WEEK 65: LOFT #49

Airline Prep

It's certainly been a busy time for me this week! I think this is the first time I've been in six days in a row and therefore required to have the seventh off.

Monday to Thursday was spent in the simulator doing the LOFT flights. Luke and I were on the late shift (18:00 - 22:00). The routine was wake up about 11:00, start planning at home around 12:00, head into the centre around 16:30 for the debrief from the previous flight and brief the next one then do the flights back to back, get home around 22:30 and go straight to bed. The two of us then had a brief on the Friday which lasted about four and a half hours and another brief, which thankfully was only about twenty minutes on Saturday. It was good to be busy and progressing, I'd much rather be busy than bored but I definitely feel a relaxed day off is much needed. The briefings covered the contents of the instrument rating exam and the possible routes that we will be flying and the shorter one was preparing us for the radio phraseology test that we have to do at some point in the near future.

Private 747 rocking up outside CTC. 

The LOFT flights were pretty hard work and intense and required a lot of planning. They were treated as commercial flights where we were the captain. The routes I did were Birmingham to Manchester, Manchester to East Midlands, Heathrow to Birmingham and Bournemouth to Oxford and back which was more of an IR routes flight than a loft flight. I think the last one was meant to be Oxford to Liverpool.

The first one was reasonably relaxed, as in we weren't given any failures to deal with, it was just flying the route and I think a go around was required due to poor weather but generally not too bad. The next two were difficult as there were a few failures to deal with, along with some re-routing and poor weather. On one of the flights I had an approach into Birmingham which resulted in a go around due to poor weather, another go around on the next attempt for the same reason then I had a left alternator failure followed shortly by a right engine failure. This meant I had a maximum of thirty minutes flying before I lost all my electrics and engines. I made another approach into Birmingham and managed to land just in the knick of time! Everything cut out just as I came over the threshold. It was fun but seriously hard work. In the sim the emergencies are treated as real emergencies so you get to do all the actual checks and make decisions as you would if it happened for real. It's certainly good practice.

Captain Clark & First Officer Scammell waiting to enter the Cedar hold @ Birmingham

My 'FLOG' from Heathrow to Birmingham

The profile from one of my ILS approaches. 

I now have three sims left before moving back into the real aircraft, which means the IR test is only two or three weeks away!

A nice surprise to be in CTC's photo in the 2015 prospectus and article on pilot career news. (far left)

Feeling like a celebrity

WEEK 63, 64: UK ORIENTATION #48

Airline Prep

It's been fairly slow progress for me over the last couple of weeks, now three weeks into the IR I've done just five sims. I've finished the UK orientation phase and the one lesson we have looking at the autopilot on the DA42.

The Centre

The orientation sims are just practising the techniques we've been taught in New Zealand such as instrument departures, tracking, holding and various approaches as well as learning the UK procedures, radio phraseology and kicking out bad habits that have crept in.

The standards expected of you here are so high. We're expected to fly extremely accurately and our checks need to be second nature now. I think I'm more or less used to the UK radio phraseology now which free's up a bit of capacity.

Top pilot organisation .....

My second sim was embarrassingly bad! I'd travelled from home on the day, back seated one of my flying partners before me and then flown. I was also fighting the cold that was going round the course so things weren't in my favour. I was only doing hold entries and holding which shouldn't have been an issue but I just couldn't seem to think clearly and lost my situational awareness and once you get behind the aircraft in IFR it's very hard to get back ahead of it. I've definitely learnt a lesson from that and will always make sure I am back in the area before a flight in the future. However, my next two were a hundred times better and proved to myself and the instructor that I am competent and have a reasonable idea of what I'm doing so things are back on track now thankfully.

Explaining a bit about the DA42 to some visitors

Start up checks

Taxiing in the sim

The next stage is the 'LOFT' phase, which is four flights treated like actual commercial flights. I will tell you more about it when I've done it. A few people on my course have finished those flights already and my flying partner and I haven't even started yet! I think they're deliberately staggering us so that there isn't a big pile up for the exam at the end. Most of us have been in groups of three so far but this week a few more instructors have freed up so we are now in pairs which means things should start moving a bit quicker.

The schedule here doesn't come out until about six pm the day before which makes it difficult to make plans. The consensus is that we have to be available 24/7.

The house

I've been doing quite a bit of back seating which really helps for this stage. Because you're concentrating so hard when you're flying it's very easy to miss something or not quite register what's happened but seeing it at least once from an observers perspective is so helpful and makes things much clearer I think.

                       A standard sim landing. Would also like to express I am filming, not flying. 

WEEK 61, 62: START OF IR #47

Airline Prep

So I'm now into the final stage of basic training, the instrument rating (IR). After just over a week at home it was time to pack the bags again and head off to Bournemouth. I enjoyed my time off, cramming as much as possible into that time. I think we could've all done with an extra few days.

DJ & I doing some plane spotting around Heathrow during our time off

The accommodation at Bournemouth is... let's say 'well used'. There's now seventeen of us and we've been split into three houses. I'm lucky to be in the smaller group of four and with my good pal DJ again, it seems we are inseparable.

The first two days are spent in the class room going through the standard introductions to important members of staff and a tour around the building. It was then into the briefs covering topics such as UK radio skills, procedures, pre-flight planning, UK laws, weather sites etc. The first day was very very long! We started at 08:30 and finished at 18:00. We just about made it on time after getting lost in the airport due to the terrible map we were given, it's a good job we left plenty of time. When you know where you're going it only takes about fifteen minutes to get in. The second day started at 09:45 and finished at 15:00 and was just an extension of the previous days briefs.

We were also given a new addition to our uniform; our first official bar! It's needless to say I felt extremely proud and am finding it hard to walk around at the moment with all that weight on my shoulders....

The new and the old. What's your preference? 

The new epaulettes 

Most of us then had our first sims on the Wednesday. I had mine in one of the three DA42 sims here and it was the older of the lot so a little different to the others. It was basically a refresher of techniques and having not flown IFR for about six weeks I wasn't expecting much to be honest. As it turns out it wasn't as bad as I was expecting although there were definitely a few cob webs to be blown away. Because the procedures and comms are a little bit different here I found myself having to think about those a lot more, rather than doing it almost subconsciously as I was in New Zealand by the end. It was great to be back 'flying' again and by the sounds of things we are going to rattle through this stage! People have recently been finishing between four to six weeks which works out to about four or five events a week.

The course consists of about twelve sims and seven flights. We also need to do a test to get our radio licence which should be fine but that's not till much later in the course.

Rumour is from cadets ahead that it is a step up from New Zealand but there's nothing unachievable, it just requires hard work and focus. My view is that if thousands of other people can/have done it then why can't I!