Exam Briefing and a New iCOM

Flying Hours Today 0:00, Total 5:20

It was a pretty standard Sunday morning in September: windy, low cloud, with a dark front approaching. I set off to the flying school and got to within 5 minutes of the airport when I received a call to confirm that the double lesson I had booked was not to go ahead. Beaten by the weather once more.

As I was so close to the flying school I decided to call in, to get a warm cup of coffee and to ask about the exams I would have to soon start taking. The seven I need to take are:

• Aircraft General
• Radio Telephony
• Air Law
• Air Navigation
• Human Performance
• Meteorology
• Flight Performance & Planning

At the time of writing the fee for each of the exam papers is £12 per sitting. My plan now is to prep for those I can sit immediately and take them when a lesson may be cancelled in future.

You can find out a whole lot more about the details and how I fared by visiting my ground school and examinations posts.

At the flying school I took the time to browse the internet and found some useful TAF / METAR sites that provide background as to why my lesson was cancelled again ;-)

I also picked up the phone number for LBA ATIS: +44 (0) 113 250 96 96 x 2489, which will be useful for getting an early appreciation of the conditions in future.

On returning home I dropped into the AirSupply shop near to the airport to pick up the PPL Confuser to aid in my exam prep. I also decided to buy an ICOM IC-R5 receiver to start listening into R/T in order to get a better understanding of protocol and the language used to help me in the R/T exam.

At the time, AirSupply ran an excellent buy back scheme on scanners - if you keep the box & packaging etc. you get a 50% rebate back if you want to put the equity against something else they sell (e.g. headphones). I don't know if that still stands, but it is worth a call to find out.

In the past week I've also been looking into getting my medical appointment booked so that when I do finally get to go solo I won't be stumped.

So That's What Flaps Do...

Flying Hours Today 1:15, Total 5:20

Today when I woke up the weather wasn't looking too promising. Oh no, not another cancellation - I don't think I could face that.

I go on-line and get the weather forecast. The TAF and METAR for EGNM (note that I'm now using the ICAO code for the airport rather than that IATA code of LBA) looked promising so I set off for the flying school. This was a good decision as the lesson was definitely ON.

We started with a short briefing review from three weeks ago when the weather changed and curtailed the lesson and then went outside to the waiting aircraft.

As we checked out G-BODD the rain was falling lightly. All checks done and off we went - I managed to have intelligent conversations with Leeds tower and taxied to R27 via F3, hold for power checks, then R09, exit Charlie to hold A3.

We had to wait for a touch and go to complete, then we missed for our slot for some unknown reason. It was then that the kindly pilot behind, waiting patiently in his 737 informed the tower that we were in his way so couldn't progress. Tower apologised - they couldn't see us behind the 737 - and so gave us clearance to depart.

Out to R27, turn around and then cleared for take off. I was particularly pleased as I had completed all R/T conversations by myself with only a few prompts from the instructor.

We set off on the familiar track out to Harrogate in the overcast and cloudy weather - LEEDS BRADFORD EGNM 190552Z 190716 24013KT 9999 SCT020 SCT050 TEMPO 1016 23018G28KT.

The handover to Leeds approach went OK then we got stuck into a review of the lesson of climbs (full power, climb attitude, trim - 40ft to go and level off, gain airspeed, power to 2400rpm, trim), glides (carb heat on, power to idle, reduce airspeed, descent attitude - maintaining 75kts, 200ft from target - carb heat off, 100ft - apply power and pull the nose up), powered descents as glides but with 2000rpm.

There was a lot of R/T chatter regarding a Chinook in the area - but we failed to get visual as we moved to another, clearer, part of the sky. En-route I was exposed to some steep banking by the instructor over Ripon - which didn't agree too much with my stomach.

Descending With Flaps

"Extending the flaps causes a small increase in lift and a greater proportional increase in drag, i.e. the L/D (lift:drag) ratio is decrease. If maintaining a constant airspeed in the glide, the flightpath will be progressively steeper following the extension of each state of flap."

From Trevor Thom's The Air Pilot's Manual 1 Now it was time to practice the use of flaps when descending with power. We moved on to using flaps to enable us to fly at different speeds, maintaining similar descent rates, power to extend or reduce the descent distance.

We did a lot of this practice by targeting various fields, rivers, reservoirs and even RAF Menwith Hill as possible landing points.

All too soon we headed back to Leeds, with lots of grim looking showers ahead. My instructor managed to get us a direct approach on R27 so I could practice the approach which would become so familiar to me.

We arrived over Eccup reservoir at around 2000ft, heading 210. Then apply a right turn to 270 when over the reservoir some 4nm from the threshold. Two stages of flap applied, throttle to 1700rpm. Keep the runway number steady in the windscreen, a right to left crosswind so point the aircraft slightly to the right. R/T for the approach done by me with help. I suddenly noticed an Embraer on the runway! But it was turning away onto taxiway Delta (phew). Three levels of flap at about 500ft, fuel pumps were already on. Throttle fully back.

A tendency to pitch up as the runway approaches fast - but the instructor insisted that I maintain the down attitude. He took control at the very latest point and I followed the controls through as he flared and we gently touched down.

Taxy along R27 to Foxtrot taxiway and back to the Multiflight West apron. I completed the closedown procedures to end another excellent lesson - and the instructor kindly apologised for the steep turns over Ripon which had cause me a bit of queasiness en route.

Altogether I booked 1hr 15 minutes on this flight as we had been waiting for some time at the A3 holding point. That takes me over the 5 hour mark - I should have this PPL business cracked in less than 4 years at this rate ;-)

The TAF Says 'Washed Out'

Flying Hours Today 0:00, Total 4:05

I arrived back from holiday in Mallorca on Saturday night. Flying into Manchester at around 2200hrs following a blustery and rain soaked approach over the Pennines.

Things didn't look too good for flying on the Sunday morning and my hunch was right. The TAF for Leeds this morning is:

Leeds And Bradford in United Kingdom EGNM 139' W 5352' N Elevation: 682 feet
Updated At : 08:20:00 GMT Standard Time
Temp: 10 C / 50 F Humidity: 100 %
Clouds: Few at 500, Scattered at 1000, Broken at 2000 feet
Visibility: Unlimited
Wind: 17 knots from 250 ( WSW )
Windchill: -2 C / 28 F
Dew point: 10 C / 50 F
Pressure: 1007 hPa
Sunrise: 06:38:00 GMT Standard Time , Sunset: 19:23:00 GMT Standard Time
METAR: EGNM 120720Z 25017KT 220V280 9999 -SHRA FEW005 SCT010 BKN020 10/10 Q1007


Forecast for: EGNM Valid From: 12 / 09 / 2004 ( 12 :00) to the 13 th ( 06 :00)
Overnight Mostly cloudy (Broken at 2200, Broken at 1000 feet) with winds from the WSW at 17 mph gusting to 29 mph.
Morning Fair with winds from the WSW 220-280 at 20 mph.
Afternoon Fair with winds from the WSW 220-280 at 20 mph.
Evening Fair with winds from the WSW 220-280 at 20 mph.
TAF: EGNM 120720Z 25017KT 220V280 9999 -SHRA FEW005 SCT010 BKN020 10/10 Q1007

So no lesson today - this was confirmed by the school shortly after 0900hrs when I called in. At least this time I hadn't got in the car to drive there! What was useful today was the fact that I had decoded the METAR and TAF for the airport and didn't think that we would be going flying. Looks like the reading of those books on the weather is starting to pay off.