Starting the new road?

Well Like I said, I am back, a few days late (In my last entry I said I would post again in August) and because of some of my readers from my heli blog, asked me to keep a blog about my CPL-A, FI training, I thought I would.


I started my uni. program on Aug 20, starting with orientation, and our first class that very afternoon, I will explain a little about this program as it is unique. The Program is a Diploma in Business Administration- Aviation Option. The business portion of the program is the normal 2 year business diploma program- Fit into 9 months, and out of the 9 months we are only in Business class for an average of 2 weeks a month, so it is quite fast paced, classes run 0900-1630 and we only work on one course at a time. The time we are not in Business class we are flight training, so we alternate between 2 weeks of business class and 2 weeks of flight training, which makes for a interesting schedule, we could also fly when we are on business course blocks but with it being darker and darker each day it's not really worth it. Our first course was only a week long, and was called Interpersonal Business Communications, and was a interesting course, and was all about communication in the work place, conflict resolution and prevention, etc in other words, How to communicate nicely :). This course was only a week long then ended and a flight training block began, so I am not back in business class till the 17th of Sept. So I have been flight training.

The flight training has been going great, Since I have 50 or so hours to build, the way the flight school handles build up time and CPL training, is a C172 check out and exam first, then some general "rust removing", and some sim training Night Rating and Mountain check out, then you are sent off to build time, then begin the CPL Training. The Flight School I am training with has some top notch Instructor Pilots/Charter Pilots, and great equipment and m/x as well. The Cessna 172 check flight went well, the usual Steep turns, stalls, forced approaches, circuits, precautionaries, diversions, your normal tasks, it took 2 flights due to time and other books, but it was nice to practice it all to get back into the swing of flying airplanes again. Then since Victoria is unlike any airport I trained at (Where I trained for my PPL-A, and CPL-H was the same airport and the airport had one runway and taxiway and was just a MF/FSS) we decided I should do some circuits alone and a flight or two solo out to the practice area to get myself familiar with the much busier airspace and radio work then I am accustomed to, and this all went fine, and I am now getting familiar and comfortable with having to talk to Clearance, Ground, Inner and Outer Towers, It's always interesting for me getting my taxi clearance but so far I haven't had any runway incursions so thats a good thing :P, I guess you can call it Small Town Airport Pilot goes to the Big City Airport's to fly? :P None the less I am getting familiar with it all.

The Sim training was focusing on getting familiar with VOR and ADF work, which was always a bit confusing for me, but my instructor explained it to me in such a way that I picked up right way, and before you know it I was doing VOR and ADF intercepts quite easily and was enjoying it! (Is that possible?!)

Onto Night Training, this is much fun, I have never flown as a Pilot at night, so I began this fun rating this week with the Night Briefing and a dual night flight. The night flight dual, for the first time was amazing, everything was so calm, the weather, basically no other traffic around, we flew over the city for an hour or so, then headed back to the circuits. I found it took a few landings to get use to landing a night, but I done well enough that I didn't break the gear :P and by the end of the flight a few of my landings were pretty close to greasers, if i have to say so myself :P we then moved onto landings without the landing lights on and those went fine, nothing too hard, and then various combinations of lights on/off/ and flap and speed settings. My next two flights were at night, solo. In these flights I found I was learning to get the A/C to do exactly what I wanted, and it felt great, to descend at a certain rate, at a certain speed, and turn at the right point to be lined up on final, then to start flaring at the right time to make a somewhat smooth touchdown, felt great. The first night I flew 2.2 solo, and the 2nd night I flew 2.9 solo, both flights went great and I felt i honed my night skills even more.

So next up is the Dual Night X-Country and then the Solo Night X-Country and then I am finished the night rating, then onto the one day mountain flying check out which should be fun and I am looking forward too. Those are scheduled for next week and the following week if the weather co-operates.

As a side note, I have been talking with flight instructor friends about their jobs and flight instructing in general, and I am getting more and more excited about when I am a flight instructor about April 2008, I am definitely not doing it for the hours, and for sure not the money :P but for the opportunity to teach others this great thing called Flying! :P. The plan is I will do the airplane flight instructing on my weeks off from flying helis. To quote a fellow blogger who sums it up quite well "I keep thinking of when I first started my flight training. How much I looked up to, and wanted to be like, my flight instructor. Someone is going to look to me for all the answers, and is going to trust me with their life. I'm looking forward to the challenge, and hope I can handle the responsibility."

Well thats it for now, I have a few more flights scheduled but the school is quite busy but like I said my next flights are the Dual Night X-Country and the Solo as well, and the mountain check out. So Stay tuned!, Promise I will have some photos next time!!