First (and second) IFR flight

I would love to be able to show you some photos of my first IFR flight. Something along the lines of clear blue skies above, surfing a layer of white fluffy cloud below. Unfortunately I can't do that. My first IFR flight was mostly spent at six thousand feet in the cloud and rain of New Zealand's winter.

We had eight simulator sessions over the last two weeks. This helped us to avoid the wind and the rain that has plagued most other courses of late. These were a good chance for us to get to grips with the much more involved and procedural techniques of flying under IFR.

It's a strange sense of relief emerging from cloud with the runway straight ahead of you, on descent profile with the ground visible for the first time in two hours. The aircraft we are learning to fly in have some very sophisticated pieces of equipment to aid with navigation during flight and following it's direction by use of the instruments is quite a challenge, especially when you now have no visual reference to fly on. It is quite easy to become disorientated and it happens surprisingly fast. So that said you imagine the sense of satisfaction I also felt when presented with Hamilton's wet runway ahead of me.

In complete contrast, my second IFR flight was full of fantastic views and a very bizarre moment of seeing snow in July. As we (EZMP02) are now quite pushed for time in which to compete our lessons before we go home next week, we are doing multiple flights a day. This means that two cadets and an instructor take an aircraft for the day and get as many lessons done as possible. For the most part of today the sky was clear and smooth. However the trip back from Napier had us flying through and above cloud, awarding us some spectacular shots of an altitude where the temperature was -7 degrees C. It was pretty cold to say the least. Here are a selection of photos from today's jaunt about New Zealand.

Departing Napier

Climbing above the mountains between Napier and Taupo

Snow capped mountains of the North Island

The view flying through cloud

Breaking through the top of the cloud

A sunny afternoon after all

Lake Taupo

Afternoon sun between cloud layers

I can no longer see where I'm going

It has been a busy week here in New Zealand. I have had six events in as many days, passing my first professional flight test, completing the first three IFR simulator sessions and fulfilling the night flying requirements of the MPL course.

At the end of our VFR flying training we have something called a Competency Assurance (CA). This is effectively a flight test equivalent to the first progress test that the guys and girls on the wings course have. The CA encompasses most of what we have been taught to date, including navigation, circuits and emergency procedures. It also means that the next time I get a chance to fly solo will be when I get round to taking it up as a hobby again at some point in the future.

At first night flying felt quite uncomfortable. Not being able to see any definition in the ground and being unable to see any of the mountains that surround Hamilton make it quite nerve racking. Once I got over that initial unease the rest of the night flying I have done has been great. During the first flight the instructor took us off for a bit of navigation towards Auckland to give us a feel for navigation in the dark, with just the urban lights of towns and cities that look exactly the same. This also included a trip to the Sky Tower in Auckland for a couple of orbits around the Southern Hemisphere's tallest building, before transiting Auckland's controlled airspace between a landing 737 and a 777 on approach, it's very bright landing light making it look as if it was bearing down on us.

Sky Tower and Auckland City by night (thanks Dean for the photo)

It's very exciting to move onto the next bit of the training and to start learning something new. As enjoyable as the nav flights were, there were a lot of them and most of us were very much looking forward to moving on. One of the best things about this next phase is that we are now not so restrained by NZ's wintery weather.

In the first three sim sessions we have been looking at flying holding patterns using radio navigation aids. All of this has been done in IMC (Instrument Meteorological Conditions) so I have no visual reference to fly to and have to spend the entire time looking at the instruments. It's suprisingly disorientating flying with no visual cues as the human body is very easily tricked into thinking that it is in a different position to the one it really is. This makes flying in cloud very difficult and dangerous. The flying itself is surprisingly straight forward in IFR, but there is just so much more to consider and so much more mental arithmetic that makes it all the more challenging. I like a challenge so roll on the IFR flights we have coming up before we go home.

First Solo

Although I have taken an aircraft to the skies on my own before, yesterday was the first time I flew a powered aircraft (a Cessna 172) solo, and the first solo of my professional aviation career. So quite a momentous occasion really.

At the start of the day I didn't think that I would get to do my solo as it was raining for most of the day and many people had had their flights cancelled, but after an hour or so of waiting around at the airport, the rain showers stopped and the cloud cleared enough for me to go up for my check flight. The check went really well and it was quite evident that everything had come together nicely. Radio calls are now not so daunting and my flying is significantly better than when I started three weeks ago. I wasn't at all nervous beforehand, but when the instructor got out and left me to it the realisation of having to do it all on my own without the metaphorical safety net (instructor) suddenly made me quite apprehensive. I suppose it didn't help that I had to wait a while for two Air New Zealand aircraft to land and depart. That is actually one of the cool things about learning to fly here in Hamilton is that we have to contend with commercial air traffic. It's great waiting at one of the runway holding points and have a Dash 8 Turboprop land or take-off right in front of you.
 

Taking off past an Air New Zealand Dash 8

It was a great experience but a little anticlimactic. Doing one circuit and being in the air for only a few minutes didn't really give the feeling of something special, and no congratulations from the tower like some of the others on the course received!

In the last couple of weeks a few of us also managed to get a trip to the control tower. This was a brilliant experience to get a feel for the air traffic controllers job and put a face to a voice. I also found that it helped with my confidence of making radio calls as they gave us some tips and made them feel friendlier, rather than just the people that tell you what to do.

So what is next? Well there are a few more solo circuit lessons before starting some navigation training. This inevitably means more time in the simulator and some more classroom based learning. But for now I'm off to the cadet function laid on by CTC to celebrate cadets achievements in the preceding few months.

First Flight

Hurrah! After seven months of being a trainee pilot, I have finally had a go in a real aircraft. It's been a very busy week, flying most days, including a trip to the nearest gliding club at Matamata.

Last weekend saw me take to the skies in one of CTC's Cessna 172's equipped with the rather nice and easy to use Garmin G1000 glass cockpit instrumentation system. The week before I completed the four simulator sessions. These were great fun with a chance for the instructors to put me to the test with some rather challenging scenarios. For example during my last session the instructor put me in a situation where I was completely lost and flying in cloud. This required a little bit of brain power to determine where I was using the instruments as well as keep control of the aircraft. All in a days work! There was a serious side to these sessions as well teaching us how to use the G1000, basic flying and general handling skills.

Since then I have flown three more times and had another simulator session to teach stall recovery techniques and some circuit practice. It has been great being back in the air. The scenery over New Zealand is fantastic with lots of rolling hills and mountains. During my first flight my instructor and I flew out to the North East of Hamilton via somewhere called Scotsman's valley, a very distinctive valley in the hills which you practically fly right through. In other flights we have been out to Raglan on the west coast providing views over Raglan harbour and Mt Karioi to the south.

Those of us with previous flying experience have found that it has helped a little with our learning but, predictably, it has been quite challenging so far. This style of accurate, airline type flying is very demanding. There are many different checks to be doing as every few minutes as well as navigating and contacting ATC (Air Traffic Control). The radio calls I find are what is making most difficult, especially as I haven't got used to the Maori place names yet. Some of them can be a real tongue twister.

Gliding in New Zealand is fantastic. It's autumn here and the weather is virtually better than summer back home. The gliding club at Matamata is located near a substantial ridge providing excellent ridge and wave soaring potential along with the thermals stronger than I have ever experienced before.

Here are a selection of photos from the past week of flying:

DA42 Simulator

Hamilton Airport

Kiwi countryside

Clearways. CTC accommodation

Climbing through a gap in the cloud

Flying in the gaps in the cloud

Sunny New Zealand from the air

Piako gliding club's PW6 with the ridge in the background

Kaimai-Mamaku Ridge

Wairere falls and the city of Tauranga behind on the east coast

Life in New Zealand

We have now been in New Zealand best part of two weeks, and its definitely easy to see the appeal of this place. Life seems so much more laid back and the people are really friendly. The scenery is pretty good too. Yesterday I wasn't rostered for any "events" (sim sessions, mass briefs, flying) so I went for a walk up one of the nearby mountains. This provided excellent views across North Island, as well as some much needed excercise.

The view from Mt Pirongia

It was nice to take the time to go and explore, as free time will be quite hard to come by over here due to quite a tight schedule. However my first lesson is coming up soon (this weekend hopefully) which I am really looking forward to. It has been best part of eight months since I last flew, so it will be great to get my hands on the controls again.

You may remember in my last post I mentioned doing some more exams. Well we all passed both the NZ PPL Air Law and NZ differences exams with ease. Having spent a week in the classroom learning these two subjects, guess what, more time in a classroom. We had two more days in the classroom for the first bunch of mass briefs. These are briefings preparing us for the next few flying lessons. The first ones were about general flying skills preparing us for what we are going to be learning during our first couple of lessons, which happen to be in the simulator this weekend. As the MPL (multi-crew pilot license) is taught differently to the traditional ATPL (airline transport pilot license), we spend four lessons in the simulator getting to grips with basic aircraft handling while learning how to use the Garmin 1000 glass cockpit instrument system, similar to what we will be using at an airline.

Living in the CTC accommodation over here is great. It has a really good communal feel about it, with spacious rooms, good facilities and barbeques at each block. So while the weather here has been very warm and sunny we have certainly made the most of cheap meat and barbeques.

Well that's it for the time being, I should go and read the training manual for tomorrow's lesson.

Arriving half way around the world

Arriving in New Zealand hasn't been the exciting journey that it was supposed to be. After thirty hours of traveling, via Dubai and Brisbane, I arrived in Auckland only to be told that my luggage had been left in Dubai. The journey itself with Emirates was very peaceful, very long and very tiring, but there were some fantastic views along the way. After much umming and ahhing about whether or not to have the fish (universally known as a bad choice when it comes to airline food) discovered that the salmon was in fact absolutely lovely.

Our carriage awaits

Sunrise somewhere over Iraq

Morning Rush Hour at Dubai Airport

The tallest building in the world

Somewhere over the Indian Ocean

Taking off from Brisbane for the final leg to Auckland

Remote Island in the Tasman Sea

Forty eight hours went by before my bags arrived in Hamilton (where the training with CTC is carried out) which put a downer on the whole first weekend really. I would have written this sooner, but my power cables were in my luggage! In a bid to try and forget my troubles and to start exploring this much acclaimed country, a few of us went to visit the renowned volcanic area of Rotorua. This small city, smelling terribly of sulphur from the bubbling mud pools and thermal springs is a rather quaint place, with a lake as clear as glass. The scenery on the drive there and back is simply stunning, and the whole place seems so friendly and laid back. Arriving here at the start of Autumn, we get very hot days with cool mornings and nights.

Living just up the road from Hamilton Airport in CTC's very nice accommodation, with sliding patio doors to each room and the sun shining so unlike back home in Britain, I can eat breakfast outside in the fresh morning air and look out onto the approach path for the airport.

A room with a view

Today we started the ten day long ground-school. As I passed all fourteen of my ATPL exams all I have to do is a New Zealand differences exam and a New Zealand Air law exam. This first week comprises sitting in a classroom studying for these two exams, though it is amazing to be here and able to see the aircraft that we will be flying in the coming months.

For now though, being thirteen hours ahead of the UK it is time for bed here, so I shall wish you all a good day.