Back to School Part 2...

I'm learning...slowly. I've done 3 hours with Phil in the PA28, and on the whole it's going quite well, but at times it still feels difficult, and there's a little way to go yet.

On the initial conversion flight, buzzing around and experimenting with the handling while a long way from the ground, the G-BKCC didn't really feel that different to DJ, the larger of the Robin aircraft that I'd learned in and hired immediately after my PPL. Even the landing went well.

Very nice Cessna about to leave for Germany on a not very nice day

The next time we were due to fly was a typical British summer day - overcast and drizzling - and I couldn't even see the tops of the hills near the airfield, which is bad news, seeing as they're only 800ft high. So it was a couple of hours spent sitting round in the flying club, reading through the manual for 'CC (yep, it comes with an instruction book!), and cautiously looking out of the window. Then a Cessna with a fancy computerised cockpit and an IMC pilot departed the club for Germany into the murk, but with the promise of better weather at the destination, and no doubt was in perfect sunshing on top of the cloud a few minutes later - one day, that'll be me!

But after a while the cloud was high enough to do some circuits, which was our aim for the day anyway, and the rain had stopped, so it was time to go out and check out the aircraft. It was still blustery and generally a bit damp, but definitely flyable. We took off from runway 27 with the intention of doing a full circuit to land on the same, but were immediately asked to reposition to land on runway 22 instead, because the wind had altered...this was going to be a complicated day!

We worked hard, and set up all of the different landing and takeoffs that we could think of - normal landings, flapless, powerless gliding and a short-field landing and take off at just 70mph 'over the fence' of the airfield, managing to land, stop and take off within about 600m - pretty short for a big lump like CC. We switched runway (again!) to do some cross-wind work and eventually, after yet another runway change, pulled up to a stop and called it a day. We'd only flown for an 55 minutes but landed 10 times and used all 3 runways at Gloucester, a new record for me pretty intense in an aircraft that I'm unfamiliar with, but working hard when you're training makes it easier when you do it in 'real life'...I had to take a nap that afternoon though!

Very fun looking Skybolt and perfect conditions...tempting!

The next booking was for the August bank holiday - normally a sure fire crappy weather occasion, but actually conditions were absolutely perfect. The plan was to take off from Gloucester and buzz around to some of the local farm strips, taking in some grass landings - something that I hadn't done before.

It seems very strange, lining up into a small grass strip. We landed at Ledbury and Croft Farm, which are both really just green fields in amongst a big landscape of green fields. The trees and hedges just off of the runway concentrate the mind a bit too! Touching down is the same as on tarmac though, and then it's not much bumpier than than some of the hard strips I've landed at - the surface at Elstree was definitely as bad as either of the grass fields!

A view of Croft Farm on (Very) short final - The first grass strip I landed at.

CC At rest after the flight

It was a great flight, just what I needed after the hard work of the previous circuits session. Perfect weather and the relaxed aims of the flight reminded me what flying is supposed to be about - enjoying yourself! Phil's quite happy to do a similar type of flight next time, which will just leave an hour or so to make my time up to the insurance requirement and to get up to speed with more general handling and circuit practice. I'm confident that that will be enough to get me to that safe standard required for flying solo in CC, but if not, then I've got no qualms about having another hour or two of instruction. The aim, after all is to get better!

Looking back through to logbook now, things seem to be happening quite quickly. I've flown nearly 10 hours since my test, and I've got more than 100 landings under my belt! It only seems like yesterday that I was waiting nervously at the club for my first ever lesson! It's good to be making progress.

Back to School

When I bought into my group aircraft, one of the conditions set by the insurance company was that I take 5 hours of instruction with an instructor before flying solo. So it's back to school for me!

My previous passion - learning how to drive properly!

The easiest way to explain flying a light aircraft to non-pilots is by comparing it to driving a car. I actually think that controlling an aeroplane in pitch, roll and yaw is more intuitive than the two-dimensional controls for a car, but the way you are taught during a PPL is completely different to learning to drive. This'll be a bit controversial, but I think the driving test consists of a lot of 'skills' that don't prepare you in any way for a real emergency or real life situations. Being able to parallel park is wonderful, but it won't save you when you have a tyre blow-out, or you get snap lift-off oversteer in a front wheel drive car on a wet, greasy road.

A PPL course is different. Obviously there are times when you can use a cut-down version of some of the procedures, but for the most part, you should actually be utilising what you learned.

3 months has slipped by since my PPL skill test. I'd planned to take a couple of check-up lessons with an instructor even before the CC insurance company insisted, to make sure that I hadn't picked up any bad (or dangerous!) habits in the 7 hours or so P1 time I've had since then. PA28 conversion training will give me the check-up I need, while introducing the aircraft to me with a safe pair of hands waiting in case I cock it up.

After an e-mail from the group treasurer to say that the insurance company had verified my details and that I was covered in the aircraft, and with my freshly arranged log-in details to the groups Internet booking system in my hands, I was straight on the phone to my flying school. My instructor for the conversion course is Phil Matthews, the CFI, who I know quite well, and knows just about everything there is to know about being a pilot. He was also my PPL examiner, which adds a certain air of authority to his opinions. We arranged to meet for an evening flight after work on a Tuesday night.

The day came, and the weather while I was at work was, to put it bluntly, awful. I tried to be interested in my day-job but the persistent drumming of heavy rain on the window made it hard to concentrate, and at lunchtime I was sure that the flight would be called off. A bit of hope came when I called the airfield at 2pm and was told that it was improving, and I couldn't believe it when at 4pm I was told that it was flyable and that I should come on up.

Awful British weather subsided into a great evening for flying

My office in Bristol is only 30 miles from the airfield but the difference in the weather made it feel like another country. CC was stuck behind a Seneca in the hangar and by the time I'd dragged her outside there was a perfect blue sky with just a few scattered, fluffy cumulus clouds. Phil and I completed the walk around and before long we were sitting at the hold raring to go.

CC's a lot more powerful than my previous aircraft, and it took a bit more rudder to keep straight on the runway during the take-off. The actual lift off is more of a rotation than in the Robins I'm used to, which just tend to fly off in their own time, but then we were away and climbing at a rate which is a bit more than I'm familiar with! We trundled westwards and, once clear of the airfield, started a programme of left and right turns up to 60 degrees of bank that Phil obviously uses for his 'standard' check ride as well as the full repertoire of stall configurations and speeds.

The PA28's controls seem a bit woolly compared to the aerobatic aircraft I trained on, but it's built to be a touring aircraft, so you would expect nothing else. The aircraft feels quite different to fly due to having a yoke to hand rather than a stick, and because it's quite a bit larger, but the handling struck me as very benign. Even (deliberate) stalls in a steep-turn failed to produce any drastic effects, and maintaining cruise altitude proved quite easy at about 2400rpm and 105kts IAS.

The largest difference in performance that I could feel was when gliding into some practice forced landings, which made up the next part of the flight. The first attempt ended up a little low (but passable) into the chosen field due to me underestimating the sink during a gliding turn, and the second a bit high due to overcompensating for it. A bit more practice there required, I think - after all, if it happens for real you don't get to go-around again!

We took another 10 minutes or so going over procedures like switching fuel tanks (unlike the Robins, CC has 2 tanks which you alternate between to maintain balance in their levels) and generally enjoying the perfect flying conditions, before we made our calls to ATC and headed back to Gloucester. After being given a left-downwind join for runway 27 at Gloucester, and I promptly started to line up with right downwind. In my defence I'd never been offered a left downwind at Gloucester because the circuit for 09/27 is always flown to the North, but no excuses - it was a silly mistake, and I'm glad Phil was there to point it out. Pre-landing checks completed, we turned base and then onto final at 600ft with full flap.

CC seems like a pretty friendly beast to land, everything seems to happen smoothly and slowly, and 180bhp means that there's plenty of power to combat any unexpected sink. I had to cut the throttle a bit earlier than I'm used to as I flared and held the wheels off the ground for as long as possible. We touched down and backtracked, taxied back to the hangar, shut down and finally pushed CC back into the hangar.

After we'd sorted out his fee, Phil went off on his way, and I went back to CC and finish off the paperwork and lock up. It was very strange wandering across the tarmac of the now almost deserted airfield, back to 'my' aircraft and hangar, after only previously having access to the airfield via flying schools. CC locked up and paperwork done, I stood in front of the hangar for a while in the silence of the cool evening air as the sun went down. A very good way to spend an evening.

Introducing my new friend...

The economy is in a recession at the moment, you might have heard about it. In fact to not hear about it you have to have physically bury your head in the sand, and even then it has to be pretty deep. Everyone's talking about money...

I sold a car to pay for my PPL, so after I'd established that my flight school wouldn't run off with my money I paid for my course up front, getting a decent discount and missing the VAT rise back to 17.5% in the process. For the last few months of my course I hadn't actually handed over any money to the flying club, so fuel prices were inconsequential and I'd almost forgotten about landing fees!

Flying clubs and schools do a great job, not just in training pilots but also for rental and support after the training, but they're a business, and like any business they need to make a profit. Add in the CAA sticking it's hand in their wallet at every opportunity and it doesn't take long to see why rental prices are as high as they are. Hiring has it's advantages; maintenance, insurance and fuel are all included in the price and if something breaks you can just give the aircraft back and forget about it. If you want to take a 1 hour scenic flight once a month it's definitely the way to go.

Silverstone (on another hazy day) - A view worth £300?

But it's difficult to get the aeroplane for more than a couple of hours at a time, and even a short land-away flight can come to £300 by the time you've paid landing fees, as I discovered when I flew to Turweston to take a look at the new Silverstone circuit layout last month. Hiring is a pretty inefficient way of turning money into noise, and it just isn't sustainable if you want to go and explore. To me, that's the whole point of flying.

If you want to be cost effective, buying a share in an aircraft is a good start. I'd been vaguely looking around for a share since before my skills test, and I had found a couple of leads, but they'd led to nothing. A midweek flight one night in G-BKCC, a PA28 based at Gloucester looked promising, but there were no spaces in the group. Other groups I spoke to offered a couple of false dawns, but in the end were just not willing to let a pilot with as few as 50hrs into their club. I had a chance of a Piper Cub too, a lovely 1940's style 2-seater, but the maximum weight was just too low to make it a practical proposal.

Tripacer - A possible share...

It can be pretty disheartening, looking for a share-o-plane as a low hours pilot. Nobody seems to want you until you've got 100 hours, and I really don't know who can afford that nowadays. But my advice is to stick with it, because, like buses, 2 came along at once. A long-winded route passed through numerous phone-calls gave me an opportunity of a 1953 Piper TriPacer based at Oaksey Park, and one Friday night I got a message saying that a share had become available in CC, the PA28 I had flown in from Gloucester. The initial cost of both shares was about the same, and the rates for both aircraft meant that I'd be able to do a lot more flying with my meagre budget.

The Tripacer offered great classic flying, but the PA28 allowed me to stay at my 'home' airfield, offered better touring capacity, and most importantly, had a large, friendly group of experienced pilots who regularly buzz around Europe and that I could glean an awful lot of knowledge from. CC was the obvious choice. I'd already checked the aircraft out thoroughly when I went flying in her, so ignoring all the usual advice of taking your time to make a steady-headed decision I called up the person selling the share straight away and agreed a price. Two weeks later, the chairman of the Tripacer group called me to say they weren't happy with a low-hours pilot anyway, which made me feel pretty smug about my quick thinking to grab the CC share before someone else got it!

'My' PA28...well, sort of

It took about a month to finalise the formalities and for the committee to meet and agree me, and the insurance company had to be consulted because of my low hours and imposed some conditions. I've had to agree to take 5 hours additional training in the aircraft, and pay an additional insurance premium, both of which seem pretty sensible. I've met the committee of the group, and they're very friendly, and I still can't believe they're going to let me fly their aircraft...I guess I should say 'my' aircraft now too!

So G-BKCC ('CC for short) is my new friend. I've missed my cars - I always feel that the best cars I've ever had have become somehow more than mechanical, like an organic creature with a personality of their own. Given time, I'm sure I'll grow the same attachment to CC. I should have the training done in the next few weeks. Then I can wind my way to new destinations, and hopefully make a bit more noise, for a bit less money than before....

Doing it for real...the first flight as a 'proper' pilot.

The first flight on your own license is a strange feeling. You step through the doors of the flying club like you've done a 50 times before, and everything looks the same. The sofa and the table are in the same place and the people sat around are invariably the same people that you've come to recognise over the last year or so. But something just feels different. The brown wallet from the CAA burning a hole in your back pocket seems to make everything a bit more real.

And strangest of all, I've got a passenger. I'd promised Jen, my girlfriend, that she'd be my first passenger and now that the time has come round, she hasn't backed down. That's despite never having been in an aeroplane of any kind before...no pressure then!

The Severn - The photo makes the haze look worse than it was

It's a bit hazy, not really ideal for someones first flight, but it's early in the morning so the thermals shouldn't be too active. We've decided to just do a short sortie around the local area in case Jen doesn't enjoy it. I settle on a simple route from Gloucester to the Severn Bridges, over Pontypool and back up to the Malverns if there's time.

After a pretty thorough passenger brief (because Jen's never been air side before), before she knows it Jen's strapped in to G-BKDJ and we're taxiing out. I call ready for departure, a private jet is told to hold and wait for us (I love it when that happens!), and we're given our clearances. Time to go.

The 'old' Severn Bridge from the air

I check that Jen's ok and feed the power in, and we accellerate smoothly away. At 50kts I raise the nosewheel, and at about 60 it all goes smooth as DJ just flies itself off. We look back in just enough time to see the Citation Jet taking off behind us, and I turn south to get out of the way. In no time we're south of Gloucester and heading for the bridges.

Jen's gone a bit quiet. Later, she admits that there was a bit of turbulence on the climb out that made her nervous, but in no time we're at our cruise altitude and the bridges are in sight. Even the haze seems to be easing off.

I love seeing things from the air, it's just something you just can't do any other way. Structures that seem enormous from the ground look tiny from just 2000ft and the green fields seem to go on forever. Jen's impressed with the colours of the resevoir near Pontypool, and we bank over it to get a better view before heading back up the river towards the Malverns.

The Forest of Dean - The haze is clearing

By the time we get as far as Ledbury there the haze is descending again. Jen's feeling ok, but the decision's made to quit while the going's good and head back to Gloucester. An overhead join and a fairly uneventful landing and we're back on terra firma.

Parking up and pulling the mixture to kill the engine is pretty satisfying. I've been able to share the experience for the first time, and hopefully Jen can see why I've been rambling on about it. Talking afterwards, it seems that some of my enthusiasm has rubbed off, but there's still a long way to go. Words like 'unnatural' are banded around to describe the takeoff, but the views were a hit, so we'll call it a success. It's only been an hour, but we've done about 110 miles, and seen an area of the country that it would've taken a whole day to cover in the car. Showing it to someone else has justified the cost and hard work at a stroke. Sometimes, life's pretty good.

My First Post - Welcome!

So I've started the obligatory flying blog...

Hello! My name is Tim and I've recently obtained my Private Pilots License. Impressive huh? Well, actually no, not really.

The old fashioned idea that a lot of people have about pilots is that they're all jet-setting, epaulette weilding playboys who can jet off to St. Tropez at a moments notice when the tax man gets a bit close to their stash. It would be nice if that was true (and sometimes I like to pretend!), but the reality is that almost anyone can become a private pilot. Sure, to do a PPL takes some intelligence, a fair bit of commitment and a decent sized chunk of disposable income, but it's not so complex or expensive that the average man on the street can't do it. As so many pilots will tell you, it's just a question of priorities.

My father tried for a PPL in the early 90's, but unfortunately ran out of time and budget before the end, and I've been hooked on aeroplanes ever since. The RAF was my dream when I was at school, compounded by annual visits to RIAT Fairford, and a weeks work experience with Delta Jets at Kemble, but for one reason or another it never really got beyond a dream, and I ended up at university doing an engineering degree. Then, in 2009, with a decent degree and a steady job, I had the realisation that if I sold my car (my other great passion) I would have enough cash in the bank to pay for a PPL course. Once I get ideas, I tend to move fast, and 3 days later I was on the phone to a local flying club arranging a trial lesson.

The rest, as they say, is history. So many milestones flew by in the 9 months that it took me to obtain my license...trial lesson, first solo, first solo nav-ex, QXC, skills test and all the exams in between, but there are plenty of student blogs out there if you want to read about that.

So here we are, and back to my original comment that simply holding a PPL isn't that impressive. The basic license means that you're certified safe, but it doesn't make you a Sky-God...air time and experience is the key to becoming a good pilot, and that's what this blog is going to be about. From a selfish point of view, I'll be writing my experiences so that they sink in and help me improve, but I hope anybody who reads this will be encouraged to try for themselves, and maybe one or two more pilots will be born!

All the best.