Initial Cross Country and Instrument Training

Training has really ramped up out here now and it looks like I'll basically be doing 9-10 missions per week flying 6 days per week until I'm finished out here now. It's all good fun but it is rather busy. At this point in the training between PT1 and PT2 it can basically be split into two parts; all dual flights are basically working on instrument navigation techniques so it's very rare on these flights that I actually am allowed outside, all the solo flights are now pretty much just cross country navigation exercises building up skills in flying using visual references.

After reading this post after writing it, it has turned into a bit of a biology and basic radio navigation theory post. But this is pretty much necessary to understand the training and operation of aircraft for instrument flying. The short version for those that don't want to read into it, instrument flying is tiring and hard work but rewarding when it all goes well and solo navigation exercises are awesome and great fun.

Instrument Flight Training

In the commercial aviation world all flights are operated under what is called instrument flight rules (IFR). These are basically a set of rules that allow everyone to safely fly around and navigate with no external visual references and are used regardless of whether the aircraft is in low visibility conditions or not. As these are the set of rules I'll end up flying under, the training for them starts fairly early on in the programme.

As Arizona isn't known for its instrument weather conditions, and because we're actually operating the flight under visual flight rules (VFR), instrument flight is simulated using a device known as a hood. This is basically a piece of plastic like a very large peaked golfers cap that prevents you from seeing outside when wearing it but still allows you full view of your instruments. The instructor will then act as a look out for navigation and traffic avoidance purposes and anyone in the back seat can also help with this if there is someone there.

First a quick lesson in aviation physiology, bear with me here it's kind of necessary to explain this in order to understand the difficulties that can be experienced with instrument flying. Instrument flying is an odd experience, you have to learn to ignore all the signals your body is given you (known colloquially as 'seat of the pants' flying) and it's very easy for your body to confuse the type of acceleration acting on it. A lot of the acceleration information is through the movement of fluid in the inner ear, specifically something known as the vestibular apparatus. There are 3 semi-circular canals which measure angular acceleration and two lumps of calcuim carbonate which measure linear acceleration known as otoliths all of which are covered in tiny hair-like structures. As the fluid of the inner ear moves past these hairs during an acceleration the brain the identifies which direction the acceleration is acting in.

Sounds simple so far... the problem is that the brain at an instinctive level is actually quite stupid and without external visual references to back up these acceleration feelings they are pretty much meaningless. An example of this with the otoliths that measure linear acceleration, when you accelerate in the horizontal plane you get the feeling that you are leaning backwards. Try this the next time you are in a car (I should probably add as a passenger and don't try this if you suffer from motion sickness, it won't end well!), close your eyes before the car accelerates and you'll feel like you are leaning backwards in the seat, the opposite is true in a deceleration. But why is this relevant to flying? Well, when you accelerate and get this pitch up feeling you naturally want to pitch down, but this will actually cause you to lose altitude. Even worse in a deceleration you instinctively want to pitch up which will further increase your angle of attack and take you closer to a stall. What you have to do is ignore these instincts and trust the attitude indicator and altimeter to ensure you remain at the correct altitude. It isn't just this level of flying that affected as well, pilots of carrier launched fighter jets take their hands off the controls and hold onto a couple of handles in the cockpit during a catapult launch. There are a couple of reasons for this, one is to prevent them from moving the throttle or control stick due to acceleration forces the other is to prevent them from pitching down into the ocean as they come off the end of the carrier because the acceleration force is so great it feels like there a massive pitch up moment that needs to be counteracted even though none exists.

It doesn't get any better with angular accelerations either, as stated earlier acceleration are detected by the fluid of the inner ear moving hair like structures in the semi-circular canals. In a constant rate turn there is no acceleration so the hairs all stand back up again, this leads to the sensation in a turn that you are actually flying straight and when you do level off it then feels like you are doing a turn in the opposite direction. This is a very weird feeling and it takes a lot of effort to override your brain and trust your instruments to ensure you don't inadvertently turn again. There is also an acceleration threshold for the inner ear to detect movement, if the acceleration rate is too low then a turn can start without you realising it and there are numerous cases out there of pilots who have got themselves into cloud and then lost control and crashed a lot of the time due to a slow turn rate sending them into a spiral dive. I was fortunate when at university to do a flight test course where we were demonstrated a spiral dive and told not to look outside, I was surprised when we started to pull out of the dive at about 60 degrees of roll and 50 degrees nose down pitch as I genuinely hadn't felt any movement up to that point. That one demonstration taught me that you always need to trust your instruments unless you have a valid reason not to.

So with that said, since we can't see outside during instrument conditions then how do we actually navigate around? At a simple level the answer is two things, NDBs and VORs. NDBs are Non-Directional Beacons and basically it's an antenna that sends out a signal in all directions to say where it is in the 190-1750kHz range, this signal can then be picked up on a receiver on the aircraft known as an Automatic Direction Finder (ADF) and to be honest the entire system is rubbish! The system was supposed to have phased out decades ago but for some reason hasn't been even though nobody really uses it since it's so error prone. But the licence skills tests still include NDB work so we have to learn how to use them. Initially the use of all radio beacons regardless of type is the same in that they need to be tuned and then identified. Tuning is as simple as looking at the station on the chart and tuning it in on relevant navigation uni, for the Chandler NDB this required tuning 407kHz. It is then identified by listening for its Morse code identifier, although Morse code is almost never used these days it's still alive and well in aviation. Usefully the Morse identifiers are also shown on the chart to help with identification. After it's identified the ADF needle then points to the magnetic bearing of the NDB and all navigation is based off this. There's no way to set a bearing for it to point to, but it's better than nothing though it is fairly inaccurate. It also doesn't tend to be coupled with Distance Measuring Equipment (DME) so although you know what bearing you're on you don't really have any real idea of how far you are from the station. When turning onto it and when close to it the error of the instrument can be as much as 10 degrees. So a more accurate system is usually used.

Extract from the Phoenix Sectional chart showing Chandler (CHD) NDB and Willie (IWA) VOR

VHF Onmi-directional Range (VOR) is the next step up from the NDB and uses the VHF frequency band from 108-117.95MHz, which is just below that used for VHF comms. At a very basic level these stations send out 2 different signals, one is omni-directional and the other is variable. The onboard unit compares the phase difference between the frequencies to determine what bearing from the station you are on, known in VOR terminology as a radial. As there are 360 degrees in a circle there are 360 radials to a VOR, for example if you are exactly magnetic east from a VOR then you are on the 090 radial. This system is far more accurate than the NDB and also tends to be coupled with a DME which means you also get distance information from the station as well which means you can exactly fix your location on a map. On of the other main advantages of the VOR is that you can select a specific radial to track either inbound or outbound from the VOR and the system will show which way you need to turn and by how much in order to intercept the correct radial. For example, if you want to fly on the 010 radial from a station and are currently on the 012 radial the system will show that you are 2 degree left of track and need to turn to the left. At a basic level VORs are the external source that modern airliners use to determine their current position and for their navigation way points (along with GPS these days).

Old Style VOR Display

VOR Display from G1000 system

At this stage of instrument training we're just looking at the basics such as tracking in and out of a beacon on a specific radial (or bearing) and intercepting a specific bearing. As the training goes on more complex elements will be added to this as we properly start to navigate by sole reference to instruments.

Simulator Flying:

Something that has been introduced since my last post is simulator flying lessons. These lessons are primarily used for training instrument techniques in a safe environment where the action can be paused to cover a lesson point if required. To be honest whilst the sims are good and are great for learning navigation techniques from they are not great for learning to fly the aircraft as they just don't feel right. The throttle and mixture response it totally different in the simulator when compared to the aircraft and the rudder pedals might as well not be installed given how far removed they are from how they work in the actual aircraft.

One of the great things the simulator can do though is train you for procedures that it's just not safe to fully do in the actual aircraft. On one simulator session alone was I faced with scenarios involving a failed battery, an oil pressure decrease that led to an engine seizure (simulating an oil leak) which required an emergency landing. I also had an alternator failure which at one point led to a total loss of electrical power (interesting in an all electric aircraft!) and had to try and get emergency power back. Obviously these are things you can never actually practice in the aircraft but it's great to be able to properly run through the checklists and troubleshoot a problem and find a solution.

Solo Cross Country Flying:

Almost all my solos these days are cross country navigation exercises of about 2 hours in length usually covering about 200 nautical miles or so. These routes are great for building confidence and decision making skills. Navigation out here is fairly easy, the visibility is fantastic and all the mountains around make for really easy reference points. These flights do tend to be quite early in the day and it's not uncommon to be off the ground by 6am, which means needing to get in a some time between 4am - 4:30am to start preparing for the flight. Whilst it does lead to tiring days it is very rewarding and at least flying at that time of the morning it's still fairly cool, only in the high 20's! As these cross country routes progress it'll start leading to landings at different airfields and will eventually build up to the solo cross country qualifier, but that can be explained some other time.

Typical navigation route shown on the Phoenix Sectional Chart

What next?
Well tomorrow, has 2 milestones. Firstly it's a SPIC flight which is Student Pilot in Command, this basically involves going up with another instructor for an instrument flight where they'll act like an air traffic control giving you vectors and altitudes to fly to see who the instrument work is coming along. All the handling of the aircraft is up to me as the student pilot however. Secondly tomorrow will also mark a total of 100 flying hours in aircraft since I took my first flight back in 2011 back when getting my PPL. To say I came out here with about 55 flying hours it's come around very quickly.

Later on this week I've got the first of the night flying exercises planned which according to people on previous courses are great fun so I'm really looking forward to those. Then all been well next week will be progress test 2 which seems to have come around very quickly indeed. This is the equivalent to the manoeuvres part of a PPL skills test so will be quite intense. After that (assuming I pass it) it'll be a lot more instrument work with a few solo navigation exercises thrown in as well.

First Solo and PT1

What a couple of weeks this has been! The first one was 6 duty days which included my first solo and first of my examination flights! I've only been out here 5 weeks and have somehow completed 20 flights and a load of ground school stuff. It's hard to believe that the next course has now arrived out here in Phoenix and has just completed their ground school, doesn't seem like a couple of days since I was doing mine.

So the entire of last week was focused on completing the necessary parts of the syllabus in order to allow me to go solo. This involved starting the week with a bit more instrument training under the hood. It was a very odd morning for Arizona as it was overcast and ever rained on and off (the new course arrived out on this day so they must have brought it with them). The weather brief showed nothing much happening and without the thermal heating effects we expected it to be a nice smooth flight. How wrong we were! Flying in moderate turbulence is bad enough, flying in moderate turbulence when you can't see outside is very interesting. After getting thrown around by this for a while we went into Mesa Gateway for a crew change. On this day there was a pair of fire-fighting water bomber aircraft around which were working at the various forest fires which are currently going on in Arizona (there's one about 100 miles north of Phoenix at a couple about 60 miles east at the moment). After chatting to the crew we got a tour around one of them which was an old P-2 Neptune converted maritime reconnaissance aircraft capable of carrying around 20,000lbs of water. It was a incredible aircraft to say it's around 60 years old with 2 18-cylinder 3,000bhp engines and 2 jet engines to help it get off the ground. They were just about to brief to go out on a mission as well so to take the time to show us around was really great of them. The second instrument flight of the day where I was back seating was even bumpier than the first, when we hit one particularly good bit of turbulence that launched us all into the ceiling (even though we all had seat belts on and tight) we decided to call it a day. I was very glad my headset has a good padded headband at that point!

P-2 Neptune Water Bomber

The other consolidation lesson was on practice forced landings and emergency procedures. Basically an engine failure is simulated by closing the throttle and letting the engine run at idle and then running through checklists as if you are going to be landing on a field/road/random airport, or whatever is handy. We always go around by 500ft above ground level by which point you have a fairly good idea of whether you would have been successful or not.

First Solo:

I had the unusual pleasure of my solo check out flight and first solo being in the afternoon. This meant it was hot, very hot! Before going solo for the first time you do an hour of circuits with an instructor to make sure you are up to required standard and are happy with the conditions on the day to go solo. It was 36 degrees when I went for the dual flight and apart from a little thermal turbulence it wasn't bad flying conditions. After landing and drinking about a litre of very cold water to try and cool down a bit it was time to head out for my first solo.
The first solo is a very important day in any pilots career as you are the only one in the aircraft so are completely responsible for any decision making and the safe conduct of the flight. Heading back out to the aircraft and doing a quick pre-flight it was time to jump in and start up for the flight. I very nearly burnt myself sitting back in the seat as it had been directly in the sun for the 20 minutes I'd been inside so had got rather warm to say the least! Thankfully the aircraft started up quickly (this gave me some moving air off the propeller which, if not cold, was at least cooler than that in the cabin) and then it was time to check the ATIS to ensure the weather was still in limits for a solo flight. For safety reasons all flying stops if the reported ATIS temperature hits 43 degrees. The latest weather was reporting 39 and the wind was 10 knots and almost down the runway so I was good to go. A quick glance at the outside air temperature probe in my aircraft (which measures the temperature underneath the wing and is affected by heat radiating from the surface) was showing a temp of 49 degrees.  A rule of thumb is that if the sun is streaming into the cabin then it's typically 10-15 degrees hotter in the cabin the OAT probe says, which means it was probably over 60 degrees in the cabin. So it was basically like sitting fully clothed in a sauna about to undertake something that's rather stressful, not that I really cared as I was about to go solo.

ATIS as copied down in the aircraft on my solo flight

After taxiing off I just concentrated on the task at hand running through all the checklists and heading down to the runway for take off. As I was the only person mad enough to be flying at that time of the day I got an immediate take off clearance from the tower and was soon heading down the runway watching as the speed built to rotate speed at 65 knots. Pulling into the air I was surprised by just how much better the performance of the aircraft was with only me in it.
A single circuit of the airfield from take off to landing only takes about 5 minutes so it's not the world's longest flight. The time I actually fully realised that I was alone in the aircraft was as I turned crosswind. Quickly glancing over to the right and seeing a large space where the instructor is usually sitting really made it sink home that I was the only one in charge of that aircraft. Before I knew it I was on final approach and heading towards the runway, thankfully on glide path and the correct approach speed. They say your first solo landing is either one of the best or worst of your career, I was lucky enough to judge the flare point just right and touch down with only the lightest of bumps and it was then a quick taxi back into the ramp to shut the aircraft down only about 20 minutes after I'd first fired it up, and smiling all the time and for several hours afterwards.
Then it was time to head back to the accommodation for a flying school tradition; getting thrown into a swimming pool in full uniform. That really is a great way to cool off after an afternoon flying in the Arizona sunshine!

Very warm and very happy after shutting down following the first solo

Post-solo photo with the aircraft

Progress Test 1 (PT1)

PT1 is an internal school assessment basically designed to ensure that we're safe when taking off and landing carried out with one of the schools senior flight instructors. This was scheduled for just a couple of days after my first solo. This is also the first time I'd flown with someone who wasn't my main instructor. It was an early day getting if for about 5am to make sure all the pre-flight preparation was done before meeting the examiner. The examiner was great, really helped to put me at ease before the flight, we also went over the theory portion of the exam. This was basically questions on the performance of the Archer and some legal stuff such as what documents were required on-board and at what intervals certain types of maintenance were due. I did ok at those but it did prove there were a few holes in my knowledge, though in most cases I knew where to look up the information if I didn't know it outright.
It was then out to the aircraft for the flying portion of the tests which is basically 3 landings and a go-around at some point as well. Thankfully it was probably the best I have ever flown and the weather was great as well which really helped so I successfully passed this first progress test and can now move onto the next stage of the training.

What Next?
The rest of that week was spent doing solo consolidation work in the circuit so I've done another 3 hours of solo flying. Next up now is navigation and more instrument work. Tomorrow involves 2 sorties, the first a general handling one looking in more detail at forced landings away from airfields. The second one is a proper cross-county flight down to Ryan Airport near Tucson. After that pretty much all solo flights will be concentrating on navigation work and the dual flights will focus on instrument flying. In a couple of weeks time I should do my night flying as well which is apparently meant to be really fun.

Part of the navigation chart for the route to Ryan

A Typical Day

So with flight training there's a lot more to flying an aircraft that just turning up getting in and going up for a lesson. I thought I'd try to explain here what's involved in a typical day of flight training at the moment by running through my day on Sunday which as far as the log book concerned is a 1-hour flight. Days start early out here but since I didn't have a report time until 8am local time I could have a lie in until 05:10. Get up, gather everything together, have some breakfast and get a bottle of cold water and one of frozen water (essential for flying out here since it's so hot) then it was off to catch the 06:10 transport to the school. This might seem very early but we're required to be in at least an hour before our briefing time.

On getting to the school the first thing I have to do is visit the operations desk and check in. As passengers do, pilots have to check in for flights even in airlines. At Oxford checking in basically states that we're here and ready to perform a flight, ops also check at the time that we've read and signed all messages that we're required to read which are tracked on an electronic system. It's at this point we'll confirm where we'll be going on our flight that day and we'll be told what aircraft we've been allocated, for this particular flight we were in N4403F.

It then into the flight planning room at about 06:30 to start preparing for the flight. The first thing I do is grab the tech log (known internally as the squawk book) for the aircraft to see if there are any deferred defects with the aircraft (such as stand by instrument inoperative) and if there is any history of anything repetitive I need to be mindful of. After that I'll do a mass and balance check to confirm the aircraft is within weight and centre of gravity limits for both take off and landing. This is pretty much a formality now when I'm flying dual with my instructor and my flying partner as I pretty much know what the masses and centre of gravity will be but it helps make sure my mind has woken up at that time of the morning.

Mass and Balance Paperwork

Then it's time for one of the most important things we do in the planning stage which is the weather brief. We have access to an online system where we can get all the information. At this stage of training the key things we are looking for are: a synopsis of weather in the western USA, aerodrome weather reports for all airports in the region (known as METARs), forecasts for any airports that supply them (known as TAFs), any reports of turbulence or convective activity (known as AIRMETs), measurements of winds aloft at different altitudes and any NOTAMS. NOTAMS are NOtices To AirMen and are basically reports of things which could affect our flight. This includes things such as runway and taxiway closures, frequency changes which are different from our charts, any restricted areas that are active and any temporary no-fly zones that have been set up (there's a couple for forest fires about 100 miles to the north of here at the minute) and various other things like that. For the flight on Sunday I ideally wanted an airport with a good crosswind (that wasn't my home airfield at Falcon Field) as the lesson plan was to do circuits so this would add a bit more of a challenge to them. The weather conspired against us in an odd way however and was pretty much flat calm across the entire of the Phoenix valley so Chandler looked to be as good an option as any to get out of the Falcon Field pattern.

Part of the weather brief

That pretty much concludes the planning required at this stage of the training so since we were running early (it was only about 07:00) decided to grab a quick hot chocolate and relax for a few minutes. As the aircraft we were flying that day was on the ramp we then went out to do the pre-flight inspection and since I was flying first then it was primarily my responsibility to do it. The pre-flight is an inspection done before you first take the aircraft up that day and it is to ensure that the aircraft is fully serviceable and airworthy. It starts with an internal inspection check all the switches are in the correct place and that all the required documents are in the aircraft and in date. The electrical system is then fired up to check everything is working and the check the external light, pitot mast heater and stall warning system are working. With those checked the electrics are then switched off to save the batteries and the control surfaces are then checked. As the control runs are all cables we check we can get full and free movement on the controls and that they are in the correct sense, it is technically possible to cross the cables in maintenance so they work in reverse so it's always worth checking they work in the correct sense. An external inspection of the entire aircraft then carried out to make sure there are no loose fasteners, no dents, there's the correct amount of fuel and oil, the engine and propeller are in good condition and various other things are in full working order. In total the entire pre-fight takes around 10 minutes or so to complete and with the aircraft we had that day there were no problems with it.

It was then back to the planning room to do the performance calculation, I like to leave this as close to the briefing as possible so that I can get the latest ATIS (Automatic Terminal Information Service, basically it's a weather report and any NOTAMs for the airfield) to work with as the temperatures and winds can change quite quickly in the mornings out here. The performance graphs showed that we were well within limits for take off and landing and now since it was about 07:45 we then went to meet with our instructor to start our briefing a little early.

Our briefing that morning consisted of running through what we'd be doing in the lesson which was circuits. As we'd done the same the previous day it was a pretty short briefing though since we were going to Chandler to do them we briefed for going there. We also ran over an emergency drill as well, this particular briefing was on what to do if you got a partial or total comms failure in different phases of flight and in different airspaces.

After this at about 08:15 it's finally time to go out to the aircraft to start flying, grabbing the keys and log book from the ops desk on the way past. The first thing to do on approaching the aircraft is to remove the tie downs and then get in and start setting up. All the electrical switches are once again checked to make sure none of them were knocked as everyone got into the aircraft, then it's time to start firing up the aircraft ready for engine start. Unusually for a light aircraft the Archer TX has a bank of overhead switches, which brings out the child in all of us as it makes us feel like we're playing with bigger aircraft. It's also unusual in that it has a push button start as opposed to key start. It still starts the same as any other light aircraft though and we are required to shout 'clear prop' before starting, that isn't just something from films.

After the engine is started and stabilised and the avionics have all fired up I give dispatch a call to ramp out. This is basically telling them that we're leaving and we pass a couple of numbers from the aircraft to them. They will also confirm where we are going and our scheduled due back time as well. Once this is done the G1000 system then needs setting up before we can taxi. This is something that isn't required on the older steam gauge aircraft as there aren't all these fancy electrical systems. I think the first time I did this it took me about 10 minutes to set up but I can now do it in a couple with a bit of practice.

It's then time to taxi to the runway, checking the gyroscopic instruments on the way whilst turning. From the ATIS we know we'll be taking off on runway 4L or 4R so head that way off the ramp before contacting ground for specific instructions. Sure enough 4R is given as our take off runway so we head off to do our final set of checks before take off called the run up checks. These are basically a set of checks at high engine power that confirm the engine is working correctly and then a final check of everything is made before heading to the runway, a take off briefing is made at this point as well in which we'll confirm initial departure direction and what to do if there are any emergencies at different phases of the take off. Falcon Field is a fairly easy airport to taxi around, there aren't a lot of taxiways there so it's difficult to get lost, some airports such as Mesa Gateway are a little more complex however so we carry airfield plates with us that show us all the taxiways and runways at an airfield.

Falcon Field Airfield Plate

With all this done it's now 08:48 and finally time to take off, so switching to Tower frequency we request permission to depart. After waiting for one to land it's time for us to take off, so it's onto the runway push the throttles to full and head off down the runway checking the engine RPM, the oil system temperature and pressures and confirming that the airspeed is building. At 65 knots it's time to rotate and get into the air and then fly our departure to Chandler. Chandler is only about 5 minutes flying away so we're soon there and settle down into doing circuits for the lesson. At about 09:50 we land and taxi our way to the parking at Chandler, choosing to park next to a very nice looking Beechcraft Bonanza and then heading up to an observation deck above the cafe to watch the world go by for a few minutes and have a rest.

Then it's time to swap so I'm in the backseat whilst my flying partner is flying and does the same lesson I've just done. Backseating a flight is really useful as it gives you time to look over what's happening in a flight and you've actually got time to think. Whilst flying you're constantly doing something so it gets very busy and sometimes you just don't have time to actually reflect on what you are doing. With the lesson done we head back to Falcon to land and shut down the engine at about 11:15, secure the aircraft and head in to debrief.

In the debrief we go over what we covered in the lesson, what went well and any areas we need to work on. We also go through what we'll be covering over the next lesson and since this was the last lesson of the week did a brief synopsis of everything we'd be covering during the following week, which should involve going solo on Saturday! We then go through all the paperwork that's required for the training records and complete the log books and it's finally time to head back to the apartments, catching the 12:20 bus back.

So as you can see there's a fair amount of work involved for a 1 hour flight and it does get quite exhausting after a week of this. But at the end of the day it's all great fun so it's not exactly difficult getting up at 5am when you know how exciting your day is going to be.

The Road to First Solo

Well I've now done 2 weeks of flight training having completed a total of 11.5 hours of flying so far and it's been rather busy so I'm currently enjoying a couple of days downtime on what's classed as my weekend out here. The training is moving along at a fair pace and in the last week starting the week with what's known as advanced stall training, this is basically teaching us to recognise stalling characteristics in a approach and landing configuration, mainly because in either of these 2 configs we'll be very close to the ground (less than 1,000ft) so it's critical we can recognise a stall early to recover from it as there isn't a lot of height to recover in. We also were demonstrated secondary stalling. Usually if you stall then you lower the nose a bit and add power, as the angle of attack decreases you can then climb away. Secondary stalling is where on lowering the nose you then pull back on the controls again and the aircraft enters a deeper more violent stall. That demonstration really proved to me that secondary stalling is something you really don't want to do, we went from about 15 degrees nose up to 15 degrees nose down and got a pretty decent drop of the right wing in the order of about 30 degrees. It was violent enough that although I was strapped in it still lifted me out of the seat (imagine a roller coaster but more sudden and you don't know which way it's going to go since there's no rails)! That's why we carry out these demos at least 3,000ft above the ground to give us plenty of time to recover, if you did something similar coming in to land at 300ft on finals it would be a different story though.

The next lesson was spent doing ground reference manoeuvres, this is basically flying around a point, flying S bends across a line and flying around a rectangle which is not quite as easy as it sounds. The main reason for that is wind, to fly a circle around a point on the ground you need to constantly adjust your bank. This is because although your airspeed remains constant your ground speed varies depending on where the wind is relative to the flight path of the aircraft. This means that when flying with the wind you need to bank more as your ground speed is faster and when flying into the wind you need to shallow out the bank to maintain a constant circle relative to the ground. This is also training for flying circuits (which are called patterns in America so forgive me if I use both terms) as it makes you account for the wind drift that is trying to blow you off your required track.

We then moved on to instrument flying on the next lesson, at this level since you are flying under visual flight rules instrument flying is simulated. This means you wear a hood (think of it like a long peaked cap) which means you can still clearly see your own instruments but can't see outside. The instructor can still see outside however for traffic and terrain avoidance and since we usually have our flight partner in the back seat they act as an extra lookout as well. This first lesson was just looking at the basics of keeping straight and level and doing climbs, descents and turns with sole reference to instruments. This requires more concentration than doing the same tasks visually. When you can see outside you pick up on your datum attitude moving relative to the horizon and correcting it without really thinking. When instrument flying you have to scan your instruments almost constantly to ensure your attitude is correct and you're on altitude, airspeed and heading. You also have to deal with your own body trying to trick you as well as the fluid in your inner ear will sometimes make you think you're turning when you're flying straight and level. This can be a weird feeling and very difficult to override. Our route took us south of Falcon Field before turning north and transiting through Sky Harbor's overhead at 5,500ft (this would be like flying over the top of Heathrow which you would never be allowed to do in the UK) before heading around and going back into Falcon Field. I was assured the views were spectacular when I was flying so when I got to backseat the second flight I wasn't disappointed. It's probably the best view of Phoenix you can get.

Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport

The week concluded with circuits which is basically flying around in circles to practice landings and accurate pattern flying. The landings are starting to come together, I was having a bit of a frustrating day on Sunday when it felt like I just couldn't get the final approach right. We work to a stabilised approach criteria which basically means at 300ft before landing we need to be in landing configuration, on glide path and runway centreline and between 66-71 knots airspeed. On reflection I was probably being a little too harsh on myself, I was letting my airspeed drop to 64-65 knots on final, I know how to correct it so I just need to work on it next time I'm flying. Pattern work it exhausting, you're constantly doing something which means there never any time to relax so after an hour of flying circuits you really feel it. I did get one of the most spectacular sights I've seen whilst doing circuits on Saturday though, we ended up on a parallel approach with a B17 bomber that was coming in on the other runway, it's certainly not something you see everyday.

B17 Bomber

So next week consists of a little bit of consolidation work, some emergency drills training and then all things going well and the weather playing ball I should go solo next Saturday! After that I'll then be flying 6 days a week and also doing double sorties on some days as well so I'll really start racking up the hours.

First Week of Flight Training

So I've now actually started flying approximately 8 months after starting the course. I've started my flying here on the Piper Archer TX which is a fantastic aircraft. The entire fleet are only about a year old and are very well kitted out. Instead of a traditional instrument cluster they have a Garmin G1000 electronic flight instrument system. This is very similar in look to sort of displays you get on a modern airliner and compared to the Cessna 152 I've flown in the past are far more advanced.

Cessna 152 instrument panel

Piper Archer TX instrument panel (from www.piper.com)

Piper Archer TX

So a little bit of basic info on the Archer TX that I will initially be flying out here. The Archer is a single engine, low wing, 4 seat, tricycle carriage aircraft with a 180bhp engine with a 2-blade fixed pitch propeller that pretty much looks like your typical light aircraft. As stated above what makes this aircraft different to a lot of other light aircraft is the G1000 electronic instruments giving it more of a feel of the instruments you'd see on an airliner. In reality, although this is a 4 seat aircraft it can only carry 3 adults and about 3/4 full fuel tanks before reaching it's maximum take off weight of around 1156kg. Controls are conventional, pulling backwards and forwards on the control column moves the elevators (since it's an all moving tail on this it's technically a stabilator), turning it left and right moves the ailerons and pushing on the rudder pedals moves the rudder. It's a nice aircraft to fly, very stable and about as responsive as you'd want a training aircraft to be on the controls.

Piper Archer TX

The basics of flying

The pace of lesson delivery here is really quick, I started flying just over a week ago and have completed 6 lessons and 6.5 hours of flying already. At this stage we've just covered the basics such as the effects of controls, straight & level flight, climbs, descents, turns and finished the week with some steep turns and stall practice. The effects of controls lessons were to teach that making a control input on one control will have secondary effects that need to be countered. For example, making an elevator input will change the pitch of the aircraft which in turn will change the speed. Making an aileron input will roll the aircraft and will also cause an yaw in the opposite direction known as adverse aileron yaw (due to the up-going wing having more lift and hence more drag than the down-going wing, this tends to pull the up-going wing slightly backwards against the direction of the turn) that needs to be corrected with rudder to coordinate the turn.

The straight & level, climbing, descending and turning lessons were all about building a mental picture for each of these flight conditions. At this stage of training we are primarily visual pilots, this means our attention should be mainly focused outside of the aircraft confirming the attitude and looking out for traffic with just the occasional glance (typically 20-30% of the time) at the instruments to confirm the aircraft is at the correct speed and on heading & altitude. The idea is to be able to perform all basic manoeuvres with reference mainly to outside datums that you establish relative to the horizon and just confirm that with the instruments, seems like a waste of those nice shiny G1000 displays at times. All these manoeuvres are then performed with different power, airspeed and flap settings to get used to how the datum changes with these.

Straight and level does exactly what it says on the tin, learning to hold the aircraft straight (on a specific heading) and level (at a specific altitude). Straight is pretty easy to hold, as long as the wings are level to the horizon and the aircraft is balanced then the heading of the aircraft will stay on whatever you rolled it out on. Level can be a bit more tricky to hold as the aircraft usually wants to climb or descend if you don't have exactly the right input on the elevators, to counter the need to hold pressure constantly on the flight controls to keep the elevator in the right position we can trim it. Trimming the elevators involves moving a little tab on the elevator surface with will alleviate the control input required, you trim the aircraft to hold a speed and the aircraft will then hold it. So for example if you want to fly straight and level at 100 knots then you set the throttle for the correct rpm to give 100 knots, hold the aircraft level and last the speed stabilise and then trim out any forces you need to hold on the controls to make things easier and free up your concentration to allow you to perform other tasks.

Climbing and descending are essentially opposites of the same tasks and are required if you want to get up above the ground on take off and get back down to the airfield at the end of a flight. The main things to think about during climbs and descents are holding the correct airspeed, maintaining a good look out, engine management (the engines can get very hot in a climb and very cold in a descent) and correcting any slip to stay coordinated. It might seem a little backwards but pitch is used to control airspeed and power is used to control the rate of climb/descent. This is because all climbs tend to be performed at full throttle and descents are either glide (idle power) or part power depending on what airspeed and rate of descent you require.

Turning is also a required skill unless your destination happens to be exactly lined up with your take off runway. Turns are basically performed by banking the aircraft one way or the other and letting some of the lift from the wings pull the aircraft through the turn. Since some of the lift is now been used to turn the aircraft a slight pitch change is needed to stop the aircraft from losing height, good use of the rudder is needed to coordinate all turns as well. Typically in light aircraft all turns are performed with 30 degrees angle of bank and no height should be lost or gained whilst turning.

I've talked a bit about coordination of manoeuvres above so should probably explain what it is. In it's simplest form coordination is ensuring the tail of the aircraft follows the nose and isn't out to one side or the other in a slip or skid. If the aircraft is in a slip or skid then we're not flying efficiently (as we're now presenting more of the aircraft to the airflow) and in certain circumstances this can significantly increase your chances of spinning. We have a little instrument on the display called a slip skid indicator which will show if the aircraft is not in balance and which way it is out of balance, this is then corrected with rudder. For example, if the indicator is out to the left then more left rudder input is need, sounds simple right? The main problem comes from the fact the any change to the aircraft attitude or controls will change the balance and require a rudder input and if that aircraft is only slightly out of balance this can be really difficult to detect. In turns rudder is needed in the same direction as the turn to counter adverse aileron yaw, when power is increased right rudder is needed to counter engine torque and propeller wash effects (and the opposite with power reduction) during climbs and descents airspeed will change which will require rudder changes. To begin with you're spending a lot of time concentrating on holding the correct attitude, airspeed, altitude, etc. that it can be easy to forget about the rudder and not coordinate everything properly.This aircraft also has an interesting characteristic during take off in that as the nose wheel comes off the ground (and the effect of that keeping us straight is lost) a fairly large amount of right rudder is needed to hold the aircraft on centreline, it's far more rudder than I was ever used to with the Cessna 152.

We also covered steep turns, emergency descents and stalls. These are flight situations you shouldn't ever end up in but are taught so you know how the aircraft handles in these situations and in the case of stalls the symptoms before they occur. Steep turns are basically the same as normal ones but performed at 45 degress angle of bank, at lot more back pressure is needed on the elevator to keep the altitude and extra power is needed to keep the airspeed up but other than that they're pretty much the same. The only time I could ever think this would be needed is evasive manoeuvres in an emergency, or if you'd somehow getting yourself stuck in a valley and needing to turn in the tightest space possible. Emergency descents are basically used if you get an engine fire in flight and need to try to put it out, you basically roll for 30 degrees of bank, bring out all flaps and pitch for 95 knots. This makes you drop like a stone (well over 1000 feet per minute) and gives the best change of putting out a fire.

Stalling an aircraft is not the same as stalling a car, in an aircraft stalling occurs where the angle of attack (the relative angle between the airflow and the wing) is increased until the airflow detaches from the upper surface of the wings and lift is lost. This is obviously not an advisable thing to do and we are shown the symptoms of a stall and how to recover from one so that we hopefully never end up there. The Archer actually has some pretty distinctive stalling characteristics, apart from the mushy feeling controls due to lack of airflow there is also the little computer voice the shouts "Stall, stall, stall" at you repeatedly and a massive amount of airframe buffet. The buffet is caused by the vorticies separating from the wings impacting on the tail vibrating the entire airframe, compared to the C152 which had almost no buffet it really is noticeable. To get out of a stall is easy enough though, just drop the nose a little bit to reduce the angle of attack, let airspeed recover and increase throttle to maximum to climb away. It starts getting interesting if you stall close to the ground where you don't have a lot of room to drop the nose to recover, this is why we practice at least 3,000ft above the ground to ensure more than adequate room to recover, especially if we inadvertently enter a spin (you should be able to recover with a maximum of 100-200ft though).

Basic flying out here can be very challenging at times though, it's getting quite warm in Phoenix now and will only get warmer as we continue into summer. The other day whilst returning to the airfield in the early afternoon it was 38 degrees on the ground (I dread to think how hot it was in the cabin at that point) and I was having to fight huge thermals (in excess of 1,200fpm climb rate) that were trying to throw the plane around whilst keeping the aircraft in a very narrow airspace corridor. It's also a very busy part of the world for general aviation aircraft and you've always got to be on the lookout for potential conflicting traffic, we have a system called TCAS (Traffic Collision and Alerting System) which will warn us about a lot of the traffic but it can be guaranteed to find all of it. There are cool things that happen on almost every flight though, on my last flight whilst returning to the airfield I had a pair of harrier jump jets buzz over the top of my aircraft at about 200ft, the scenery out here is just spectacular (if you like mountains anyway) and since it's free to land at pretty much any airport in America I've already been to more airfields in the last week than I did in the entire of my PPL training a few years back.

What next?

Next week should conclude the lessons on stalling as well as introducing some rudimentary positing holding, instrument flying, practice forced landings without power and engine failures after take off. All being well my first solo should be around the end of the month with the first progress test to follow shortly after that. After that I'll then be flying up to 6 days a week and the pace of training will really pick up.

A short journey across the pond

I've now been out in Phoenix, Arizona for just over a week and a lot has happened during that time.

Ground School

So after about 7 months and 14 exams it was time to say goodbye to ground school in Oxford, to replace it with ground school at Falcon Field! This time around the ground school can be seen more as a set of briefings however. It basically went through the first few lesson we'll be doing, the content of the course out here (which is 94 lessons, 81 on the single-engine Piper Archer TX aircraft and 13 on the multi-engine Piper Seminole aircraft), departure and arrival procedures for Falcon Field Airport and various other little briefings. It also gave us time to get our FAA medicals so that we can fly out here. We had a tour of the facilities here as well to familiarise ourselves with the layout of the place before we start flying.

The Piper Archer TX flight line at Falcon Field

One of the 22 Piper Archer TX Aircraft

Today we met our flying instructor who will be taking us through the first phase of our flight training and possibly through the entire of our single engine training. We spent about 4 hours briefing on various different aspects of the flying we'll be doing over the next few weeks up to our first solo, looking in some depth at our first couple of lessons which will be on the effects of controls. These lessons will basically have us manipulating the controls to see how the aircraft handles and how the elevators (technically stabilator on an Archer), ailerons and rudder work and feel. It will then introduce the throttle, flaps, mixture control and various other controls we have available to us. We also went through the charts for the Phoenix area pointing our various landmarks on them and how to understand the various markings on the chart.
A good amount of time was taken to complete a walk around on an aircraft on the ramp as well. A walk around is a check before every flight to ensure the aircraft is in a serviceable condition. It consists of an internal and external inspection looking for any obvious defects or faults that could be a risk to flight safety.
We also spent an hour in one of the Archer TX simulators they have here to go through the set up process for the Garmin G1000 flight display system. Unlike traditional light aircraft the Archer TX has a full glass instrument display much like a modern airliner. In some respects it's a lot more advanced than the systems found on a lot of commercial aircraft. This has the benefit of introducing us to a glass instrument display early on in our flying but it takes a lot more setting up before you can go flying. The total set up in the simulator took us a good 20 minutes and while it's obvious that it'll be possible to cut this time down it's going to take a lot of practice to do so!

Grand Canyon Trip

Last weekend marked pretty much the only one that we'll have off as a course before we all go flying. Since the instructors all work different days of the week it means that we'll all have different rest days. In my case my 'weekends' are now Monday and Tuesdays as these are the days that my instructor has off. Once I go solo then I'll be flying solo missions on one of these days as well so it'll be a very busy timetable out here! As we all had the weekend off some of us took the  opportunity to explore so rented a car and headed to the Grand Canyon for the day, it's only a 500 mile round trip after all. It was an incredible day and really was something worth doing. The Grand Canyon is just spectacular, I've seen many photos of it but they really don't do justice for just how vast it is. At the part we were at it was around 10 miles wide and 5,000ft deep so it is just enormous, especially to say it's all been caused by erosion from a river that's just 300ft wide! Although it was the hottest day of the year so far out here (hitting 101F in Pheonix) at the altitude at the top of the canyon it was pretty pleasant. It's something that I'm certainly glad I took the time to see.

Panoramic View from the top of the Grand Canyon

What next?
So next it's actually into the flying stage, approximately 8 months after starting the course. Tomorrow morning I've got my first flight with a scheduled briefing time of 07:00. We have to be there at least an hour before to do all the flight prep that is required. This is things like the mass and balance documentation, look at the weather reports for the airfield and the surrounding area, check the maintenance history on the aircraft and, if it isn't out on another flight, then go an pre-flight check the aircraft as well. We'll then go up to do the first effects of control lesson, as we have flying partners I'll spend one lesson at the controls and we'll then land and swap and I'll sit in the back and observe (also known as back seating) or the other way around depending on which one of us flies first. This will be followed by another flight on Sunday where we'll do the second lesson on effects of controls.
It seems like a long time ago since I first started this course with a lot of hard work and stress over the last few months and personally I can't wait to get started tomorrow!

The end of ground school

Firstly, sorry for not updating this as much as I intended. For starters ground school isn't the most interesting of things to write about and the last couple of months have probably been amongst the busiest of my life.

If there's one thing to say about Phase 2 it's that it's probably the most intense learning syllabus that I've ever gone through! The pace of delivery is quicker than anything I've ever come across and after 3 short weeks of teaching and roughly 67 chapters of materials covered it was time for Tests 2s!

Test 2 is the school's internal set of exams midway through the phase to ensure that you're on track with the work and to highlight any areas you need to work on. It is probably the most under-prepared I have ever felt for any set of exams, as it felt like there is no time to actually learn and consolidate the information we had been taught. Thankfully the information must have sunk in somehow as all the exams went very well. After a day a debriefs we were already gearing up to school finals with lessons in Air Law, Operational Procedures and Radio Navigation thrown in on Friday afternoon straight after the last debrief!

After another intensive burst of 3 weeks of teaching it was time for school finals followed by the EASA exams. School finals thankfully went well as well though I will be glad when I no longer have to sit 7 exams in 2 days!

After another week of intense revision it was then time for the final set of EASA exams. I will admit the week didn't start off great, both the Performance and Mass & Balance exams weren't that nice and it didn't really put any of us in a good frame of mind for the rest of the week. Thankfully the week got a little more pleasant from there on out and the final exam on Thursday was soon completed. It was a great feeling to actually be finished, all that was left to do was pick up the log books and headsets we need for the flying phase and then go home to enjoy a nice long weekend.

Revision week for me wasn't totally spent revising for 12 hours a day with no break, I had a couple of amazing opportunities come along which helped to break up the week and remind me what I was putting myself through all this ground school for. On the Tuesday of revision week I got the opportunity to get a tour around an engineering base of Heathrow thanks to people I knew from a previous job. It was great to get back with aircraft again and see them in a new light having done the ground school. I also got the chance to have a go on an A320 simulator was well, it was a procedure trainer as opposed to a full flight simulator (which I should have been on but it broke down that morning) but it basically still functions like a fully operational A320. It was a great afternoon and really interesting to run through a 'flight' and what I would actually be doing as a day to day job. I also got the opportunity later that week to do what is called a familiarisation flight and an A319. This is where you sit on an observers seat on the flight deck to understand what happens during a flight and also during the turnaround as well. It was an amazing experience and I learnt so much on that day and it really did confirm that I was doing the right thing and would love what I was going to do.

The view I had during my familiarisation flight

The final EASA exams were not quite the end of ground school however, the following week we were back in for one final week of classes know as Flight Safety Fundamentals. This is a week of various lectures covering topics such as stabilised approach criteria, crew resource management, operations manual and procedures and culture in the states. It also included the first part of the Bucks New Uni module in Air Transport. Management. This also included a little quiz (where only 40% was needed to pass which was a welcome relief since everything up until now had required a 75% pass mark!) and a debate on one of two topics which everyone got stuck in to making it quite an enjoyable experience.

Soon it came around to Thursday and the end of FSF week which was a bit of an anti-climax if I'm honest as the lectures just finished and it was time for us all to go our separate ways. At the end of the exam week we'd all felt like we'd achieved something and it was good to be finishing whereas after this week there didn't really feel to be any closure.

It was also a bit of a strange time as well because our course is now splitting into 2. Our course was made up of a number of people doing the traditional ATPL route who will now go out to Phoenix to complete their basic flight training but was also had a number of people sponsored by EasyJet completing an MPL (basically a slightly different qualification route to becoming a first officer) and they will be completing their basic flight training at Oxford. It's a shame we're not all going out to Phoenix and will be odd not to be going through as a group from now on as we've helped each other out a lot over the last 7 months.

I will admit that I've gotten so far behind writing these posts that I'm now actually out in Phoenix and have started the training programme out here, but I'll leave that for another post.