Monday 14th February to Sunday 20th March 2022, total hours at AFTA, Phase 2; 77:20 (91.5% of phase 2) & Phase 3; 24:50 (39.8% of phase 3). Firstly, I’d like to apologise for not posting a blog in 5 weeks, but I’ve only got 2 flights to bring you this time unfortunately – I have no doubt this will change in the not too distant future though and I can bring you some more flights, both to complete Phase 2 and moving onto the twin DA-42 in Phase 3 too! Without delaying you any further, please keep reading to find out about my latest 2 flights!
Monday 21st February 2022 – WM 013 IR Routes 2 (02:05)
A good flight where we took off from runway 34 and tracked on the 072 radial out towards Waterford up at 5,000ft. Managed to stay ahead of the aircraft well, but can be a little bit earlier getting the ATIS to stay more ahead so it can reduce workload in the future. At Waterford, flew an NDB arc but need to pre-anticipate the turn as flew inside and then needed to regain the track to fly before flying the NDB approach for a missed approach and entered the hold where time and heading calculations were good. Flew back to Cork on the 252 radial at FL060 before an RNP approach for runway 25 for landing which went well.
Monday 22nd February 2022 – WM 014 IR Routes 3 (02:25)
My final Phase 3 in the Cessna 172 and it went well! We took off from runway 34 and flew the KURUM 1N SID towards Shannon before routing to the VOR beacon for a procedural join where we flew outbound on the 066º radial to 10nm DME before joining and flying the VOR approach for runway 24. We then routed back to Cork and flew the ILS for runway 34. Very windy conditions and did well to keep it within altitude limits, but I would like this to be more precise for my own liking.
I haven’t done so yet, so I’d like to take you through the system for how we know when we’re going to be flying. We find out the night before if we’ll be flying the next day so this means we need to be prepared for if we get a booking through for us to fly, so being up to date on the theory before the flight that we may be tested on, what we’ll be doing in the air and how to do it based on reading the lesson plans. By being prepared well in advance, this means we can be adequately prepared in case a booking comes through late into the evening. The first way we see if we have a booking is via email. We get an email letting us know the very basic information about the flight. It tells us the flight time, who our instructor is and what aircraft we’ll be flying. By logging onto out FlightLogger account we can then confirm our report time, completion of debriefing time and what lesson we’ll be doing. By clicking on the lesson, we can see what we’re going to be graded on and what we’ll be doing in the lesson, not to mention how long we should be in the air for. If we need to, there’s a way for us to get in contact with our instructor. I’ve done this a couple of times to check what time I should file a flight plan for or confirming something in the lesson I don’t understand, and they’re also there for you after the lesson if you want to check your understanding afterwards that what was done in the air was done correctly.
Report time is normally 30 minutes before the off blocks flight time, at which point we’ll greet our instructors and go for a pre-flight briefing explaining what we want to cover in the lesson and they may test knowledge on what we’re going to be doing. Each instructor is different, some want us to lead the briefing, others want to test our knowledge by asking lots of questions, and others do it where they explain everything and ask if we have any questions. By having different instructors each time, it means we get a variety of these different approaches so it can enhance our learning and learn in a variety of different ways.
After the lesson, we come back into the briefing room, and we receive another briefing, but this time talking through what we’ve done in the lesson, how they thought I got on and what I could improve on (this is my favourite part!). I like to know what I could do better so I can work on it next time, I don’t like hearing what I’m good at particularly, I want to know what I can improve on to make myself better. In this debriefing we receive ‘scores’ on the various parts of the lesson, so as a very basic example, we may be assessed on our takeoff and departure, our turns in the air, our climbs and descends, then our approach and landing, and we receive a score from 1 to 5 on these various parts, so in this very basic example, I may receive a 4 for my takeoff and departure, a 4 for my turns, a 3 for my climbs and descents then a 5 for my approaching and landing – I greased the landing in this flight! 😉 At this point the instructor then adds a comment outlining what we did in the flight and anything we discussed and what needs to be worked on or carried over into the next flight.
Again, I am really hoping to get more flights done soon, so please do bare with me for the time being. Thank you again for all your support while I haven’t been flying. Things will get back on track sooner rather than later, I’m working as hard as I possibly can to do so, but while I haven’t been flying means I am getting to know the characteristics of the aircraft really well! I should hopefully have some more flights to bring to you soon, and until next time, take care and I’ll catch you all real soon!
