Exams and the Welford Navex

I've now completed all bar one exam with Derek Davidson. This was an intense few days learning from an old aviator. It was very much a exam cramming session but there were some great anecdotes illustrating many of the points he was making. I've also finally learned the wind-down method on the flight computer which seems much easier!

The week after that I arrived to do a navex via Welford and Overton as I discussed with Barrie a couple of weeks before. We were in Alpha-November as usual and since it was first thing in the morning I did the alpha-check. Actually I mostly alpha-check every time I fly. Oil was fine but I spotted we needed fuel (and the landing light was still out...) we trundled over to fill up where Barrie checked the oil again (left) before hitting runway 25 to begin the detail. I was fairly well together for this flight, climbing to the overhead at 2300ft,  establishing the heading and power, changing to Farnborough radar (once I could get through on a busy radio day). We were about 10 minutes into the flight and I wasn't entirely sure my heading was right and so was checking ground features when Barrie alerted me to the fact that the oil inspection flap wasn't latched and was flapping around. After a minute or so Barrie decided we should return, he didn't want it coming loose and damaging something else, particularly the propeller. I turned us around and Barrie did the rest. At least it was a cheap lesson!

The next week we tried again. For a change runway 07 was in use with the slightly trickier right hand circuit. We had a quick briefing to think through the slight change in departure which hadn't even crossed my mind. Doh. The plan was to climb to 2300ft and depart above the base leg. Alpha-November had a little modification shown right. Barrie has checked the aircraft so without delay we were off. Winds were very light so there weren't any difficulties taking off. I set course, did the ETA and spoke to Farnborough all without a hitch. After a bit of Ian's famous left hand down action and steering to avoid AWE we were bang on course at Welford. I actually found it a bit tricky to identify it as a disused airfield, though it is very visible and I was pretty sure it was Welford having seen it from a distance before. I should have studied the map for identifying features more thoroughly. I had to climb to regain altitude lost while circling Welford and set course for Overton, giving Farnborough a quick call with location and ETA for the next leg. There was a bit of accidentally descending and climbing to get back the altitude - we were crossing Kingsclere which has some of the areas highest ground and a couple of tall masts too. Must keep and eye on power as well as heading. We arrived to the west of Overton but it was quickly identified and the new heading was set. Once again Farnborough were updated with the ETA and I requested MATZ penetration for Odiham which we would hit just after Basingstoke. All well and good and we very soon had Blackbushe in sight. Barrie made it clear that it was my decision when we turned north to make our approach. The Blackbushe approach was a bit messy again - almost overflying Yateley (naughty - noise abatement). Re-join went okay but my first attempt at a landing was awful - too high and tried to lose too much height too quickly meant we were too steep and we bounced hard and went around. Barrie said I should have gone around once I'd realised I was too high because it is difficult to judge the flare at that angle. The second try was much, much better.

Next week - the same Navex but this time solo!

Daftlogic's Distance Calculator for this route

What was it now - Oh yes Circuits

A couple more lessons, both circuits. I don't feel I've really got over the long weather / holiday break at the beginning of the year so when Barrie suggested circuits I wholeheartedly agreed. We're back in Alpha-November with runway 25 in use for both.

My first hour long session was pretty awful and I think it was partly due to a poor night's sleep and a quite variable cross wind. My flare had just vanished. My circuits were pretty much fine it was just that last manoeuvre. That and calling Downwind when I was on Final much to the amusement of Steve who was arriving back in Charlie-Whisky.

The following week went much better. Barrie offered a demonstration but I felt good and nailed it first time.Almost no wind and I knocked off half a dozen circuits with fairly good landings each time.  Low cloud meant a low level circuit at around 600ft, but that didn't seem to deter me.

I've booked ground school with Derek Davidson at the beginning of May and Barrie suggests I save my flying until after I knock off the exams. It looks like I only have a few more flights before we start doing solo navigation and examiner stuff and it's really the exams holding me back. Derek has advertised for years in Flyer and both Barrie and David Cue have recommended him on reputation so off I go.

It's amazing to think in a relatively few short lessons I may well be out there on my own!

Navigation and Circuits, Always

So I've managed to squeeze in another couple of lessons in the last couple of weeks.

Firstly a session practising circuits. I'm sure I need plenty of this after a two month break. The weather wasn't bad but the visibility was pretty poor and one extended downwind meant we all but lost sight of the runway. My performance wasn't very good - once again slow and low and we all know where that leads. It felt good to be back flying though. Whisky Oscar is back - I love the sun visors, a small addition but they make a difference for me.

The second lesson was a navigation exercise to Westcott in Alpha November. The weather was windy so more circuits were out. The route was straight from Blackbushe on a course of 330 (45 knot wind from 245), turn around at Westcott and come back. I honestly had a great flight, departed more or less overhead and was on course for the whole outbound route without need for course correction. I even maintained altitude and picked out my way-points on the way. Henley was a great way-point from the air and the views were great. Changing to Farnborough North was an education though, so many people desperate to infringe, so much poor English and poor RT work. Even we had a go at it - my turn at Westcott was too wide, we didn't depart overhead and got a bit to close to the Benson MATZ - a warning from LARS N and a sharp left turn! As usual when these things go wrong I was sort of noticing the ground features didn't match up to the map.

The landing at Blackbushe left a lot to be desired, too slow, too high, one go-around and a follow up poor landing. It's time for a few circuits.

It turns out Whisky Oscar had some engine problems while Barrie was doing a trial lesson - he just managed to limp back to Blackbushe though he did do his first mayday!

That night I also went to my first club seminar on Human Factors and Performance given by Mike Bagshaw. I didn't realise he literally wrote the book! He's an old friend of the club and one of the examiners that we use. He was, to use the old cliche, very informative and entertaining. Highly recommended and I'm certainly planning to do other seminars.

Petworth and Petersfield

I finally had another lesson on Thursday after about two months off. Appalling weather and work timing meant a big gap. Thursday was overcast in Newbury but Blackbushe was bright and a little blustery. Barrie had changed the route and we were heading south towards Goodwood. The route went Petworth - Petersfield - Haslefield and back to Blackbushe. The was the odd fierce gust as we took off - not welcome. We transitted Farnborough at around 2000ft - another first!

Some of the Red Air Fleet

The navigation exercise wasn't too bad though the wind at 2000ft was stronger than anticipated and I have this terrible tendancy to lock my focus inside the aircraft when I'm using the map or doing FREDA checks - not good. Add to that the death-grip on the controls means I often lose several hundred feet or turn to the left. These bad habits mean I'm frequently climbing back to altitude or correcting my course and as Barrie pointed out can be fatal if we're flying lower.

Exams are becoming a block to progress at the moment so I really need to get on with that. My new Air Navigation book arrived today so GET SOME WORK DONE!

Bit of Flying and the 1 in 60 Rule

Last week while we waited for the rain to clear Barrie did a briefing on the 1 in 60 Rule. This states that if a pilot has traveled sixty miles then an error in track of one mile is approximately a 1° error. These are calculations done on the ground based on a reference point or two chosen for the flight.

For example the reference point is 20 miles into a 50 mile flight. The first part of the calculation is the nautical miles gone and the second part is nautical miles to go, thus in my example:-

(1/20 * 60)  + (1/30 * 60)

60/20 + 60/30

3 + 2

5°

So we construct a table showing how far we need to correct given how far we are from course

• 1nm =  5°
• 2nm = 10°
• 3nm = 15°
• 4nm = 20°

Any further out would be poor flying! We subtract these numbers if we're on the right or add if we're on the left.

It was then on with a few circuits to keep my hand in. Since the change of hands the club now only keeps Alpha-November so that's now a given. Blustery conditions made for some interesting circuits with lots of active use of the controls. The circuits were cut short after four touch and goes by a wall of rain and low cloud moving in.

Nav-Extranaganza

Between the storms

So I ended 2013 with a couple of different navigation exercises with varying levels of success. Firstly my regular Friday slot with a four leg flight via Tilehurst, Lambourn and Overton. There was a 40 knot wind at 2000ft which on paper made for some big corrections. I was late starting the first leg which was only corrected because I could see the water tower in Tilehurst. The leg to Lambourn was better. I underestimated timing and thought I was late at the half-way point, but thing weren't all that bad in fact. I correctly arrived at Lambourn but Barrie wasn't particularly happy with my identification. We turned for Overton and that's when things started to go awry. We climbed and descended, went off course and corrected poorly and arrived at what I assumed was Overton. In fact it was too close to Basingstoke, too big and had a major railway line fork - Oakley in fact. Barrie corrected me and pointed out the identifying points. We then flew back to Blackbushe and quite flustered I messed up the approach and circuit though the landing was quite sweet - turns out there was no wind at all!

Lesson from that one? I really have to remember Aviate, Navigate, Communicate.


The last flight was moved forward to a Sunday. Barrie spotted that there was another storm coming in and would stop the booked flight on the Monday. He gave me a call and worked specially on the Sunday. This flight was via Grove and Overton (much error correction needed!)


The first leg went very smoothly with only a little prompt from Barrie to start navigating. (Follow the the mantra Aviate, Navigate, Communicate!). We flew at 2600ft to go over the restricted airspace at Burghfield and also the prohibited airspace at RAL. My flying was straight, level and on-course. I even managed a FREDA check.

Barrie de-icing Alpha-November

I flew a few laps around Wantage and identified Grove airfield, the railway line an a couple of roads. Barrie thought I lacked confidence in pronouncing it was Grove, I think I was just trying to demonstrate that I was looking at features. Still it proves one thing - I need to study the map before I take off.

The second leg to Overton was less disastrous than last time, though my inclination to descend and then have to climb to re-gain altitude was still there. Again a course correction really screwed with everything, though we did arrive further west than last time and I knew Overton and Oakley by sight.

Route plotting with leg identifiers

Again the final leg was all over with the approach being too high and the descent being too swift. We again plunged through the 800ft circuit height, again approached at a terrible angle. This time I made an awful bounced landing which as Barrie later pointed out started with my terrible descent.

And so into 2014 with nothing on my account, a new flying school owner and everything to play for. I really want to do this, not sure where it goes after that, but I'm looking forward to it!

NavEx? No.

For the past couple of weeks Barrie had got me to plan navigation exercises. I'd carefully plotted them out and done the weather and winds to get to Blackbushe for him to decide to do local area familiarisation. I'm not complaining - good practice and last week after a quick check flight I flew solo over Reading and to Theale - awesome! Weather has been great autumn with blue skies. We're firmly back in Alpha November - just got to get used to an HSI that doesn't slave properly!

The re-join has been a bit crappy - must do better there. I should be arriving at 800ft, perpendicular to the runway, just inside the numbers. I shouldn't have the tower calling me to check I've set Qfe when I have - I'm just a couple of hundred feet low.

Lakes beside Theale

Theale on the nose

West Berkshire farmland

Refueling after the detail at the new pumps

More Navigation and an Amazing Autumn Day

I flew this week on Wednesday - curse those work commitments. Work might prove to be inconvenient for the next few weeks too. It was as fine a day as one could hope for, very light winds, blue skies and reasonable visibility. Barrie had asked me to plan a route from Blackbushe via Membury to Overton near Basingstoke and back to Blackbushe.

I'd has some frustration with the flight computer - so many terrible instructions and bad videos trying to "help".  Before my lesson I checked the winds aloft via form 214 and the weather with METAR and TAF on the Met Office web site (rather than relying on Apps!). I filled out my PLOG with info I was a bit uncertain about - both which F214 area to use and dodgy calculations. I didn't think there would be many problems since the wind was a very light 5kts at 2000ft. I did the common sense checks with wind direction and that seemed reasonable, though speeds seemed odd. I cross checked with Flight Demon but they had different answers. So I headed off to the airfield for real advice.

Once again we were in Tango-Echo, the runway was 25 and for a change the surface winds were calm.

Another solid briefing session glossed over the flight computer stuff, pointed me to the correct area of the F214 wind chart (between Heathrow and Bristol - which we are, rather than Jersey...). The winds for this region were much stronger, 20kts, so a swift re-calculation with dodgy flight computer technique and we were off.

As planned we departed overhead and again I wobbled around the airspace. We were running today via heading, speed and timings. As you can see from the map segment above we should have been north of R101, sadly no, we were too far south! Already very wrong, though Barrie did point out that the wind wasn't as strong as advertised so we adjusted the correction (halved our calculated amount (was 10º adjusted to 5º). We got back on the new heading and pressed on, checking out waypoints based on time as we went. I'd divided the legs into quarters before we started and calculated times. So now it was in action - so many minutes into the leg - what can we see here? What should we see? We pressed on to Membury. Today Barrie made sure I did my radio and FREDA checks as we went along. Again a bit of random turning when all of that happened.

I wasn't very positive in my corrections and I could see the motorway way to the north when in fact we should have crossed it. Eventually I spotted the tall aerial at Membury again way north of our position. I turned the plane that way and after a bit of circling above the services and airfield we set off on the second leg.

This leg I made more adjustments based on the ground below. The Kingsclere masts were very useful again and we arrived at Overton on time and as planned. The only problem was it was right under the nose and had to have it pointed out to me!

We circled Overton familiarising with features - using a country road isn't much use because they're difficult to spot from the air.

Finally we headed back again using timings and features until we once again had to head north for the appropriate Blackbushe join.

Barrie said we'd practice a variation via Reading next time and if he thought I was up to the radio, FREDA and flying I'd be off for my first solo cross country!