First day of IFR training!

Today was our first day of instrument flight training and I've now flown for two hours with the FNPTII simulator!

FNTP II

Our IR-training consists in total of 50 hours of flying, of which 35 hours are flown with our FNPTII (Flight Navigation Procedures Trainer), which is a fixed-base "simulator" that emulates the flight characteristics of the Piper Turbo Arrow. After the FNPT flights, 15 hours are flown with the real plane and hopefully at least a few of the hours in actual instrument meteorological conditions.

My "office" at the moment

The first three flights (of which two I've now flown) are not actually part of the IR syllabus but are intended to give a little introduction to the trainer and make students comfortable with the controls before the actual IR training begins. However, we already did some interesting flight figures and ILS approaches just for practice.

ILS

Flying with the FNPT is actually quite demanding and somehow more challenging than the real aircraft since it's much harder to keep in trim. After two flights I already felt quite exhausted and tired. But after all, I like the challenge and can't wait to learn new things as we progress further.

Until then..!

At last it's behind me!

Whoa.. Frankly, I'm speechless at the moment.

I did the last half of the ATPL exams today and the day before, and I just got to know that I have managed to pass them all! I have thus reached my goal, which was to pass all of the exams in one go and with good grades. I couldn't be happier!

Never worked so hard for a piece of paper :)

Here's a little summary:

Subjects in total: 14
Number of practice questions answered: 22 542
Hours spent studying: Countless!
Average score: 91,4%

Well deserved..!

Now it's time to focus solely on flying! See you next time when the Instrument Flight Training begins! :)

A small update on the situation

Recently I've been extremely busy and it feels all things start to stack up quite a bit. I've practically done aviation-related things from eight to ten hours a day and don't seem to have much of free time for the next few weeks or so.

In addition to some few theoretical studies we have left, I've now been starting to practice question bank exercises more intensively. The final six exams will be on the 16th and 17th of next month. After that, all of it will hopefully be finally over. I have experienced some anxiety since I really want to repeat my success and pass also these six exams on the first time. However, studying seems to be much harder now that summer is knocking on the door and weather gets better and better, so I just have to focus and repeat to myself that passing these exams is the best way I can make all aviation-related things move forward.

We have also had our first briefings on the next phase, which is IR-training in the FNPTII simulator. Our course actually had some simulator flights already planned for this week but we requested to postpone those until the exams are over.

... :)

In addition to school-related things, I have two other flying-related things going on that have been taking a lot of my time. Both of them could be described as work, which I am extremely happy for. However, I've decided not to go too much in depth on those until things become more clear. I don't want to hype things before something actually happens for real.. Also, I have to somehow figure out how to write work-related things here since it's a bit more complicated than writing about school :)

I recently also joined Malmi Aviation Club and was going to start flying with their Cessna 172 and Diamond DA-40 but decided to put those things on hold until I have a little less going on...

First ultralight flights of the year!

I've been hanging around at Nummela yet again for a few days now and got a chance to fly a little with the Fk9. After I finally managed to get the battery working and was able to start the engine, I went for a little rehearsal flight. I had studied the manual a bit and wanted to go through some basics like slow flying and stalls in order to re-familiarize myself with the plane.

It's like riding a bicycle, really...

Ready for some evening flying :)

After the rehearsals it was time to grab a local friend on board and fly a little cross-country trip from Nummela to Kiikala and Forssa airfields. I also ended up in Nummela the day after and flew with a friend to Malmi for some refueling. From there we went to Torbacka grassfield and then back to Nummela. On the way back I got to show and demonstrate my friend some basics of flying. It was all very nice and we had a great time!

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 :)