Grounded

Just as I was getting back into flying in the circuit and pushing for that solo flight, the weather closed in. I have not flown for almost two weeks. This week Ireland bore the brunt of ex Hurricane Katia with winds gusting over 50kts. (http://www.nowpublic.com/environment/hurricane-katia-photo-iss)


Being grounded has allowed me time to think about the procedures I need to follow whilst in the circuit. @askcaptainjon on Twitter has asked me adhoc questions on what I would do if a particular scenario transpired. There is no harm in revising the procedures once in a while. I am fully aware that a PPL is a License to learn and not an indication that I know everything about flying!


On a positive note, I did pass my English Proficiency Test. Armed with my valid Student, Medical and EP License, I am now ready to push for that elusive solo flight.


Next flight is Wednesday 14th.

English Test

Where possible I am practising all my radio calls ready for my English Proficiency Test next week.


The radio doesn't scare me. Just need to remember to write everything down that ATC asks me to do. I am always anticipating what the Controller might ask me. When I flew out of Newcastle (EGNT) last year in a PA28, I came unprepared to fly out of such a big airport. No pen, no paper etc. Lesson learnt!


Here is a link to a recent flight where I had to call into the Dublin Controller who was handling several inbounds into Dublin. I know it's not perfect. Didn't mention VFR once. But with the help of websites like liveatc.net, I am improving.


http://bit.ly/nylE8d

What a Difference a Day Makes & Social Media

With 3 years away from flying, the world has become a smaller place. Since starting to fly again in August, there is a large amount of information out there to aid student pilots. One resource is Twitter. I am now tweeting updates on each flight to my followers (I call them fans!). I am finding that people are very helpful with providing inspiration to continue and advice when needed. 

I lost a lot of confidence during my latest lesson where I could not judge a 40degree 10kt crosswind. People like @askcaptainjon and @JamesDCessna152 are providing instant feedback on what I should be thinking about. One comment was made that I should not get back in an aircraft until I understand the following. Thinking about what the Tweeters were writing to me helped me understand the issue.

Speaking of the issue - On Tuesday, I nailed the 6 T&G's. Felt I was getting closer to solo. On Thursday I screwed the whole thing up. What a difference a day makes. I now understand what went wrong and I need to work on ensuring it doesn't happen again.

Thanks to those who are tweeting me. For me, it's an additional briefing/de-briefing session.

Now focusing on getting these landings sorted and solo before moving to Arizona in October.

Next up is my English Proficiency test.

Back Flying

Well it's a long story that I can tell you over a beer one night. But I am back in Ireland. Back flying again. Hired a C172 this evening and clocked up another 50mins with 2 T&G's and 1 landing.

Moving to Phoenix Arizona next month for eight months. Expect lots more blog updates as I aim to complete my PPL in under12 years!!

Meeting the STS-132 crew

This week I had the opportunity to meet the crew of Shuttle mission STS-132. They have just completed a week long visit of Great Britain. 10 days ago, the Center for Life group managed to secure the astronauts for an evening.

The crew spoke for an hour, showed several slides and a video. It was a very inspiring evening. My seven year old came along for the ride. He very much enjoyed meeting them too. He managed to get one of his questions answered during the Q&A session. I still don't think he has separated Doctor Who/Star Wars from real life! I think he was expecting the crew to arrive in a Tardis or with a light saber!

First flight at an international airport

I hired a PA28-161 Warrior for an hour from Northumbria Flying School and flew from Newcastle to Carlisle and back with an instructor.

My mission goal for the flight was two fold (a) just get flying again and (b) practice my RT skills in relatively busy airspace.

The lesson got off to a bad start when the instructor asked me to pre flight the Warrior. 95% of my previous flying has been in a C172, but a plane is a plane and I started my external checks. Mistake number 1. I was very disappointed with myself. I failed to get into the aircraft and start the internal list first. The instructor proceeded to remind me of all the small mistakes I was making for the first 20 minutes.

Once I finally took off, I settled down and enjoyed the rest of the flight. We flew VFR to Carlisle never getting above 2200'. I managed to make a couple of mistakes locating some of the key visual reporting positions, but I did manage to find Carlisle without any help! I performed a touch and go on runway 25 and arrived back at Newcastle approx 80 minutes after starting the engines.

I was not prepared for the lesson. My knee board did not work too well and I failed to write down all the read backs from ATC. Mistake number 2!

I have to be better prepared next time. I know I can do better.

One of the reasons for learning to fly is so I can fly amongst the airliner traffic. This was my first flight at Newcastle and a chance to test my RT skills. Despite a couple of stumbles, I survived and only made an arse of myself once. I just need be write instructions down in the future.

Lesson's Learnt
(1) Follow the checklist from the beginning and don't rush (I should have done this)
(2) Buy a good knee board and write everything down.

Pushing Tin

On March 17th I had the chance to visit the Air Traffic Control Facility at Newcastle International Airport. The reason for the visit was to become more familiar with the local procedures and the airspace as I was in the process of trying to find a flying school in the North East of England where I could complete my PPL training. There was additional interest due to the fact that I have spent the last two years flying our of the airport on a weekly basis as self loading freight on business trips with my day job.

The accompanying video to my visit can be found on below.

The Facility

The new ATC facility opened in 2007. The facility has moved away from the terminal buildings allowing a better view of runway 07/25 and the surrounding taxiways. The new facility is split into two areas. There is a Radar/Approach room on the lower floor and the Tower Visual Control Room (called the tower) located at the top. The airport is served by Easyjet, Ryanair, British Airways, BMI, Jet2, Thomson, Emirates and a few others. But as you will read below, depending on the day of the week, the controllers can handle a wide range of military traffic.

Radar/Approach

I knew the facility was only a couple of years older, but I was not expecting the equipment to be as state of the art as it was. Must admit, I was expecting the scopes to look much more conventional, rather than modern LCD monitors. There are three workstations forming a semicircle. The Director Controller (125.825 MHz) sits on the right hand side and the Radar/Military Controller (124.375/284.6 MHz) sits in the centre. On the left hand side there is a work station where the Assistant Traffic Controller spends his/her time. During quiet hours, the Director frequency is normally not manned. On this particular day, both the Director and Radar freqs were in use. The Director controller was handling the inbounds into Newcastle. The Radar Controller was handing the civilian outbounds. The Radar Controller was also working the military frequency 284.6 MHz.

Tower

Due to the location of the new Tower, it's difficult to see aircraft parked on the domestic stands. But state of the art monitoring equipment allows the Tower Controller to monitor all ground movement in reduce visibility operations. There are three workstations shared between the assistant, ground control and the Tower frequency (119.7 MHz). The ground frequency was not used during my visit. In fact, I believe it's only used early in the morning when several aircraft are looking for clearance at the start of a the day. The Tower was less hectic than the radar room. During my stay up top, the daily Emirates A330 arrived (UAE35). One of the flights that I frequently travel on with business also departed.

Airspace/Radar Plot

The majority of departing and arriving traffic will use the Papa18 (P18) airway that is south west of the airfield. Other traffic will route either North or South (normally on track Ottringham which is located in Humberside). There are several over flights largely comprising of Transatlantic traffic going in or out of Europe. There aircraft are under the control of Swanick or Scottish Control and don't tend to interfere with Newcastle ATC operations. The Controllers use a state of the art communication system that allows them to talk to other controllers around the country by simply pressing a button. The controllers spend their idle time when not talking to the pilots on another line with other facilities, e.g. Leeming, Durham Tees Valley, Scottish Control. I have a Mode S receiver at home which allows me to monitor aircraft that are transmitting ADS-B signals. So the first time I saw the radar screen at Newcastle, I was very surprised at seeing no callsigns on the aircraft tags. The data tag shows only the squawk number and height readout. The software would need upgrading in order to display callsigns. The Controllers use normal flight progress strips for tracking the aircraft progress/intentions.

Military Traffic

I probably visited on one of the busier days in term of traffic mixture. There were two major military excercises going on around the north east of England. The Radar/Military Controller monitoring 124.375/284.6 Mhz had to co-ordinate a mixture of different traffic ranging from Apache's out low to the west, F-15's up north, Hercules requesting to operate within the P18 corridor near Leeds and traffic that was transitioning the corridor that lies north west of Newcastle (Hexham Gap). One of the highlights was a Eurofighter Typhoon practising a simulated hijack escort of an airliner. The hijacked aircraft was played by a Hawk (PIRATE12). The Typhoon (GUNFIGHTER1) escorted the airliner to the ILS and then broke off and went on-route. The Hawk received a talk down/PAR approach from the Director Controller.