PPL Qualifying Cross Country done!

When I woke up this morning and opened the blinds to see blue skies and calm winds, I very nearly wept with joy; my QXC, after no fewer than 10 wx cancellations, was finally a go.

Best laid plans…

I’d like to say that all the planning I did for the cancelled sessions made planning this one easy, but Kemble is NOTAMed closed for non-based pilots on Sundays and Mondays so I had to throw my usual route out the window. Instead I had to plan for Blackbushe > Shoreham > Turweston > Blackbushe. Two things of note for that route:

1. Before takeoff I’d need to get a relayed clearance from Farnborough so I could transit their CTR down to Tongham. From memory I think I’d only done this once before, but it’s fairly standard stuff.
2. I’d been asked to plan to go around Farnborough airspace on the way up to Turweston, making the already long flight from Shoreham to Turweston a 96nm, 1hr leg. Again, not unusual in the grand scheme of things, but easily my longest single flight and it made the whole QXC close to 200nm.

Planning done, I set off for the airfield nice and early. By this point I’d not flown for a month, and not done any flying other than 3 circuits since the middle of February. School currency rules meant I had to squeeze in a circuit with my instructor before he could send me on my way, and he had another student to send off for QXC and a third needing a dual lesson all at the same time. Anyway, I managed a perfectly acceptable standard landing on 07, dropped the instructor off at the pumps and topped off the fuel ready for my flight.

Leg #1: Blackbushe > Shoreham

I got my relayed clearance after completing the power checks, managed to read it all back without fumbling anything, and headed to the B1 hold for 07 ready for departure. Taking off on 07 and holding north of M3J4 doesn’t give you a whole lot of time to orient yourself and get the appropriate radio calls in. As soon as I’d bid Blackbushe farewell at the edge of the ATZ and switched to Farnborough, I could hear the ATCO calling my callsign. Turns out they wanted to cancel my hold and give me clearance to cross directly to the Tongham VRP. I thought this might have been to expedite my crossing for traffic, but there was only one other aircraft on frequency and it was nowhere near the ATZ.

The flight down to Shoreham was blissfully peaceful - or at least as peaceful as it can be with the noise maker upfront, ANC notwithstanding - even if the visibility did leave something to be desired. I got the ATIS for Shoreham just north of Littlehampton and then scooted along the coast for an overhead join for my first landing on RWY 02. I must say, I’m not sure I’ll ever tire of flying that base leg and final approach over the sea, especially on a beautiful sunny day like today. A nice crosswind landing later and my first leg was complete.

I didn’t want to spend too long on the ground at Shoreham as my route up to Turweston was going to take me quite close to Abingdon and they’d scheduled meatbombs for 12:30 BST. I nipped into the control point in the hut to pay my landing fee and get my QXC form signed. I had to stifle a laugh when the guy, seeing that the form asked them to rate my landing and general airmanship, said “Well, we can’t see your landing from in ‘ere”. Still, form completed, and I strolled back out into the sunshine to the aeroplane for leg number two.

Leg #2: Shoreham > Turweston

In order to avoid Farnborough airspace and give me some semblance of a round trip, the second leg I’d chosen was a bit… convoluted. The routing was Shoreham, to the Butser Hill Mast VRP, up to Greenham Common (thru the Odiham MATZ), then overhead Didcot Power Station, overhead Brill (-on-the-Hill, thru the Benzon MATZ) then direct Turweston. Altitude keeping on the first part of that over the windward side of the South Downs was a bit of a pig, but the rest of the journey was okay, even the two MATZ penetrations which I think were my first ever. Given I was flying close (but not too close) to Lasham I’d brought my SkyEcho along and hooked up my phone in Traffic mode; seeing the swarm of gliders on the screen and just how few of those I could pick out visually was quite sobering.

As with Shoreham, the wind direction at Turweston meant I’d be landing on a runway I’d not landed on before (09). Thankfully their circuit guidance for pilots is well-written, so the circuit was no bother and I chalked up another good landing with a short backtrack to parking. After the hour-long flight I was properly hungry; I headed inside to pay my landing fee and get myself some lunch. As with my last visit the cafe was busy, but there was plenty of outside seating and I had the plane for the rest of the day so I opted to wait. After sitting outside in the chilly easterly breeze for 5 minutes I decided it would just about have been tolerable, but a table inside had just been vacated to I rushed back inside to munch my very delicious fish finger sandwich in the warm.

Leg #3: Turweston > Blackbushe

Well fed and well rested, and after the marathon second leg, the 20-something minute flight back to Blackbushe via Stokenchurch was very ordinary. I was pleased to see Blackbushe appear in the distance after a tiring but rewarding day, and managed my best landing of the lot back on 07. Taxying back and shutting down, with my instructor waiting to congratulate me and debrief the day, I could feel the fatigue setting in. QXC done!

Wrap-up

Next up, either this week or next, is a mock test to to find out just how many basic skills I’ve all but forgotten. We’ll then use my remaining time to work on those skills before a final mock and then getting my actual test booked in. Between now and then I need to book in my PoF and AGK theory tests, but I’m happy I’m ready for those.

Standby...

I’ve been rather tardy in posting since the start of 2023, but rest assured I’m still flying. I’ve even written most of the updates, just not gotten around to posting them here. I’ll work through the backlog shortly.

Review of 2022

Coming into 2022 I had absolutely no intention of learning to fly, and I’d have scoffed if you sold me I’d be well on my way to being a private pilot by the end of it. As we close in on the end of the year, I thought it would be worth reflecting on the this first year of flying.

Having started at the end of June, at the end of December I have…

• completed 25 lessons¹, with probably a third more cancellations due to weather, illness or arocraft issues
• logged 24hrs of flying experience under my belt, including 1.5hrs solo flight
• completed 79 takeoffs and 75 landings, some distinctly better than others
• passed 6 of 9 theory exams
• written 35 posts covering my journey (36 if you include this one)

As I type this the weather is utterly miserable. I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed for fairer weather for my first lesson on 3rd January, when I’m supposed to be doing my first solo nav exercise to Welford and Overton.

See you all in 2023!

I passed my Navigation, Meteorology and FPP theory exams!

It turns out that the lesson on Tuesday was my last for the year as we binned this morning’s lesson due to low cloud. So, like any sane person surely would, I booked my Nav, Met and FPP exams back-to-back for this afternoon and spent the morning in revision and mock exam mode :cyclopsani:

Nav: 16/16. I started with Nav as it’s the one I’ve been studying the longest, and putting much of that into practice with the navigation flights I’ve been planning. As with the first three exams, I found the actual questions much less taxing than the Easy PPL mock exams. Maybe I got lucky, but it seems there are a fair amount of trick questions or “clever” answers in the Easy PPL question bank that didn’t come up at all in the actual exam.

FPP: 10/12. I’d only started passing my FPP mocks on Easy PPL this morning so I wasn’t as confident going in as I was with Nav. The first question I dropped was on 032.01.04.01 - Climb and cruise performance - Use of aeroplane flight data, which I remember was just a lookup with a small adjustment for farings and I thought I’d got that one right. The other miss was 033.01.01.02 - VFR navigation plan - Courses and distances from VFR charts*, which was almost certainly a simple measurement of the distance from Norwich to Framlingham and I can’t for the life of me work out how I’d have stuffed that one up. 😜 Clearly there are still areas of FPP that haven’t stuck in my brain so I’ll spend a bit more time with Easy PPL over the Christmas period to see if I can internalise some of the weaker bits.

Met: 16/16. I’d been really struggling with the motivation to work my way through the Easy PPL Met slides, and the Met section of my Pooley’s book remains undisturbed. In the end, I found these two videos from the world of hang gliding and paragliding covering Met theory and whacked them on in the background whilst cooking, and that seemed to uncork the bottle. After that I was able to quickly blast through the slides and was passing the mock exams from the first attempt (Note for those following: Don’t squint trying to read the screen from the videos; the slides are available for download from the video description. Also note there’s a mistake on the typical wind direction for polar maritime - it should be SE not SW)

All’s well that ends well, as they say, but I’m going to make a concerted effort not to leave my final 3 exams to the last bloomin’ minute. One at a time at a leisurely pace will do nicely, thankyouverymuch!

PPL Lesson #23: Low-level navigation and instrument appreciation

Got massively lucky with the weather for this morning’s lesson after the miserable weekend: clear blue skies, 10°c and nil wind on the ground.

We started with a bit of low-level navigation over the outskirts of Reading up to Goring. I managed to leave my chart at home but thankfully I’d memorised what I expected to see on the route, and was able to glance at the instructor’s unmarked chart to cross check where needed. The shift in perspective flying at a relatively low level of 1300’ over Reading definitely made structures - particularly the windmill at Green Park just off the M4 - and terrain stand out, and I was able to easily fly my way to Goring nestled among the higher ground to the east and west.

Overhead Goring we turned due south, and my instructor produced the dreaded hood: it was time for some instrument appreciation. We started off with me closing my eyes completely so that the instructor could take us on a bit of a roller coaster ride as a means of reinforcing just how rubbish our other senses are at identifying orientation when deprived of sight. After a bit he asked me what I thought our orientation was, and what felt to me like a nose-high right bank turned out to be a fairly steep left bank (though the nose was indeed above the horizon, so I’m claiming half a point). He did that again and what I thought was a nose-high left bank was actually bang on straight and level. Lesson learned!

From there I took control to first maintain straight and level, then climbing and descending to specified altitudes, followed by rate-1 180° turns with and without the DI to practice safely getting out of inadvertent IMC. The instrument scans were straightforward enough, but I found keeping on the intended heading whilst climbing particularly tricky and had to correct by 15° before we got to the top of the climb. My instructor seemed pleased with everything else.

We had a bit of time left at the end so we closed the lesson out with a few touch and goes. I’d managed a (relatively gentle) tricycle landing in the previous lesson, and given I don’t fly a tailwheel the instructor just wanted me to work on better flare technique to make sure I’m always getting the rear wheels down first.

Scarily, when I look at my training record there are now only two “lesson” items left on it: solo consolidation and landaways. I’m still only at just about 25h flight time so I’ve still got a LOT of flying experience to gain yet to properly embed and reinforce the stuff I’ve been learning, and I still have my solo nav and QXC to do, but it’s bizarre that I’m mostly out of new stuff to cover.

Online simulator for VOR/NDB radio nav

Logging this here partly as a reminder to myself but also for any PPL students in or about to begin the navigation portion of their training: I’ve been using the Firgo IFR Simulator to mess around with radio navigation outside of my PPL training. Really helped me to get my head around the concept of relative bearings for NDB-based nav and the practicalities of radial/reciprocol radial and from/to flags for VOR navigation.

I particularly enjoy the mission mode, which gives you a random selection of (hidden) NDBs and VORs you have to fly to in sequence, but it’s also useful if you just want to drag beacons or the plane around and see what impact that has on the various instruments to help solidify the theory outside of the cockpit.

PPL Lesson #22: First control zone transit

Woke up this morning to what my old man would call “a proper frost”, and I spent close to two hours at the airfield intermittently brushing down the wings and tail with school-issued rubber brushes and waiting for the sun to do its thing. I’d planned a nav route through Farnborough’s control zone down to Littlehampton, then past Goodwood on the way to Petersfield before turning back to Farnborough for a return transit and recovery back to Blackbushe. Thankfully the warming sun won out with an hour of my lesson left, which gave us just enough time for the planned route.