I had a flight in the pouring rain and it felt wrong!
Although we’re always under the most extreme IFR conditions in the sim, flying
into it in real life takes guts. The rain was obscuring the runway centreline
and getting stuck behind the square of anti-icing the windscreen has. After
take-off we broke into the cloud, it was solid white all around, just like in
the sim. At this point I was laughing from pure excitement, it was so different
than any flying I’d done before. Really exciting though and you get an amazing
view at the top when you break into the clear skies above. Who needs to see the
ground anyway?
After what felt like 100 sims learning how to do ILS and
NDBs, recapping holds which are a bit more complicated than those we did in
America and getting familiar with check-lists and cockpit set ups we were ready
to start practising full routes. The first route I did in the sim was to
Coventry; notorious for being the shortest route and having a tricky missed
approach, if you can handle Coventry you can handle any of the routes (I mean just look at their missed approach!)
I ended up messing up in the sim and turning the wrong way
in the missed approach, “busting” Birmingham’s airspace and hoping I don’t do
something like that in a real flight.
The basic profile was the same every flight, you’d flight to
a different airfield; the closest being Coventry and the furthest being
Bournemouth. You’d do a precision or a non-precision approach, then have an
“engine failure” and have to divert, sometimes returning to Oxford, sometimes
another airfield first to do a procedural approach. The way we did the flights
built up these aspects really well and we weren’t doing the full profiles until
the last couple of lessons before the test. There’s a lot more planning
involved and I always backseated Josh so we often had nearly full days at the
airport. My sim trace picture shows an ILS, all within limits the glideslope's good but I was oscillating on the localiser, you need only tiny rudder corrections to keep yourself central.
The flights could be scheduled for any time of day, meaning
I was lucky enough to get a full night flight in as my take off time was about
17:30. This was in the week leading up to bonfire night and was a route down to
Bournemouth to do an ILS before returning to Oxford. My instructor let me do
the flight without the instrument hood and the view of flying through London’s
airspace whilst fireworks were going off was absolutely incredible. I think of
the entire course that was my favourite flight, although being in darkness does
make reading the charts and approach briefing a little trickier but just having
a hand-held torch to use.
We had a break in our training, the UK was being hit by
multiple low pressure systems, so it was a pain going in and being told that
you weren’t flying because storm Barney or Desmond (their names are cute) means
the winds are out of limits. I had about 3 weeks of cancelled flights before
finally being scheduled for PT6, the last internal flight test and a practice
IR profile. I was so determined to get to fly that although the winds at
holding altitude were pretty strong and the crosswind was on the limit, I still
decided to go. What’s more, I had my favourite (not) route; Coventry. This one
is tricky because it’s so short giving little time to set up and do the
required checks in the cruise, you start getting the ATIS and giving a plate
brief in the climb out of Oxford. I was expecting radar vectors to the ILS but
once I started speaking to Coventry Approach I was told it would be procedural
and to take up the hold. This I was not expecting and needed time to think
about setting up the hold on my PFD and thinking through the procedure, the
examiner told me I was over the beacon now so I ended up with a very messy hold
entry and rushed procedure.
Battling the winds on the ILS was tough; it was so
bumpy from the winds that I had to fight the plane to keep it within
half-scale. I almost exceeded my altitude on the missed approach and we decided
to do the engine failure drill after I was established on the missed approach,
rather than on the initial go-around which is where we’d normally do it. It
felt like such a stressful ILS and I didn't have much hope that I’d passed at
this point. We continued the flight, engine failure drill and general handling
were fine despite the high winds and diverted back to Oxford. Again, I had to
enter the hold and do a procedure, my correction for the outbound of the hold
was nearly 90 degrees to compensate and my track in the procedure was all over
the place, meaning I couldn't begin descending until I was established within 5
degrees, this was really tough and I did start descending then went around into
a low level circuit due to the decreasing cloud base (all of this was
asymmetric). I went around on my first attempt to land as I was having
difficulties with the crosswind; the examiner said he’d give me one more go
before taking control. Luckily I landed the second attempt but it was tough.
I think this test was my worst flight to date; I didn't
enjoy it at all and felt like I was battling the plane rather than controlling
it. I partialled, surprisingly on the NDB and not the ILS which I felt didn't
go so well. I learnt a lot from this experience, mostly about my own wind
limits and to not be too eager to fly if conditions are marginal. I got some
great feedback though in the debrief and knew exactly what I needed to do for
my re-test, which would just be a departure and NDB at Oxford, about 20 minutes
of flight time. I still felt awful, it really knocks your confidence to have a
poor flight, especially this close to my real exam. My flight partner and
house mate were both really positive though and talked things over with me, that
helped and I love how everyone here understands and knows what you’re going
through.
The re-test was absolutely fine, I absolutely nailed the NDB
and the ILS is the part I'm worried about in the actual IR test.
Before the IR you also need to complete a VFR radio test
(haven’t flown VFR in a while…) and do a partial panel/unusual attitude
recovery sim. I passed both with flying colours and had one flight left with my
instructor before my IR. We decided to just practice an NDB and an ILS here at
Oxford as I was fine with the navigation, radio and entering controlled
airspace parts of the route. Most people fail on account of the ILS which takes
a lot of concentration and becomes more and more sensitive the closer you are
to the ground, so I was determined to show Alan I could do this. This also
ended up being a night flight but I really enjoy those and as a last flying
lesson it went really well...We touched down after the final approach which was
asymmetric and as we were on the landing roll my ‘live’ engine cut out,
thankfully we were already on the ground! That was fun to experience and Alan
said I took it “like a man”. I just glanced over and was like “Oh, the right
engine’s failed”. We taxied off the runway on one engine and then got it towed
over to maintenance. With the mission objectives all complete, Alan informed
Ops that I was ready for my IR.
