Mayday mayday mayday!

Our Mayday holiday started today and since me and one of my course mates didn't have anything special planned for the afternoon, we went to a nice place near EFHK to watch some airliners landing to runway 22L. I'm not very much into plane-spotting and don't even have a real camera but decided to take a few iPad-quality pictures for this blog :)

Japan Airlines / Boeing 787 Dreamliner

Flybe Finland / ATR-72

Finnair / Airbus A340...

...which apparently lost two of its engines right before touchdown ;)

ATPL phase is coming to its end..

The ATPL theory course is now coming to its end. We've finished Radio Navigation and Meteorology. OPS and FPP are only a few hours short and then we only have a little of AGK and Mass & Balance left. We have yet all but the Radio Navigation exam to do, but we've had a few practice exams. It seems the theoretical studies will last for a few weeks and we'll be doing the TraFi exams sometime in the second half of next month.

IFR

After the exams it's time for the IR(A) course and some 35 hours of simulator flying. It seems I'll also be doing something else that's flying-related after the course but I'll get into that later :)

A Visit to Finnish Meteorological Institute

Recently our course visited the Finnish Meteorological Institute, which is situated in Kumpula, Helsinki. We got a presentation on what the institute provides for aviation and how the meteorological information is gathered from different sources and then presented as aviation weather data.

A few screens on one desk. Maybe one of them could be used for facebooking without losing too much data?

It was interesting to see how all those many different sources of information and weather data is gathered and made into an SW-chart for example. This visit was of course part of our ATPL meteorological studies, and with this it came to its end. So now we're supposed to be ready for the school exam!

The Airbus A320 in retro-livery :)

A Visit to EFIN

Last week we visited Finland's Area Control Centre (EFIN), which is located in the city of Tampere. The visit was part of our Air Law studies and we were actually about to go there earlier on but it was postponed to a later date.

Area Control Centre of Finland

The Area Control Centre is responsible for coordinating air traffic that fly over Finland and traffic between airports on national flight routes. We got a short presentation about the building and the history of Finnish ACC, whichafter we could go to the main room where all the actual ATC service and communication is done.

Air Traffic Controllers doing their job and us watching closely :)

It was interesting to see how the controllers managed different flights and very often talked to their closely workmates about situation-related things, informing each other about incoming flights and changes to flight routes or altitudes. Of course there was a lot involved so I didn't get hold of everything that was happening.

The workspace

All in all, it was a nice visit and of a sort that's becoming quite rare nowadays. EFIN is being transferred to Helsinki and it seems getting a visit after that will become much harder.

Meanwhile, ATPL studies continue and hours go by. We've been mainly going through Meteorology, Flight Planning & Monitoring and Radio Navigation. Actually we finished the latter a while ago and already took the school exam. I got 88%, which is okay. Only five more school exams left and then it's time for the final challenge..!