Friday 2 October 2015

An introduction to holds. Cross-country qualifier and PT4!


When you get to lesson AP64, you have an ‘introduction to holding’ brief and sim. It’s fair to say I felt completely lost and couldn't recall a thing about the hold entries we learnt in Air Law. Thankfully, Bryan had a few ways to make it simple and enough patience to go through it properly with me. It made a lot more sense actually flying it than it did studying it in ground school (I've found that with quite a few of the topics we learnt now). It did, however, take quite a while to figure out the type of entry I needed to use to get into the hold and I practised a lot of these questions with my house mate. For some reason I always guess ‘direct’, but I've gotten the hang of it now and can figure it out in a second using my house mates method of placing the CDI needle on the hold axis and just looking at where the tail is, as well as Lee’s POD method. Works every time! I also drew little diagrams to stick on my knee-board to use as reference. In Air Law we learnt 3 entries, there are 5 according to Oxford, I can see why but at the moment it just needs more to learn. 



The standards for PT4 are to get the holds within +/- 12 seconds of 3 minutes which is easy in null wind conditions but a little trickier if you have to correct for the wind. Luckily, we had lots of practice flights doing these and in real life it’s rarely calm, especially in the turbulent desert air. There are only two holds we do out here; Stanfield and Buckeye, we practice with them so it’s a bit of a head start for the PT and also gets us used to using the approach plates which, upon first glance, looks like a different language, with practice they do become easier to read though, I promise. The Casa Grande (Stanfield) approach is quite a simple one and the easiest way to do everything correctly is to brief the approach early and set up the cockpit beforehand so you only have to fly the plane (not fuss about setting minimums or frequencies last minute). Again, the RT takes a little getting used to but I'm a lot less nervous speaking now. 




The sims were always good fun and really good at getting used to the theory, briefing and plates with a few surprise emergencies thrown in and ‘moderate turbulence’ given by Bryan grabbing the back of my seat. He was due to take leave so decided he’d squeeze me and Josh in with quite a few flights that week to get us ready to take our test during his time off instead of having a long break. This meant more early starts and double lessons, which does get so tiring after a couple of days.


I also completed my Cross-country qualifier. This is a necessity for gaining a license, and includes a landing at Ryan then Goodyear before arriving back at Falcon, the trip is approximately 420nm and took 5 hours. The navigation is important and it’s important to stick with your due back time, however at this stage I knew the area so well it’s more a case of pointing the nose on my turning points and then relaxing, talking on the practice area frequency with my course mates and tuning in Disney FM on the ADF. I really enjoyed myself, though it was tiring and nearly unbearably hot in the cockpit; I was even starting to feel nostalgic that I didn't have many Archer flights remaining, I love how confident I felt with the plane, feeling I could do anything with it and it’s such a huge jump from how I felt only a few months before. I feel like a real pilot and I'm proud of myself.



PT4 time! I had a few days off  before the test but I felt pretty confident going into it, which was a first. I was with Amanda again and as I’d already flown with her before she gave me the option of Buckeye or Stanfield and said we could have a practice landing at one first before doing the assessed hold. I picked Buckeye for the hold as I preferred the circle-to-land approach and generally it tends to be a bit quieter (less radio for me!) than the Stanfield VOR which is always incredibly busy in the afternoon. I did the hold and approach to Stanfield pretty well, it was one of the best holds I’d ever flown so I was happy. 

We then didn't have time to get all the way over to Buckeye so created a GPS way point over Maricopa Mountain to simulate the Buckeye VOR and did the hold and approach over that instead. Maybe not the best idea as I got an up-draft from the thermal coming off the little mountain on every ‘inbound’ leg of the hold. On the whole it went pretty well; on the way back we did the Chandler arrival which I had to amend slightly to avoid traffic who thought they’d cut a corner on the approach. Not naming any names but I know exactly who it was and of course let them know back on the ground. Amanda was joking about it, saying they thought they could get away with it because there were two women flying.  The test couldn't have gone better, meaning I was finished with the Archer (apart from one last solo navigation) and ready to gain another engine and start my Seminole flying! I was also the first in my class to take PT4 so one up for the girls!

I had another few days off after that which felt so good to chill out and catch up on sleep from all the early mornings. Josh took his test the day after mine so we mostly stayed in, watched Sherlock and played Call of Duty, it’s too hot to even go and stay by the pool for too long and most other people were still in school.

As it was 4th of July which is a huge deal in America we were doing the most American thing possible and going to a Diamondbacks baseball game. We wore red, white and blue and decided we’d learn the national anthem so we could sing a long at the opening of the game. I’d been to a baseball game before in Chicago but this one was a lot more fun, probably due to the occasion (and the fact that I'm over 21 this time!). Diamondbacks won! After the game the stadium roof opened up and we could see the fireworks display over Phoenix, it was a great night and I was very glad I didn't have to get up early the next morning as Oskar did.





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