Approaches & Holds

Over the last week I have done 3 more simulator flights, which has been teaching me the basics to fly holds and approaches. It means I now have 1 more sim flight which is a review of the last 5 flights, after which, I will then be able to go and do the holds and approaches I've been practising in a Cessna 172 for real!!!!

Holds are where an aircraft flies a racetrack style pattern around a navigational aid; the most common reason for these are to allow traffic separation, but they are also useful in an emergency as an aircraft can fly the repetitive pattern in a safe area, while the problem is being resolved. The biggest challenge is trying to maintain the pattern with wind, however once you've sorted out the effect of wind they are relatively simple to fly.

A Racetrack Style Hold

When we have finished in the holds, we are then able to make our final approach for landing. Most of the information that we require to fly the approaches are on an A5 plate which gives us all the distance and height information for the descent and turns.

Starting the IFR stage has been really exciting as we are now flying procedures that commercial airline pilots fly on a daily basis. The workload and study required is much greater than the previous 4 months of flying, but it is all worth it, especially when we now fully understand the techniques taught back in groundschool in the UK.

Away from flying, I travelled up to Auckland for a day this week. Unfortunately it was a bit cloudy and rainy, but we still got some pretty cool sights and pictures from the top of the Sky Tower. I have to say, standing on 38mm glass with a couple of hundred metres drop below was quite unnerving - the lift wasn't much better either !!!!!

Just a 186m drop

View from the sky deck

View from the bottom

First Simulator Flights....

After finishing 2 days of groundschool this week, I have managed to do my first two simulator flights in the DA42 sim. It means I have completed the first 2, of 36 flights, left remaining in New Zealand (+3 VFR Night Flights).

The first sim session focused on increasing our understanding of the 'instrument-scan' required in the new glass-cockpit, which we have been introduced to. An instrument scan is effectively a pattern we follow when trying to achieve a certain stage of flight. 

For example, in a climb we want to achieve a set attitude, speed and direction. So like the image below, we look at the position of the yellow chevron in the centre, then look at the airspeed on the left, back to the chevron, then to the direction indicator below and back to the chevron. We then continually repeat this cycle to maintain our desired conditions and make sure we don't wander off.

Climbing Instrument Scan

As well as going through these instrument scans, we also did some general handling including taking-off and landing - a bit of practise is needed here!!!!

The second simulator flight, which took just over an hour, introduced us to tracking towards and from a VOR - a navigational aid. Understanding these navigational aids is quite important, especially when the next two simulator flights are 'VOR holds' and 'VOR approaches'.

I've been quite lucky with scheduling this week, as I have my third simulator flight tomorrow. If this goes ahead, it means I only have 3 more simulator flights to do before getting to go lose in an actual aircraft above Hamilton.

I also managed to make a trip down to Lake Taupo this week for a day. Unfortunately due to the cloud, we were unable to see the peaks of the surrounding volcanic mountains; however we did get to see Huka Falls (New Zealand's biggest natural visitor attraction) and the Taupo McDonald's (the official coolest McDonald's in the worlds - due to a DC3 making up part of the restaurant).

Huka Falls - 220 000 Litres Pass Every Second

Taupo's McDonald's

Plenty Of Reading...

This week I have made progress in reading most of the manuals I spoke about last week. Tomorrow and Tuesday mark the first in a series of IFR ground school days. During these days we should learn more about the next 2 types of aircraft we will fly (C172 & Twinstar), and the Instrument flying that will make up most of the training left.

Instrument flying is basically how pilots of commercial airliners operate. Rather than looking outside the aircraft for 80-90% of the time like we have been doing so far, we now focus on all the instruments inside the aircraft with very little visual references. Just like the airliners, we are now going to be introduced to glass cockpits. Whereas before we had an array of different instruments and systems, we will now just have one main system - the G1000 (shown below).

G1000

Luckily with home software being developed, we can now practise all of what we will be doing over the next few months on both our computers and iPads, which makes understanding the basic principles a lot easier. The outline for the rest of our time in NZ is as follows:

• 6 Twinstar Simulator Flights
• 8 Cessna 172 Flights
• 5 Twinstar Flights
• 6 Twinstar Simulator Flights
• 11 Twinstar Flights (including 3 profiles and 1 actual Commercial Pilots Licence skills test)

Home Simulator even with CTC Buildings & Apron

Hopefully I will have got some of the first 6 simulator flights done by next weeks update. It has now been 44 days since my last flight.....

IFR Manuals

Apologies for the lack of updates over the last couple of weeks, however there isn't really anything of interest to report. Apart from golfing, rock climbing and a few nights out, that is it. Unfortunately due to the weather our recent night flyaway was also cancelled, with the anticipation of being rescheduled for it during the next week or so.

The only activity related to flying, is us picking up all our manuals and checklists for the next stage of training, so there is now just a few hundred pages of manuals to read through...

The 10th Feb couldn't come soon enough, even if there are a few days of groundschool at the beginning of the IR stage.