WEEK 4&5: METEOROLOGY #9

Airline Prep

The new logo

The last week and a half has been spent on MET (meteorology), which to me has been the most interesting subject by far! And I think it will remain so until human performance down the line in module 2.

Although it is a lot to take in and some aspects are relatively tricky, it's so applicable to the real world which is probably why I find it so interesting. It's great being able to look out the window and try to predict what type of cloud is present, why it's there, is there a high pressure or low pressure, warm front or cold front, stable or non-stable air, what weather's coming next etc. It's also quite cool being able to read and understand those complicated weather charts that the reports sometimes show that make you think "what the hell is that!". That all seems to make sense now and I find it fun trying to understand what kind of weather is going to be occurring in the next few days by looking at these now. Of course, I'm most likely going to be wrong, which should make me more than qualified to be a professional weather man!

This makes reasonable sense now

The best day so far in my opinion was the one spent on clouds. It's something that absolutely fascinates me and I had already done some previous research on that particular area, purely out of interest. I love being able to understand our climate a lot better now (still lots to learn though!) 

Caught off guard at the end of a long day

I think MET seemed to sink in reasonably well with the exception of fronts, which I'm struggling with a little bit at the moment but some more time spent on it over the weekend should clear up most loose ends.

Our instructor for MET has been absolutely incredible! He goes through things at a lovely pace, making everything as clear as possible and not moving on until he's comfortable the class are up to speed with it, and if there is any uncertainty after that, he is more than happy to give up his own time to help you - absolutely top class! I'm extremely happy that we have him for instruments and comms too. We just have a little bit more to do tomorrow (Thursday) before moving onto instruments, which should finish a week later. 

Class in full flow, learning about Hadley, Ferrel & Polar cells

Using the break to get a bit of extra reading in. Luke probably playing flappy birds in the background

On Friday some guys on a few CP's ahead of us invited us to the local pub with them which was really nice. It was good having an evening away from the laptop and just relaxing for a few hours, having a couple of bevi's and playing a bit of darts. It was also interesting hearing about how they got on with the course at our stage and getting as much inside knowledge as possible. A night very much needed.

A night at the pub

Last Sunday my dad came down to visit which was really nice. He brought a shed load of supplies with him which would be sufficient to feed a small army, including a large amount of toilet paper. I hope I don't get through all of it before my time is done here, otherwise a trip to the local doctors surgery is in order! We went out for lunch in a nice pub in Beaulieu where I had been as a small child before. It was really weird going back and recognizing it. When he left I was straight back to revising and managed to get a solid 4/5 hours done that night (the work never stops).

Back at the place visited a long time ago

Today we had a CBT day and most of our CP went into the center for an arranged extra lesson on turbine engines, which everyone seemed to have a below average understanding of. Another excellent instructor kindly gave up his free day to come in and teach us and he did an extremely good job. It turned out to be a full day purely on turbine engines, which makes me wonder how on earth we got through the entire topic of piston and turbine engines plus a little extra before 3 o'clock in one day during our scheduled lessons for it..... Maybe it wasn't my incompetence proving the problem there after all!

Anyway, I feel much better with it now and reckon after a few hours of question banking and re-reading of notes I'll feel relatively confident with it. 

DJ having a go on the flight sim (not quite the A320 full motion)

 Back into school tomorrow and Friday to finish off MET and make a start on instruments.