The final Cessna flight

Today I finally managed to fly my last Cessna flight. As I've mentioned, we need to gain 200 hours before the King Air phase and 50 hours cross-country before the IFR evaluation flight. I've already gained these hours from flights outside school but still had about 45 minutes of prepaid Cessna-hours to fly. So today I took a friend with me and we went for a short trip to watch some night-time scenery over Helsinki. I decided I wanted to fly this flight in the night since it's so much more fun and gives a certain different feeling to the flight :)

Helsinki by Night

OH-AWB in the dark..

C152 to Räyskälä

It's been quite a while since I've last flown with the C152, but a few days ago we decided to go flying with my classmate who is also my simulator partner. We took the OH-AWB and headed to Räyskälä to have some lunch. There's extremely good hamburgers there so it's always nice to go and have some.

Over Helsinki once again

Flying with the C152 after a few months brake was very fun and I didn't even remember how nice and simple it is to fly. Of course it's quite slow and a bit "cozy" especially with two persons on board but I think it's perfect for short trips like this one.

Landed at Räyskälä airfield

My classmate flew us to Räyskälä and I flew back, logging about one hour of flight time. I still have about 2.5 hours of C152 flying left so I think I'll have to figure out some more flights in the near future..

After the flight we had to plan an IFR flight from Helsinki-Malmi to Tampere. We're not actually going to fly it yet but the FNPT exercises include some homework like flight planning etc so we decided to do this one together to be better able to encounter possible difficulties. The planning didn't went so smoothly even though we finally got everything done. IFR flight planning still feels quite stiff and you have to scratch your head a lot, but I guess it starts to feel more comfortable if you just do it more. Hope so :)

Night flying above Helsinki

Feeling confident from the late night solo excersise, today I went to fly after sunset to see how Helsinki looked from the air at night. I very much liked night flying when we did the course last summer and was lucky to get an instructor who encouraged to continue flying at night every now and then. I also took my girlfriend with me since she also wanted to enjoy the view.

Katajanokka

After careful preparations and checking that the weather indeed was perfect, we managed to take-off in to the night sky. I immediately got a great feeling from the flight and was happy to notice that I didn't get any difficulties or extra pressure from night flying. After all, the surroundings are so familiar to me that it brings very much extra confidence to everything, it especially makes navigation easier. I still, however, plotted all the required radials and DME-distances to be able to fly back to the airport using only the instruments as a navigational reference.

Porvoo's oil refinery yet again. Looks like a city with skyscrapers.

Some instructors and therefore also students seem to have developed a strange fear and anxiety over flying at night but my personal attitude is that it's atmospheric, challenging and brings some very nice variety to daytime VFR-flying. After all, it is a totally normal and legitimate way to fly when you have the right plane, proper training and necessary equipment on board. And what's most important, it is very fun!

On final runway 18. The fact that the Airport Duty Office couldn't turn the PAPI-lights on brought some extra challenge to the landing!

My first flight this year!

Lately the weather has been very nice and this had led me to think more and more about going flying again after the long winter pause. Yesterday after school I went flying with my schoolmate sitting as a passenger in the C152 for the first time. We flew from Malmi to Nummela and Kiikala aerodromes and then returned back a while after sunset. I was supposed to go flying myself after this trip but it was getting late and I decided to go home instead and booked a plane for tomorrow.

EFHF at sunset

So today I took the OH-CVP and went flying. My main goal was to fly the compulsory three take-offs and landings in order to be able to carry passengers again so I first spent a few minutes in the traffic circuit whichafter I flew to the Porvoo training area to do some basic flying excersises. I did the usual slow flying, steep turns and stalls and was happy to notice how well everything went despite the couple of months of being in the ground.

It's getting dark..

 After I returned from this flight, I wanted to fly another one so I made all the necessary calculations and preparations and waited a while for the sun to start setting. My goal was to take off at sunset and fly for about an hour before returning and making one touch-and-go landing before coming to a full stop. This was in order to log the compulsory one take-off and landing at night to be able to carry passengers also at night.

Porvoo oil refinery at abut 18.40 local time.

Everything went well and although it wasn't pitch-black when I came to the landing, I logged the last 18 minutes as night time since it had already been over 30 minutes from sunset. In Finland's requlations, night is the time between sunset and sunrise when an unighted obstacle can't be clearly distinguished from 8km distance. As you can imagine, this definition is quite interpretational :)

OH-CVP

My first post-CPL flight!

I've now completed my first flight as a licenced commercial pilot! I took the C152 and flew about an hour first in the traffic circuit and then at the training area.

AWB and a crisp winter afternoon

 I thought at first that it would be strange flying the Cessna 152 after a relatively long pause but I was surprised how well everything went. Maybe it's like riding a bicycle..

Almost all boats have been pulled up from the water. "Winter is coming!"

I originally thought that as soon as I get my license, I'll start asking for friends and relatives to come on board but since I got my license so late in the autumn, the weather's getting worse, days are getting shorter and most of my time is dedicated to theoretical studies, I guess I'll postpone those flights to next year. However, I'm happy that I got airborne at least once more this year :)

Heading back to Nokka.

I now have two flight time -related things to accomplish myself during other training. Firstly, I need to have 50 hours of Pilot in Command cross-country time before the IR checkride. The CPL flight training syllabus doesn't give that much hours for some reason. So I have about 3,5 hours left. Secondly, I have to have 200 hours of total time before I can start flying the King Air C90. If I consider the minimum of 15 hours I get from the IR course, I still have about 4 hours of flying left. These hours are supposed to be flown with own discretion and with the school's airplanes, and are included in the course and its price.