL instructor amongst other things but this is his first "real" job.

he's got about 1300 ( might be more ) hours flying time with just over 100 hours on type.

he paid for his own type rating , then did line training with Astraeus ( in which he actually flew me out to egypt on holiday )

He's on half pay for 6 months , but will be on aroudn 3k a month take home after that.

His aim will to be a captain by the time he's 30, which should be paying about 120,000 euros pa.

its also all he's ever wanted to do

so as you can imagine , he is a pretty happy bunny right now !

[Tumble]

But Moby.. can he make the flights go on time?

[Loony_Pilot]

Hi,

I am Moby-Dicks former housemate/lodger.

Been reading this post with interest and hope you dont mind me throwing in my 2 pennies worth.

I have a CPL, IR, 737 rated, instructor with 1300 total hrs (of which 900 is as an instructor) and 120 on the 737.

First regarding Tee-Pee's comments ...some weren't really that accurate.

Firstly I have just joined Ryanair as a 737 type-rated direct entry F/O.. which is different to how a newly qualified pilot would join them.

If you apply via Ryanairs online application, there is a £50 fee (refundable to successful applicants), but u can email and discuss it directly with the recruitment people. There is a fee for the sim check but its closer to £200gbp. I havent had to pay that either (yet).

Secondly if u get thru the assessment, u do pay for your own rating, about £22k or so... then you start with Ryanair on £9k basic (the basic salary is based on experience(total hrs and 737 hrs) and half sector pay for 6 months (worth £24k a yr at full sector pay rate). as you progress through the system and your experience builds, your basic will go up to 16k and then 24k (once you get 1500hrs total / 500 on type).
After a year or so with them you can expect to take home £3500 or so a month, but remembering your pension and sick pay are based on just the basic salary.
This info comes both from friends who fly for them and what i was told at interview.

Flying is a hugely expensive career to get into, but it is rewarding. Some people get lucky and land a great job staright after completing training, some like me, got lots of bad luck and had to wait 5yrs.....
Still, from a purely "business" point of view, I can expect to spend 25yrs earning close to £80-100k and there are not too many jobs where u can do that, even if you spend £100k on training and 5 yrs on crap money first.
You can your licence for £30K.. OR U CAN SPEND £80K ON Oxfords APP Course

TeePee.. I also did my basic training in Florida, I was at Lakeland.. have you been there? I remember fondly all those airports you mention. is the guy in the tower at Barton still a grumpy git?
Is Crystal River the airfield where the final approcah is right over the top of a supermarket roof and car park? (its been 7yrs since I was there)

Just going to make a few more points now... learning to fly in Florida has its pros and cons (like all flying related choices)
Firstly.... its much easier to navigate in Florida than the UK, and u get a lot more support from ATC in the USA. Secondly, there are different emphasis on different things in each country.

I've found from both a personal experiece and an instructing point of view, that most people that come back from the USA with a shiny PPL need between 10-15hrs instruction to get up to the standard to fly in the UK (with the UK having more random weather, much more congested airspace, especially in the south east, also the R/T in england is much more disciplined than the USA).

Its also unusual to complete a PPL in the bare minimum 45hrs... the UK average I believe is 65hrs, my own students average is 55hrs or so. I've found that the extra few hours instruction makes a huge difference, as its in the last few lessons that it all really comes together and your flying becomes really very good. The main difference for the extra time in the UK, is that in general, you get more weather related delays, which reduces continuity, and the increased complexity of operating in UK airspace.

In my personal opinion (and its opinion, not gospel fact), UK standards of instruction are quite a lot higher, with the US approach seeming to be like a sausage factory approach, (of course.. I'm a little biased but its based on experience rather than the overwhelming desire to present UK instructors as better)
However quality differs between individual schools, I've instructed at a few schools/clubs, some I liked, some I didn't. (I have instructed at Taylor Aviation at Cranfield and at Lydd Aero Club for those that are interested, both clubs are great, with very high standards of instruction, a good atmosphere and lots of support)

I also think there are some restrictions on using an FAA PPL licence in the UK. But I dont know what they are....sorry!

With regards to PPL and NPPL, I would strongly advise anyone against the NPPL, unless, quite simply they are unable to get a PPL for medical reasons or they really only ever want to fly Day VFR in very "simple" aircraft.
Also..... the bare minimum of 45hrs for a PPL(with an average of 60-65)... its 32hrs for the NPPL... but I cant see anyone passing in 32hrs.. there just isnt the slack in the training syllabus to lose the 13hrs and not have a detrimental effect on quality and safety. The NPPL skill test is also identical to the PPL with the exception that its broken into 2 tests.. one for naviagtion and one for general handling.

As the where to learn in the UK... there are advantages and disadvantages to everything, learning at a busy airfield like cranfield means you'll be better equipped to cope with busy environments and ATC, but it might take longer and cost a touch more due to the taxi delays and busy circuits.
Learning somewhere quieter... well... the reverse applies. Swings and roundabouts.

The best thing to do is to visit anywhere you would consider learning at.. I mean you wouldn't spend £5000 on a car without looking at it would you?

Anyway, enough from me, if anyone is interested in flying and wants info/advice then feel free to email me. Loony_Pilot@dsl.pipex.com

and TeePee.. good luck with the training and I'm sure you'll do fine!

Pete

[TeePee]

A shorter post this one I hope!

The last couple of days I've been doing solo cross country flights to nearby airports. Yesterday was a simple flight from Crystal River (CGC) to Cross City (CTY) then to Gainsville (GNV) and back to CGC. The flight up to cross city was accross an amazing area of swamp and wilderness then cross city itself was a small town around a logging camp. They still managed to have an airport with two asphalt runways over 5000ft. All hail proper government funding!

Landing was smooth and straightforward with final approach over the logging camp, although I had to edge over to the right of the runway to avoid two vultures eating the remains of an armadillo... I taxi'd back and took off then headed west towards gainsville. I managed to get a little north of my planned course and gainsville arrived quicker than I thought, but communications with the tower went much smoother. Then a final leg back to CGC all as planned.

I got back having completed the solo cross country portion of the training, but I've only flown 22 hours, of 35 required, and there are only 5 hours of training left, so I need to fly more. I go up again for some circuits, but the weather is drawing in, so I only manage 0.8.

This morning I'm up bright and early to get some flying in. Tropical Storm Katrina is coming, and bad waether is forcast for the afternoon. Flight plan filed and I'm off to Cross City again. There are some scattered clouds from about 2000ft and I nip between two of them before deciding it would be better to decend to 1500. Over the wilderness area theres no limit (apart from the trees) on how low I can go, but I want to stay reasonably high so that I can navigate.

I roll into Cross City and this time park up to use the facilities. There are 5 aircraft there, all tied down, and two old guys huddled around the radio in a new building. (I found out later that the airfield used to have a very popular restaurant with a 400lb pig that lived outside and was fed beer by pilots. The guy that ran it tore the place down and left after 20 years. He took the pig.)

Another hop further north to Perry-Foley. This field has three runways although NOTAMs said one was closed. Of course, it had to be the into wind runway that was closed. Suddenly I had to do my first Crosswind landing! I've been very lucky so far, that we've hardly had any wind, so while I've been shown how to do a crosswind landing, there was no way to actually practise it. In theory, you land with the into wind wing down, and land on one side of the landing gear first. My first attempt left me drifting to one side on the runway on final approach, all over the place.. I powered off and went around for another go. This time, perfect! I landed and taxiid around to take off again. There's nothing at Perry, the field is unmanned, so I was hoping noone saw my cock up. But what do you know, I'm holding short for a cherokee to take off...

Then it's back to cross city for a touch and go, no pigs, vultures or armadillos in sight, and on to one more stop at Williston. I can hear on the radio that there is an aircraft banner-towing out of williston, so keep a good lookout. They say they are south of the field, but I don't see them. Another touch and go and I am headed back to CGC. I practise landing into a headwind there, which is really just a question of keeping a little more altitude as your groundspeed is much slower on final approach. Another 3 hours flying!

I was hoping to go up again this afternoon, but the weather has really started, so I went to the shop for some Krispy Kreames. (Well, you wanted to know what I'm doing when not flying).

[TeePee]

Posted before reading.

There are restrictions on using an FAA PPL in the UK. You cannot fly a G registered (thats UK registered) airplane outside of UK airspace. You can fly an N reg (which is US Reg) anywhere you like. Lots of people have N reg aircraft, mainly because it's cheaper, but flight clubs are mainly G reg.

Standards of instruction vary a great deal between schools. I had a few lessons with a club in the UK and found it very 'sausage factory'. When I looked at US schools some really are a production line. There are some where they expect you to turn up every day in uniform. I picked my school carefully, it's a family run, very friendly school. The owner let me borrow his pickup to go get those Krispy Kreames! If you are considering flying, in the UK or abroad, do your research!

As for the availability of jobs, I only know what I read on the very negative www.pprune.org but it is still something I'm going to look into. The FAA route to commercial is much easier and cheaper, so I might research that. I have no pressing desire to work in Europe, and money spent on FAA training is still good flying hours. Spending GBP 3000 on groundschool and exams doesn't appeal to me as much.

I haven't been to Barton or Lakeland, but the approach to 09 at CGC is over a Home Depot, carpark and then Route 19, with powerlines!

[herulach]

A tenner for you if you can find some of these and get a photo of them tied to the tail plane.