Greetings from the World of Books

New Year and a new begin... well, the same old theory lessons continue and the end is not near :)

Some new subjects have started and with that, new ground instructors have come to alter our daily routine. Some lessons seem to pass by in an instant while some lessons seem to last forever. But so it goes.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Christmas is coming and with that, a well-earned holiday period is near. Now it's time to see some red instead of blue :)

Santa has come to visit the terminal building of Helsinki-Malmi airport.

Next year the studying of blue books continues and I've heard that we'll start "lightly" with a mock exam on meteorology. Nice!

Maldivian Air Taxi

In these times of dark winter evenings, rainfall and coldness I'm sure many of us dream of warm faraway places with their eternal summer and sunny beaches. I've been spending some time researching all the different airlines operating in these places and dreamed about possible jobs in one of these companies. A great way to gather some extra motivation in the middle of a theory course!

They say you haven't lived if you've never flown Twin Otters in the Maldives. I suppose I'll never live then. At least I know a certain amount of our population is with me :)

One of the air carriers under closer inspection is Maldivian Air Taxi that operates a huge fleet of Twin Otters in the Maldivian islands flying people from an island resort to another. According to one of our teachers some finnish pilots have gone flying there in the past and it seems they still have at least an application form you can fill in their website, with requirements that are quite possible to meet.

Look at the size of that tailplane!

However it seems that the company has started to stricten its requirements and apparently you'll need a lot of seaplane experience to be applicable. In addition the Maldivian government has started to favour local pilots and it can be hard for expat first officers to gain work permits to the country. So practically it seems that unless you're a captain with thousand seaplane hours it might be quite impossible to get a job.

So, that's it about the motivation and back to the books! :)

Can one drown in blue books?

Theoretical studies continue and there's more than enough to learn. CPL theories are just something way different than PPL theories. The language has changed from Finnish to English and when AGK was formerly all about the systems of our little Cessna 152 we have now started tearing Boeings and Airbuses to pieces and exploring them. Navigation is now more like mathematics and all about calculating time differences, convergences and departures when it earlier was a kind of "there the church of Nikkilä is now" -kind of subject. Also, my "dear" flight computer has become increasingly familiar to me lately.

Our ground instructors are all in all quite decent. What's different from PPL studies is that we no longer have our schools own instructors teaching us. We now have freelancer instructors who are experts of diffferent subjects, mainly airline pilots, business pilots, air traffic controllers and technical people.

I'm planning on keeping a little break from writing. There's really not that much to say about theoretical studies. I wake up in the morning, go to school, sit there for six to seven hours and go home. The weeks pass by suprisingly fast now that I've become used to this kind of schedule after the randomness of the flight period. It seems now that the theory course should be over by April next year.

But before that, there's a little over 200 classroom hours of things to learn!

CPL theories begin! ...and flying ends.

The CPL theory course begin next monday on the 27th. After that it's time to stay in the ground and sit in the class everyday listening to lectures. I predict it can at first be quite hard to just sit in the class after all this flying. On the other hand it's quite nice to be able to sit inside in the warm as outside temperature decreases all the time and the weather gets worse.

We got our books and material in advance. In the We will use the blue ATPL-series by Oxford Aviation Academy. Some parts of the subjects will not yet be covered in the CPL course but I think most of the contents will become familiar. I'm actually quite horrified by the amount of stuff to learn, just got to cope with it!

So there's fourteen different books and the ones most important regarding working life are easily recognizable by their small number of pages :)


Oxford JAA ATPL -series:

Volume 1: Air Law
Volume 2: Aircraft Knowledge 1 - Airframes & Systems
Volume 3: Aircraft Knowledge 2 - Electrics & Electronics
Volume 4: Aircraft Knowledge 3 - Piston and Gas Turbine Engines
Volume 5: Aircraft Knowledge 4 - Instrumentation
Volume 6: Flight Planning 1 - Mass & Balance, Performance
Volume 7: Flight Planning 2 - Flight Planning & Monitoring
Volume 8: Human Performance
Volume 9: Meteorology
Volume 10: Navigation 1 - General Navigation
Volume 11: Navigation 2 - Radio Navigation
Volume 12: Operational Procedures
Volume 13: Principles of Flight
Volume 14: Communications

Summary of the PPL flight training period

Now it's the time to just believe that flying is over for this year. Weather keeps getting worse and in the last week almost no-one seems to have gotten in the air. Luckily, almost the whole PPL-phase is now completed and actually only two solo cross-country flights will have to be postponed to next year.

A rainy day and an Antonov AN-2

So, the first flight training period is now over and here's a quick summary of the flying hours I logged during the training:

Total time: 48h 25min
PIC: 12h 19min
Dual: 36h 06min

C152: 48h 25min

Take-offs by day: 159
Landings by day: 159

Sensory illusions, cross-country adventures and the end of the flight period...

Autumn weather has taken over Finland and chances to get in the sky get slimmer every day. Lately I've been having quite a lot of free time. Usually you can just continue sleeping in early morning after gazing out of the window and seeing some BKN003 SHRA weather.. Alternatively you'll wake up when your flight instructor texts you that the day is cancelled.

Ready for takeoff at runway 36, I miss this kind of weather :)

Some flying has happened though, including something new to me. The PPL flight training includes so called basic instrument flights, which are meant to teach the student pilot how to make a co-ordinated 180 degree out of a cloud in the case that you accidentally end up in bad weather. This is the sole purpose of the trainining and by no means it gives any competence on being able to actually fly in instrument conditions on purpose. Well, that training is also ahead of me later, when the IFR course begins.

We simulated instrument conditions by using special goggles that restrict the view outside of the windows and forces you to focus on your instruments. It was interesting to notice how much mental capacity is required even for the most basic of maneuvres when the visual horizon is taken away from you. Even straight and level flight requires much more work than usual, since the tennis ball -sized artificial horizon isn't as easy a reference than its natural big brother. I also experienced a somatogyric illusion when all of a sudden I felt a strong sense of turning left even though I was flying straight ahead. You almost start to correct this falsely perceived attitude before realizing that the artificial horizon shows that you're flying straight and level.

Coming in for landing!

One flight that's also behind me is the classic "Turku-Tampere" flight, which is the traditional way of flying that mandatory flight to controlled aerodromes that's in the PPL syllabus. The flight planning for this trip took almost three times as much time compared to the last cross-country flight we did to Hyvinkää and Lahti. I had to plan three flights: From Malmi to Turku, from there to Tampere and then back to Malmi. In addition, this was the first time I had to plan a route using flight levels (FL75) so some time was consumed in counting Top of Climb and Top of Descent -points.

Me flying the Charlie Alfa Papa, another successful landing completed!

Something funny happened to me the day before as I forgot to check our crew web in the afternoon, noticing the information about a cross-country flight late in the evening therefore having no time to plan the flight. So I woke up at two'o'clock in order to be at the airport at three in the morning. Planning takes time and I didn't want the flight to be cancelled. Actually it was quite epic to be at school in complete darkness, doing pre-flight checks with a flashlight...