AFIS Aerodrome

Today we flew an interesting school flight to an AFIS aerodrome, Kajaani EFKI. An AFIS aerodrome is an airport, which is kind of in between a controlled aerodrome and an uncontrolled one. It has no ATC but flight information service instead. You need a flight plan to be able to enter the airspace but the controller doesn't give you any clearances, only suggestions. This leads to interesting radiocommunication that isn't always so easy and requires some practise if not used to.

The journey begins. Malmi Airport from above.

So, if you normally say "Information Alfa, QNH 1013, request taxi", in an AFIS aerodrome you would say "Information Alfa, QNH 1013, will taxi to holding point Bravo". When the ATC normally says "cleared to land" in an AFIS aerodrome all that you'll hear is "runway free". So you receive information but every decision is ultimately up to you. You don't have an obligation to, for example, use the runway the AFIS controller suggests to you.

Turning to final at Mikkeli.

We flew this flight with a C172 so that the first leg was to Kajaani via Mikkeli airport and I was sitting in the backseat as an observer while my schoolmate was flying. At Kajaani we swapped seats and I flew the plane back home via Jyväskylä. So in total I spent almost six hours in a C172 :)

FL075

The other objective of this flight was to navigate at higher altitudes, so we flew the leg to Kajaani at flight level 75 and back to Malmi at flight level 85. We used the GPS system to help in high altitude navigation and learned a lot about its features.

Approaching Kajaani. It was a bit rainy below the clouds.

Overall, it was very nice to fly at high altitude on top of the clouds since it's so stable up there and you get to concentrate on other things than keeping the plane straight. Although our C172 doesn't have an autopilot, I now acknowledge its benefits since steering by hand at these altitudes is really just correcting the heading by a degree or two or correcting a 20 feet altitude change and so on. Very easy but boring and gets quite tiring after a long leg.
It was also nice to get to learn all the AFIS procedures. From now on, we can start flying solo flights to these airports. Looking forward to it :)

Travelling to Copenhagen..

I got a chance to fly to Copenhagen for the weekend with my family, with the intention of going to look my sisters newborne horse at the stables in southern Sweden. I gladly accepted since in addition to being fond of animals, I don't really get to fly on airliners that often, maybe once or twice a year.

I tried to make my way into the jumpseat by showing my school ID card but it appears Finnair's company policy is that you have to be in the company in order to make it to the front. Being a student pilot isn't enough, or so the F/O told me at least. However I know random people have made their way to the cockpit so I guess it all depends on the mood of the captain :)

There it is waiting for us, the Airbus 321 :)

Airborne.

Lappeenranta International Airshow 2013

I spent the weekend promoting our school in this year's biggest airshow in Finland, the Lappeenranta International Airshow (LIAS). When I heard of the opportunity to go there for free on behalf of our school, I instantly volunteered to be part of the team. I'm very happy I decided to go there instead of spending a free weekend in Helsinki.

After setting everything up we mainly did promotional work from about ten a.m. to five or six p.m. talking to people and telling facts about our training whenever asked and so on. The evenings went by in our camping site, which had a nice outdoor grill place and many small cottages for us to sleep in.

All in all, I met many interesting persons, got to know some of my coursemates and older students better and of course saw all the airshow's performers every day. So, a very nice weekend well spent!

Here's some pictures:

Our stand from the front. There was three of our airplanes for the public to see, the C152, Piper Arrow and the King Air.

The Team.

King Air on display. Visitors could also go inside the cabin. I got to spend a lot of time there too. This plane was essentially like a motor home to us during the show.

Promoting Scanwings and the Citation CJ2+.

The Royal Jordanian Falcons aerobatic team. The Jordanian king obviously has a soft spot for aviation.

The Harvard, a military trainer aircraft from the times of WWII.

Finnish Aviation Academy's Embraer Phenom 100, used in multi-engine training.

I got to fly back to Malmi as a passenger in the backseat of our Piper Arrow. Quite a nice way to travel and the view's were fantastic :)

Home at last :)

Cessna C172 familiarisation training

Time to move on to wide-bodied airplanes!

Today I finally got to fly the familiarisation training program for the four-seater Cessna 172. I got the flight manual beforehand to go through and then had to fill up a questionnaire/exam, which had questions about the type. Most of all it was pretty straightforward like "what is the speed for best rate of climb?" or "how much fuel can you take on board with four standard weight people on board?" but I encountered a few more difficult questions too.

My new airplane, the Charlie Oscar Kilo

The intetion was to fly to the nearby Hyvinkää airfield and practise touch and go landings there after doing some training area excercises and then head back to Malmi, so I did a brief OFP, a few calculations and off we went. One of my coursemates wanted to act as an observer on the backseat. It's quite useful since you get a little extra air-time and experience by monitoring everything closely.

There's quite a lot to go through in the Pilot's Operating Handbook.

The airplane itself is not too different from a 152 being kind of an oversized version of it. All the familiar instruments, knobs and switches are there, the checklist procedures are quite the same and the airplane feels already somewhat familiar after having spended 75 block hours in its little brother. The Garmin GPS added something new to the package and so we spent some time going through its specifications and features.

The working environment doesn't differ that much from a 152. Even the checklists are almost identical. The main distractions come from the new HSI and the reverse placement of the tachometer and gyro.

The flight itself went well and I enjoyed it very much. I did some normal turns, steep turns, stall recoveries and slow flight which all went without problems. I noticed the additional stability compared to the 152 and also the force required for some manoeuvres was somewhat larger. This also highlighted the importance of proper trimming. Also, the Cessna 172 requires a lot more right rudder in take off and climb-out when compared to the 152.

Landing the four-seater was a little different. This plane requires much more focus on maintaining the right speed throughout the landing procedure. If the speed gets too high, it is quite difficult to get it back again. I had to do a go-around when first trying to land with less than full flaps since I underestimated the quite good glide characteristics of the 172 and had a little too much speed. The airplane just didn't want to stop flying..

Quite a beautiful one if I may say so.

So now I'm qualified to fly the Cessna 172 and we will continue flying school flights and training flights with this one. This doesn't mean we'll stop using the 152 but will begin flying with both airplanes to the end of our CPL training, depending on the assigned flight for the day and airplane availability. The Cessna 172 is good for example when flying longer cross-country flights and I'm hoping to gain a lot more hours on this one!

Plane spotting

Every now and then some pretty interesting aircraft visit Malmi airport and it's nice to walk around the apron taking a closer look on them. Today's guest was the Short SC.7 Skyvan being used as a research airplane by the Aalto University.

The flying box. Probably not the most beautiful airplane in the world.. :)

How's this for symmetry?

Bird strikes and some other news

After having completed the last few theoretical exams I can now finally concentrate solely on flying, at least 'till the ATPL theories begin. This week I only flew on one day since I requested a few days off to be able to do a little final spurt on studying. That really helped!

Charlie Juliet Mike, the blue plane..

My plane today was about to be the Charlie Victor Yankee but since it was still in maintenance and some FINAA students couldn't fly their routes due to weather I stole one of the planes assigned for them and decided to do a training area flight.

Paint's starting to wear off a bit.

However, my first flight only lasted for four minutes since right after take off I managed to collide with a small bird that hit the left window. I immediately informed the ATC and requested a landing to be able to inspect possible damage. Thankfully there was none and I could soon try again. So off I went and flew a nice flight. Now it's time to start the weekend!

A nice blue panel :)

Next week there will be quite a lot going on since I will be having my familiarisation training for the Cessna 172 and in the weekend there will be an airshow in Lappeenranta Airport and I'll be going there on behalf of my school for some promoting duties. I think I will be flying there with a school Cessna and receiving free food and accomodation for the weekend. We've also been promised a free flight hour with a C152 as a reward for our duties there. Nice!

CPL theory course finally over!

So now it's finally behind me!

As I suspected earlier, I passed most of the exams first time but had to do a couple of them again. I decided to postpone the exam to give myself enough time to read while making progress on flying. I now did the two exams (General Navigation and Meteorology) and passed them with 93% score on MET and 90% on GEN NAV. I haven't counted my average but I think it's somewhere between 86-88 percent.

It really helped to change the question bank site since the one I used to rehearse for these exams was much more accurate and some of the questions were actually there on the real exam! The ATPL theory course will begin next autumn and I'm now much better prepared for them and know which question banks to use. I'm hoping to get a first time pass on all subjects with a good average, hopefully over 90%. It will be hard to accomplish, especially now that the exams are done with a computer system instead of pen and paper, which has had a huge effect on the overall difficulty level compared to previous years.

Time will tell if I'll succeed :)