RT Couse First

Well i was at the flying school and Doug mentioned that a guy called Pete Stephens was running an RT course if i was interested. Apparently Pete is an ATC and East Mids - so i thought it would be a good idea.

So arranged with Pete, signed up for the course (£60 for 9 weeks, each wed night) However wont be make the 2nd and 3rd week as we are in Ibiza.

Popped along to Burleigh College in Lougborough for 7pm (till 9pm) and he went through intros, Cap 413, and told us about the course etc. the important points to remember, and what we would be doing, looks like it we be very usefull.

Key point - he expects us all to have passed the written and oral exams by the end of the course.

PFLs again and a Spitfire Exhibition

Well its a lovely sunny Friday morning, weather is perfect. Vis good, sun is out, CAVOK blah, blah. :)

Off we went to the North this time, after i checked her out, booked us out etc.

As we set off, the rolls royce spitfire was out of the hangar on the tarmac - looked lovely especially on this sunny morning

Did a few PFL's they still arent coming that well, cant pick a bloody field - there are too many of them. We had a look at judging the size of field needed etc.

Next thing we know, the spit fires bombs past us to the south and starts having a whale of time, we just flew along watching him barrel roll, loop the loop fantastic!



Flew back in with some basic nav, doug asked me to land on the numbers but overshot a bit - not too much but doug was moaning, still im getting used to his teaching style now :)

First lesson back after the break

Well the initial 9am lesson was cancelled but the weather turned out quite nice and sunny by lunch so had my lesson at 13:30.

Was a bit nervous about getting back into the saddle as i knew Doug would throw me in at the deep end, and what with my memory being seive like i thought i would struggle. I did revise some of the checks before going - pre- landing and made sure i could rememeber the radio calls.

Anyway, we did a variet of stuff in the lesson , all revision stuff, PFL's, Stalling and Steep Turns.
Didnt do too bad at the stalling, bit rusty but got there in the end.

Power back 15Krpm
Keep pulling back to keep the nose there
Wait for the stall warner, keep it there
Push the nose forward, full power

With flap (as above)
full power, When stable, no stall warner and +ve rate climg - remove drag flap
Wait for positive rate of climb on VSI and ALT remove second stage flap
Repeat to remove last stage.

With flap in turn
as above
full power nose down, no aileron
as soon as stable straighten up

Whole concept is to loose as little height as possible - Doug used the analogy of landing and it all goes wrong.

PFLs' - made a bit of a mess of these - im useless at finding a field - just too many of them - got the wind direction right, but picked fields too far away - Doug gave me another pointer - in no wind, use fields 0.5 - 0.75 along the wing.
I need to revise all the checks and the calls for this

I also need to revise the HASELL checks and memorise them ! :(

Did the zone entry fine, got down to 2K for the zone, pre-landing checks but came in too high after setting QFE - didnt get down to 1K, then left the final setup a little late, but landing was acceptable - although i did dump the nose in a little.

All in all - not bad considering in at the deepend and 3 months gap, radio was pretty good too.

Another one booked for tomorrow AM :)