WEEK 25, 26, 27: TIME OFF & NEW ZEALAND #22

Airline Prep

So finally I have arrived in New Zealand and what a great feeling it is to be here!

After exams I had two and a half weeks completely free to enjoy myself and I can honestly say I couldn't have packed much more into my schedule, I didn't have a dull day. Thankfully the weather was excellent almost every day which made it easy to find something to do. I saw a lot of my friends and family and had some nice trips out to the beach, London, Brighton, a few rounds of golf, a couple well earned nights out and even managed to squeeze a couple of cricket matches in which felt good.

A well timed hook for 6

pottering around in the field

chilling on the beach

actually warm enough to go in the water

bit of plane spotting @ Heathrow

The time absolutely shot by and before I knew it I was packing my bags and heading off to Heathrow. I struggled to get much into my suit cases due to the strict weight restriction. We were given a maximum mass of 30 kg which is not a lot to live on for eight months, especially if that includes all your uniform, flight bag and equipment. I think after that I have a pair of jeans and tracksuits and about five shirts. My dad has kindly organised a cargo company to take the rest of my clothes and a few extra things out for a price of about £180 which should take about a week to arrive so once that comes I'll be well set up for the next few months.

our fine carriage awaiting our arrival

our flight (me a few rows back with an emergency exit seat I managed to scrounge. so much leg room!)

our flight departing Heathrow (great picture mum)

We flew with Emirates on the sublime beast that is the Airbus 380, which I have been longing to fly on for ages! Out of the seventeen of us travelling, nine were on my flight and the rest on a later one. We all met at the check in desk and eventually said goodbye to our parents and headed off on our journey.

DJ & I early into the flight

down town Dubai

me on the A380 flight deck

We had stop overs in Dubai and Sydney then landed at Aukland and met up with the rest of our group where a bus picked us up and drove us to Clearways in Hamilton. We had a seven and a bit hour wait in Dubai so we decided to go out and have a look round for a bit. It was the early hours of the morning so nothing was open but it was still good to do a bit of sight seeing.

on the stand in Dubai

tallest building in the word had to be seen

a rather famous hotel

Sydney airport 

I thought Emirates were absolutely terrific. Everything ran like clockwork, the service was excellent, it was comfortable, the in-flight entertainment was good and the food was actually very nice. Although it was long it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be, I actually enjoyed it and felt sad to leave the aircraft at the end. (the lovely cabin crew may have influenced that a little bit...)

what a pleasure! can you blame me for not wanting to get off??

From door to door it took just over forty hours!! During which I slept for about three at best. The lack of sleep didn't seem to affect me until we got to New Zealand and then if I sat down I genuinely couldn't stop myself falling asleep, I've never felt so tired before!

Cracking view

Coming over the New Zealand coast

the timer

The whole group is in CTC's own accomodation, Clearways. The facility is filled with cadets and the atmosphere seems to be very good. We are not all in the same block but we are all in close proximity of one another. You get your own room which is very nice indeed, and share a mini kitchen, toilet and shower with one other person (in my case DJ which I'm very pleased about). We have been given cars for the first couple of weeks which gives us enough time to find our own which is shared between about four.

We arrived on Friday afternoon and all went out for a meal that evening, had an early night and just crashed! We had the weekend free to recover and get ourselves sorted. After a nice lie in we went into Hamilton to do some shopping and sort ourselves out. The group then had a night out in town which was very fun. Sunday is going to be spent sleeping and preparing for the next couple of weeks where we have a bit of theory to get out the way. Then we will finally be up in the air!

The weather so far is very much like England in February; cold, dark and wet. Hopefully it will pick up soon. At least I got a few weeks of lovely sunshine.

getting in the spirit with my kiwi, NZ slippers and flag

my room

the kitchen I share with DJ (shower on right, bathroom on left)

our corridor 

the blocks common room 

the blocks kitchen 

Clearways

my block

Clearways 

Clearways 

WEEK 22, 23, 24: REVISION, MOD2 EXAMS & RESULTS #21

Airline Prep

That's it, ground school is officially finished. That was most definitely the hardest 6 months of my life. I have never worked so hard but I'm very glad I did because it totally paid off. After the mocks we had a large amount of time to revise (a full two weeks), which was sufficient to get up to speed with all the topics. I must have done about 8 hours every day during that period so I felt prepared when it came to the exams. The second week seemed to drag a lot as I felt ready and was just spending the whole day answering the same questions over and over again.

revision at 6am on thursday morning. beautiful view from my bedroom.

We were the second course to take the new electronic exams which I was initially skeptical about because we all receive different papers. To me that seems completely unfair but there's no other option but to just get on with it and hope the dealer is kind to you.

the setting. lush!

It's taken in a room that looks just like the driving theory room with a sufficient amount of space for the charts, with the boards up either side separating you from the next person and a computer of course. You all go in together and log into the system with the username and code given to you on a sheet of paper on the desk, whilst you listen to the brief by the invigilator (which gets a little repetitive when you've heard it twice a day for the past week). You're then told to start, you click start and off you go. There is a count-down clock in the top right corner and there are separated sections, usually A,B,C,D. You have a bar across the top of the screen with the question numbers and when you answer a question it turns green to mark that it's been answered. If you choose to skip a question it stays black to remind you that it hasn't been answered or you can answer it and mark it, in which case it turns red so you can go back to it at the end. You can click on any question at any time, it's not like the question bank where you can only click next and that's it so to be honest I was pretty impressed with the layout of it. You also have to click finish twice so there's no chance of accidentally closing the test prematurely. As I said, my only complaint is that everyone has different questions.

I felt good coming out of all the exams with exception of performance. I had a lot of CAP questions on graphs I hadn't seen before and they were worth a lot of marks. It's very hard to tell with those questions whether you've done it correctly or not and it's worth a large percentage of the exam. On top of that I had a few too many tricky theory questions which I wasn't sure about so I was very worried about that one. This highlighted my concern with the system as some people only had 3 CAP questions plus some easier theory questions, whereas I had about 6 or 7 which makes a massive difference! All the other exams were mainly question bank questions with a few new ones thrown in but they didn't seem unreasonable so I think I was lucky to receive a decent set of exams, plus of course I had worked extremely hard to get to that position in the first place.

relaxing in the sun #heaven

epic game of pool which was definitely a close match......

Finishing ops on Thursday morning was an amazing feeling and we all congregated to my housemates house (which is very nice indeed) to enjoy each others company in the perfect sunny weather and in a really chilled out environment before heading out into Winchester for a night out. It was absolutely perfect! and fair to say a fair few drinks were had by all. Well earned I say!

some of the crew

myself and Gareth

We received our results the very next morning which is absolutely brilliant, no hanging around. It was a very tense time indeed! We were expecting them to come through at about 7am but instead they started coming through at 10:10, slowly, one by one. The last one came through at 11:30. It was absolute hell!

some of the lads in Winchester

I am very pleased to announce though that I SUCCESSFULLY PASSED ALL of the exams, as did many of the course including both my housemates so as you can imagine we were very very happy and it eased the damage of the previous night a bit.

My schedule and results were as follows:

Monday: 9am - GNAV - 97%
               4pm - PERFORMANCE - 88%

Tuesday: 9am - RNAV - 91%
               4pm - MASS & BALANCE - 94%

Wednesday: 9am - FLIGHT PLANNING - 94%
                    4pm - HUMAN PERFORMANCE - 96%

Thursday: 9am - OPS - 89%

Overall average - 91% with 14 first time passes. YES!!

luke the next day. hangovers are hard for old people

I just have an APD on Monday along with an exit interview with the head of ground school then we all leave for New Zealand on July 30th. Finally! Let the celebrations begin.

WEEK 21: MOD 2 MOCKS #20

Airline Prep

This week turned out to be a very successful one for me. Having had four days off to prepare we started our mocks with GNAV and RNAV. I thought the layout for these mocks was much better than last time. Rather than cramming them all into three days in a row they were more spread out which gave us more time to revise.

A few of the papers were very difficult and left a lot of us feeling uncertain about whether we'd passed or not, GNAV and PERF in particular. GNAV seemed to have quite a few questions that weren't in the database and that required us to think right back to when we were taught the topic. I hope this was an exam made deliberately more difficult than the real thing.

The flask the class got for our favorite instructor

The exam layout was as such:

WEDNESDAY: GNAV & RNAV
FRIDAY: PERF, MASS&BALANCE, HUMAN PERFORMANCE
MONDAY: FLIGHT PLANNING, OPS

My results were as follows:

GNAV - 81%
RNAV - 78%
PERF - 83%
MASS&BALANCE - 94%
HUMAN PERFORMANCE  - 88%
FLIGHT PLANNING - 88%
OPS - 87%

AVERAGE 85%

A view of the building work going on in the main hall. There's something not quite right...

My goal was to pass five out of the seven so I didn't have to retake but to my surprise I achieved the goal I set myself for the real exams. Needless to say I was very happy. I just need to repeat the process in a couple of weeks time.

My visa for New Zealand. Very exciting!

WEEK 19 & 20: HUMAN PERFORMANCE & OPERATIONS #19

So that's it, fourteen subjects covered and none to go, the whole ATPL syllabus has been completed.

Airline Prep

After a long weekend Human Performance (HPL) was the topic to be studied. Having done Psychology A-level I was looking forward to HPL as a lot of the areas are the same or similar to what I did last year at school. It didn't fail to disappoint, it has become my new favorite subject and was definitely the most enjoyable.

It is a relatively laid back course and the concepts are fairly straight forward to understand. We seemed to watch one or two air crash investigations a day which was brilliant. The subject seemed to be so relevant as well which is probably why I enjoyed it so much. The scenarios we talked about are real life scenarios that we need to be aware of and know how to prevent or deal with (for example, decompression, hypoxia, hyperventilation as well as a few biological things like parts of the ear and eye and how they work).

I learned quite a lot and will definitely take that forward with me into the future to prevent potential accidents or incidents occurring.

On the last day of HPL we did a couple of practice exams (in which I got 91 & 89% so happy days), watched an aircrash investigation and then a doctor came in to give a lecture on his experience of dealing with disorientated pilots. He was very good and again it was great hearing about real life scenarios. It's scary how easy it is to become disorientated without visual references!

We then got to experience it ourselves by trying to walk in a straight line whilst wearing these funny goggles which made walking seem like the most challenging task on Earth!

Over all, a very enjoyable subject!

The last three days were spent on Operational Procedures (OPS) which was fairly similar to air law. There's a lot of tables and figures to memorize which is no fun at all. There are also a lot of rules to be aware of such as what to do in the event of a fire, decompression, ditching, micro-bursts, icing etc.

To be honest it's all a bit boring and I think the more time spent on the bank for it, the better.

It's a great feeling not having to go in for lessons now and it's all just revision now for the next 23 days. The mocks start on Wednesday and the real exams start on July 7th. Let the grafting begin! 

WEEK 17&18: RNAV #18

Airline Prep

The last couple of weeks have brought an end to an extremely busy month. The latest subject to be completed was RNAV (Radio Navigation). RNAV is more like the module one subjects because it is more factual based and there's not as many calculations. Rumor is it's a data base subject which is good. However, with our next set of exams being electronic we are all a little bit worried about the questions that will come up. The fear is that there will be a load of new, unseen questions which means we will need to know the subject in much more depth than has previously been required.

RNAV is basically the theory of radio waves and aids such as VOR's, NDB's, DME's, various instruments and how they respond when tracking various radio aids. If I'm honest it can get a bit boring but some of it is very relevant so I tend to be more interested in that part than the actual theory of how radio waves travel etc.

Big wasp nest outside the house

To my surprise and delight we were given another sim session, where we practiced tracking VOR's and NDB's. I found this helpful because it gave me an opportunity to actually see how the instruments we studied respond. We took off from Gatwick in the 737-400, flew around for a bit then followed  a series of beacons into Bristol is bad visibility, using an approach plate (STAR), which we had studied in flight planning. Everything happened very quickly and if you're not totally certain on what you're doing then you get behind and it is almost impossible to recover it (as Luke and I found out). Following the aids en-route wasn't a problem and we did that pretty well but our approach was a bit messy and the landing was one not to be spoken of again.... But as far as the purpose of the exercise was concerned I found it very beneficial.The target is to fly as close to the marker radio as possible by putting the coffin in the grave. A skill which becomes easier with practice.

The info we were given for the flight

Captain Clark

Ashurst lads in the cockpit

Captain Clark & First Officer Patel at the controls before Take Off at Gatwick

2 of the displays I was following on the ND (nav display)

Myself, Luke, DJ and a good friend of mine, Nick Tester, went to the Rose Bowl on Friday night to watch Hampshire vs Essex in a T20 match. It was so good to watch some cricket again and made me want to play again. Definitely getting a few withdrawl symptoms at the moment. It was a really nice evening out though and a well deserved treat for us.

I now have four days off to catch up on a bit of sleep and recap on RNAV, GNAV, MASS & BALANCE, FLIGHT PLANNING and PERFORMANCE. Time much needed.We now only have eight days of lessons left before we're into revision and mocks. Very exciting but very scary too. One week closer to New Zealand!

 

At least we didn't end up like this...

WEEK 16: FLIGHT PLANNING #17

Airline Prep

Flying's easy with directions

I have just finished a long week of flight planning. It's amazing how a week feels so much longer without a CBT day, I'm very glad it's the weekend now, even though it will be spent revising. Just not having to go into the center for a couple of days will be nice.

A high level chart. These are all possible airways to fly in the South of England region. Terrifying!

There was a lot to take in for flight planning (as always), lots of charts, tables and graphs. A majority of the questions revolve around working out the fuel required depending on the weight and distance. And then you have to compensate for the altitude and temperature deviation with or without an engine failure which will affect the drag and efficiency of the engine so will affect the fuel flow and so on... all very complicated. There is a different graph or table for each scenario so you just need to flick to the right page and interpret it correctly. 

A typical table from the CAP

A typical graph from the CAP

Having to work out routes from A to B on various charts or calculating the lowest/highest allowable altitude to fly and reading the particular airports SID (standard instrument departure) or STAR (standard instrument arrival) is another of the many sections. I enjoy that bit of it because it is real practical stuff that we are going to be doing during our training and on the line on a day to day basis. It's not always easy because the charts can get quite congested but it is quite fun.

The Heathrow to Munich flight plan DJ & I filled in

Towards the end of the week we had to plan a couple of routes and fill out a flight plan for Heathrow to Munich and Stansted to Biarritz using the charts in our Jepessen's and all of the skills we had learned. We had to find the correct airways, measure the distance and calculate the time and the fuel required, including reserves and allowance for the wind. Both times my desk partner and I were very successful but it took quite a long time and a lot of faffing. I really enjoyed those tasks though.

A Heathrow STAR (standard instrument arrival)

Like all the subjects it isn't easy but after practice should become manageable.

A lot of the class have been suffering from a stinking cold over the last couple of weeks, including both my housemates. I have been pumping myself full of vitamins which is working so far so hopefully I can continue to avoid it, although with both Luke and DJ suffering it can only be a matter of time until I come down with it too. Immune system don't fail me now! 

WEEK 15: PERFORMANCE #16

Airline Prep

CP116

Performance was the topic this week, also known as POF 2. If I'm perfectly honest it wasn't the most interesting of subjects but it's got to be done anyway.

There's a fair bit of theory which is very similar to POF, such as determining the performance of the aircraft when it is at a certain point on the drag curve, what happens to the glide range or fuel consumption with a head/tailwind or how an increase/decrease in mass affects the descent rate. The rest of the subject revolves around interpreting graphs or tables for either single engine piston, multi-engine piston or medium range jet aircraft. The task is generally to find a required take off mass, take off/landing distance whilst taking into account all of the necessary safety requirements and weather and surface conditions. I didn't realise how much there was to it! I thought it was just load up and go. How wrong I was...

These are things that you just don't consider as a passenger. The margin for error on calculations like these are so slim and if they are done wrong then the result could be catastrophic! So I guess as far as this subject goes it is actually quite relevant.

Ground School Housemates

However, when it comes to actually answering questions it can get quite tedious. You have to work so accurately and precisely on the graphs and even if you are as careful as can be and do the right method, you still don't always get the right answer which is very frustrating. It is also difficult to know sometimes which safety factors to apply and where. The questions are pretty time consuming and it's very irritating spending ages working it out and getting an answer totally different to the one the CAA have given. But, like all the other subjects, with a bit of practice it should start clicking in to place.

Class hard at work

I was the last person in the group to turn 19 this week. My birthday was celebrated by a day of performance, work in the evening and a Chinese with Luke and DJ whilst watching Man City increase their hopes of stealing the title again. My Mum and step-dad had come down the previous Sunday evening to take myself and my housemates out for dinner and wish me happy birthday which was very nice and this Saturday my Dad took me to Twickenham to see Harlequins v Bath for a place in the play offs. It was a really good day out, even though Bath sadly lost.

Today is going to be a long day practicing performance and then I have a whole week of flight planning to look forward to.

Just how every person wants to spend their 19th bday

19th bday Chinese & football

Cake before the ants got it

Dad & I at the stoop

Rugby and planes. Perfect!

Virgin A330 landing @ Heathrow