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!