Hour Burning with Sari

Today we went on a flight up North with Sari's remaining hours that he had left over after passing his IR. We set off up inbetween Birmingham and East Midlands controlled airspace and arrived at Stafford. After a little bit of navigation we saw Sari's house and gave his family a few low passes in different configurations and at different speeds, which was a great deal of fun! You can see (excuse the shaky video) that they had made a huge banner which was sprawled out over the lawn, providing a message to us in the sky, which was a really nice touch.

Picture taken from my back garden in Banks, Southport.

Sari, very kindly, allowed me to head up North over Liverpool and up towards Southport, so I could go and wave the wings at my parents, who were in the back garden on lookout after I'd given them an ETA! We passed over my house and I could see them waving and jumping around as they saw us fly over and like at Sari's we were able to do a few laps before departing to the South, to begin our 180 mile leg back to Oxford.




I'd like to thank Sari for allowing me some of his flying time to spend going to make my parents very happy to see their son fly over our house. It was a fantastic day out and a great experience flying the Seneca without IFR screens for a change!

All in all, a pretty active and exciting Saturday afternoon...

Start of IR

So I am back in Oxford for the next stage of training which is called the 'Instrument Rating' phase. Since my last post (which was a while back!) we were awarded our gold bars and wings which was an amazing feeling and was worth all the hours of hard work to receive them.

I have since done 3 sorties in the sim and have completed two VFR and partial IFR familiarisation flights and the pace is starting to pick up with work load and complexity of the flying, however, it's all still loads of fun and it feels so much more real as we fly through the clouds on a really poor weather day and you're greeted with fantastic sunshine and a carpet of white clouds with the likes of BA, American, United, Delta, Emirates etc over the radios.
Certainly up there with the big boys, but they all started out somewhere too!


Congratulations to all my friends who have recently passed their IR exam and enjoy the 737!

Sam

I PASSED MY CPL!!

I know this is a slightly late write up, however I have been so busy it's unreal!

Well, I passed what I was out in Arizona to do, the first time of asking, which was to gain my commercial pilot's licence! So as you can imagine, I was absolutely over the moon about that. However, there hasn't been much time to celebrate as I arrived back on the Friday night and was in Oxford on the Sunday.

This week, my course have been on a First Officer Fundamentals (FOF) course, which includes modules on crew resource management, air accidents and how working as a team in a professional manner may have eliminated mistakes which led to certain accidents. This was all interesting, however the jet lag certainly hit halfway through this week! We have work for Bucks University to do tomorrow and then on Monday it's the England IR flying stage brief, which will cover every applicable change to how we will be flying and how the whole system works back here in the not so sunny UK (I'm certainly a weather snob now)!

Monday will also see the presentation of our gold epaulettes and wings pin, which to someone who has dreamed of this since they were very small like myself, will be one of the best days of my life so far.

Pictures will follow!

Speak soon

Sam

Flying the Seneca

So I have moved onto the Seneca and there is such a massive difference between it and the Warrior, except for the obvious...

It has so much power. It climbs, cruises and descends at a much higher speed and the rate at which you have to do everything is doubled, which can be stressful. I have had two flights in the aircraft and two flights in the simulator.

Here is a short video of my first takeoff and landing in a Seneca. I over boosted on the take off and didn't land on the centre line but it wasn't a bad first attempt...

Sam

PT4 and Seneca

PT4 is finally done and passed with a grade 3, which is a massive weight off my shoulders and I have done all the hours required on the fantastic PA28 Warrior. It will be missed, however I get to move onto the Seneca now, which has 200bhp on each wing and is turbocharged, so not a bad change at all!

The only problem is my instructor has been off ill unfortunately and so I am behind on my flights, so much so that I won't be going home with the rest of the course, which is disappointing, however, I'm out here to pass my CPL first time and as long as I do that, I don't care when I go home. I hope you get better soon Matt!

I will let you know how my first flights go on the new aircraft and will upload a few pictures once I eventually get to fly the thing!

Sam

P.S. I would also like to wish my Grampa a happy 80th Birthday and I can't wait to come over to Ballymena to see you both as soon as I can! If it wasn't for your influence when I was young I certainly wouldn't be in such an amazing position and training for such a fantastic career.

The pace is picking up! 100 Flight Hours Logged...

As the title of this post suggested, the flying is really at full throttle at the minute and it is extremely tiring. The holds seem to be going reasonably well, which is good seeing as I have my PT4 on Wednesday. I'm pretty nervous for this next PT as it is a big one and there is so much to do and think about, it would be very easy to make mistakes... but that isn't going to happen!

I officially logged my 100th flying hour today during my 2 hour invoice flight, which is a milestone entry into the logbook!

The rest of my week is as follows:

• Tuesday- 0700 Seneca Brief, 0730 AP76 for 2:00, 1100 PT paperwork, 1230 Invoice flight and 1515 PT4 Brief
• Wednesday - PT4
• Thursday - CPL Cross Country Qualifier (5 hour navigation flight with 2 land-aways)
• Friday- AP81 in the morning then Seneca flying in the afternoon

I will be flying on Saturday too, however the schedule hasn't been released yet. I am hoping to have my CPL either a week on Friday or Saturday after only 7 or 8 days flying the Seneca.

It really is amazing how fast the time has gone out here and each successful flight is one step closer to home!

Sam

PT3- Busy Busy Busy

Today I passed my PT3, with a grade 2.

Seeing as it is graded officially from 1-6 (1 being perfect and 6 being a re-take), I was very very pleased!
It didn't look good when my upper winds were forecasted as 25kt and the winds were gusting 20 when I was landing but there isn't time to delay my flights so I went for it.

It was a really good flight and the only thing that prevented me from getting a 1 is that, on one of my practiced engine failures, I was too high on final on the dirt strip I chose to make a forced landing on.

I have four flights flights over the next two days (26th & 27th Jan) which will then leave me with only 2 lessons before PT4 and then my CPL Cross Country Qualifier (a 5 hour flight with two land-aways) and then any invoice time (when lessons get cut short, the time gets banked and this banked time is known as invoice flights).

I aim to have my first flight on the Seneca next Wednesday (1st February) and cannot wait! First I have to focus on the holding procedures and PT4....


Sam