PFLS and Stalls (again) GFT stylie

Well this one was another PFL and stall session. This time Doug did it GFT style: i.e. Show me a clean stall and recover when i say so, show me a full flap stall and recover at the stall warner, and show me a turn stall etc.

Oh and Doug got me to go through the HASELL and HELL checks between.

Most went well, apart from i put the nose down, then removed flap before power in the flap format - misread my own post on here -(but ive fixed it now)

Very cold day, wind from 330/13 knots hence the cold.

I drew my wind spider as instructed which was correct :)

Then we did PFLS, he kept doing these all through, mostly got them right, not a great deal to report on this lesson to be honest.

We had to orbit on right base for rway 27. We cam in quick from the North a little too quick.
Doug asked me to point the right wing at a ground feature on orbit around it, making my turns tighter when against the wind to keep my orbits as circular as possible.

Landing was bumpy on the way in, but put it down ok.

I suppose the bit of good news is that Doug wants me to do my solo North run pretty much in the next couple of lessons. I was going to booka few lessons in for the week before xmas as i finish my contract then, but doug is off on hols, but he got me to book the plane anyway as he reckons most of my time now will be solo stuff - tee hee :)

Last RT Course and tour around EGNX Tower

Well this was the last of our course and the most awaited night, as we were going to be shown around the inside of the East Midlands Control Tower and Radar :)

We met in the departure lounge at 6.45pm and went up to the board room and did the usual couple of hours RT training. We then headed off to security with our passports to get temporary passes.
After getting through security we got the lift up the new (1 year old) tower (254 steps) and got out at the lower section, which has a 360 gantry for viewing - i beleive Pete called it the media center?
We then went up a flight of stairs to the control tower itself. it was about 9.45pm a this point, so fully dark. First impressions were how quiet it was, the rest of the airport rumbled with jets coming and going , the tower however was almost silent, apparently the windows are triple glazed and heated.

We had a good look around all the systems, the ground radar, tower radar, lighting systems, ATIS, etc. All very interesting stuff, see the pictures.

Then we ploded back down to the bottom of the tower to radar, a much more oppresive place, no windows just screens to look at, seemed more intense than tower.
There they had the VDF display, with the QDM, QTE buttons, and the huge monitors showing the whole central section of the UK.

It was a very interesting trip indeed.

Ex 18 Diversions - Wind Spider

Today was my first double lesson. Very lucky with the weather as it turns out, the weeken before had been awfull,
and the rest of the weekend wasnt much better, but our 9am slot Saturday morning worked out great. Weather got a bit poor
by the time we headed back in, had to dip down below 2K feet from the 3K we were at but hey, got 1:45 mins flying time in.

We started the day of with a ful brief (my first with Doug) and we went through Doug's wind spider, which he wants me to draw
on the map for every lesson from now onwards.

Drawing the wind spider:

1) Get the wind for the altitude say 3000ft , 250/20 knots.
2) On the basis that we are travlling at 100knots airspeed, in 1/10 minute we should travle 10 miles
i.e. airspeed / 10, so whatever speed we are travelling at in 6 mins we travel 1/10 (move dec place to the left)
so 258 knots in 6 mins would cover 25.8 miles.
3) Calculate Max drift angle so put in t 100 knots and 90 degrees track off the wind, so giving full crosswind, the flight
computer will then give you your max drift angle, write this on the map.
4) for each 45 degree increment, use the whizwheel to calc ground speed with the wind, so N, NE, E, SE,S,SW,W,NW
which gives you 8 legs values - hence the spider. we know that from the groundspeed, we divide by 10 at it gives us the distance
5) Draw a point on the map somewehere not being used, for the center of the spider.
6) draw the 8 distances legs outwards in the correct direction for each of the legs of the spider.

Once completed, you then have 8 lengths in 8 directions which i indicate how far you can travel in that direction in 6 mins


Using the wind spider:

So youre flying along, and need to divert (for weather etc), you plot where you are now, look at the place you want to land,
and draw a line to it. You estimate in your head what that angle is - lets say 050 degrees. The closest spider to that is the NE
spider at 45 degrees. Using the end of pen of whatever hold then pen up to this spider line and put your finger on its length.
The go back to your new track, and measure how many of the lengths are on the track (roughly). This gives you your time, i.e. 2.5
lengths = 15 mins (2.5 * 6). We have calulated the max drift for today as being 15 degrees. and the wind is coming from 140 degrees
so we have a full crosswind from the right - so we add the full max drift.
Hence we need to fly 065 degrees for 15 mins to get to our destination.
Flyihg along, we constantly check we are tracking that our guess is right, and when we start the turn, start the watch, and gross error
check.

Anyway, we did 4 of these in our lesson today and the first 3 worked out perfectly, the last one a little less accurate on the timing,
but heading was correct, and i adjusted half way for the new times, so we got there exactly on time (2mins added to a 20 mins flight
time)