Clear of Cloud

Finally, some flyable sky

After plenty of failed attempts to go flying over the last couple of weeks, this was the view that I was greeted with on Sunday morning.  I had been hoping to go flying the day before but the cloudbase was just too low to do what I need to do - namely some upper airwork or cross country exercises.

Sunday was CAVOK and we headed out to the West to do some stalls and steep turns.  I was very pleasantly surprised with my flying.  The Grob is a new type to me but I was very comfortable handling it.  It's a more sensitive aircraft than I'm used to but despite this I had no problems.  It looks like then, that I'm actually learning some flying skills, not just flying by rote.

There were lots of cues indicating progress in my flying.  I knew where I was 99% of the time and was aware of how to reticify errors all of the time.  At the end of the stalls and turning, which were all wel executed and controlled,  Brian, my instructor, told me to head back to the field.   It wasn't a navigation exercise so I didn't have a flight plan to follow so I said to Brian that I was going to take up a southerly heading to intercept the motorway and I'd follow that back in.  Flying skills,  situational awareness and utterly comfortable throughout the lesson - I really am on my way to being a pilot.

I did some less than perfect touch-and-goes when I got back to the field but it was turbulent and I am new to the type, so I'm not really worried.  Had I been solo, I would have quite happily aborted landings until I was happy that I had a fully stabilised approach and was ready to put the aircraft cleanly on the deck.  All in all a really good day's flying.

VOR tracking

Having reinstalled MS Flight Sim I set about practising some of what I learnt this week's ground training.  So I dialled up the 270 radial on the BAL VOR, intercepted and flew from the station for 8 miles or so.  I then dialled up 090, got the TO flag and started a rate 1 turn to intercept and fly 270 radial inbound to the station. 

I managed to pull that off just like my instructor told me.  So, looking for a challenge, I decided to "go under the hood" and do a rate 1  360 orbit on the radial with the intention of picking up the track inbound with little or no loss of height.  This was more or less successful. I found myself hunting the needle, which bugged me as I had been warned about it.  I then looked at the DME and found I was 1.5 nm from the station.  At that kind of range the needle gets more sensitive to deviation.  Hence the hunting.  When I looked at the GPS track I had actually managed the 360 orbit and it was only after I was reestablished inbound on 270 did I start chasing left and right of track.  For a first attempt, that is a result.

Bring on the IR !!!

Image from http://www.auf.asn.au/navigation/other.html#vor

And the Outlook for Tomorrow

More Muck.   Today's flying ops were yet another wash out.  I'm booked in for two slots tomorrow early morning and early afternoon.  I really want to get some proper flying done.  It's hard to stay motivated by just doing  imaginary flight plans.  It all counts I suppose.

While we waited for something vaguely resembling flyable conditions, Joe introduced me to the VOR.  A useful instrument for navigation or indeed torture by the sounds of it.  See, remembering to dial in the reciprocal heading when flying to the station on a particular radial is easy to do on the ground but I can so easily imagine how simple it will be
1. either not remember it and end up wandering all over the place or
2. remember to do it but forget when talking to Dublin that I am inbound on Radial 290 and not inbound on 110 as dialed up on the instrument.

Having just rebuilt my old PC I have been very reluctant to reinstall FlightSim, having done today's briefing, I'll be installing it tonight !!!

Weather or Not to Fly..

Ah the life of an Irish student pilot.  I'm between jobs this week and I book a full week of flight training with a local school.  Surely I'd make some progress  - maybe even a solo cross-country.  But no.  One upper airwork session that the cloudbase turned into a series of touch and go's and that's it.  The meteorlogical conditions the week have been,  I think the word is, muck.

Frustration, bring it on, I just can't get enough of it!