Full Thr0ttle!

Winter wonderland... [EBAW - LFQQ - EBAW]

2011-12-19T22:24:00.008+01:00

At 05h30 this morning - a bit later I guess than it usually does in a commercial pilot's daily life looking into an early shift - my alarm clock snatched me out of a deep sleep. That went rather well.. since I had great plans for the day! Intentions: an IFR flight across the French border and back, where I would fly the first leg and a friend of mine the return trip. Since the prevailing winds on our flight planned flight levels were western to northwestern, the plan was to fly a south- resp. northbound track as to both having about the same crosswind conditions (read: fair part of both flying & paying half of the plane rental).

A quick check of weather and notams showed me no items that could turn this flight into a no-go. Besides tempo PROB30 SHSN with BKN0500 the weather at our departure & destination airports was very suitable and met the minima for my planned non precision approach.

Arriving in the hangar near sunrise - almost sliding over the apron covered with a layer of glazed frost - we found the plane to be insufficiently fueled for the flight. So after the walkaround & startup, we carefully taxied to the fuel station. And care was needed since even Antwerp Ground warned us for "very slippery conditions on the movement area".

About 45' later with flight plans filed & confirmed, clearance copied, departure briefed, all items up to the "before takeoff checklist" completed, I was gently steering the DA42 to the Bravo 2 holding point at the 29'er end of the runway. With a Piper Archer on long final and us holding short I had more than time enough to skip through the before takeoff checklist, controlling both engines' ECU's, the controls, the electric elevator trim, the seatbelts still fastened & canopies closed. Cleared for takeoff I taxied the plane to the very beginning of the RWY (cherishing every extra meter of concrete available ;-))... pressure on the brakes, load 100%... releasing brakes... unleashing the beast... to be airborne a few seconds later. How grrrrreat! NIK2C departure and recleared for a direct to CIV VOR (thank you Brussels... any cost-conscious pilot liiiiikes shortcuts ;-)).
The same "hospitalité" on Lille Info with a "Daairect LimaLima and contact mie forrr zze dezzent". FL060, IAF to be entered @ 2000 feet... so that would require me to put the top of descent at about (3 * 4) NM = 12 DME [flying a cruise descent @ 145 kts with the DA42 I use to add another 2 NM]... so... at 14 DME. That's exactly where we received the clearance for our descent after asking so.

The kind question if we'd have preferred radar vectors for the ILS on RWY 26 however was responded with a "negative" from my side since I had put a "full procedure locator ILS RWY 26" with racetrack entry on my personal TO DO list. We were asked which was the latest ATIS we had received since that one warned for patches of ice on the runway in the touchdown zone. We had indeed received this ATIS and already discussed during the approach briefing to land the plane very smoothly, not applying brakes in the first RWY segment (an option since RWY 26 at Lille Lesquin is way long enough for a Twinstar to come to a stop without braking...) and perform a go around in case of any slip-behaviour at touchdown. However, conditions were way better than in Antwerp and I safely put us on the ground, slightly ahead of the planned landing time [at RyR they would play the Jihaaaa-tune but we just kept it silent ;-)].
After a taxiback during which airport services deiced the suspected part of runway, I was cleared for my request to perform another 2 lefthand circuit VFR approaches... as to obtain my 3 landings in this marvelous plane and be able to carry passengers if there may be some knocking on my door the next 3 months ;-). During the return leg I offered my services as pilot monitoring... but next to having an eye on the instruments and a couple of ears against the headset, I found some time to take pictures of Winter Wonderland below us... to be shared with you off course, dear Blog-visitors!

ps: if some of you would wonder how things are going concerning my career as a commercial pilot... well... stiiiiillllll looking for thé job while doing a job ;-). The fact that I am not the only one looking around and sending loads of applications is just a poor solace :-(.

Living an aviation-jobseeker's life

2011-09-30T21:09:00.015+02:00

Today I am celebrating my ATPL-licence's first birthday... it's quite a modest party however since so far I spent a lot of money into just... air!

I am still quite devoted to shiftleader-ing the logistics department @ Volvo's largest European Truck plant. The daily challenges in controlling the goods flow from delivery to line address, coaching 130 people, assisting in the building process of about 192 trucks a day all together are quite attractive and days lasting longer than 10h spent in the plant are no exception. However, staring at contrasting contrails in sunny skies at sunrise or bluesky evenings and often sitting behind the Piper Archer stick in the aeroclub as well as flying the magnificent DA42 G1000 Diamond TwinStar on IFR-trips from time to time... I dó realize that my real challenge, dream and aim still lies behind the stick!

But no dream to realize without a valid license off course! So, as mine was about to expire, last Tuesday I took place in the left seat of a DA42, next to a very wise and experienced examinator to demonstrate if still all goes well with my multi-engine and IFR abilities. About 100 minutes later, after a few interceptions & holdings at a local VOR as well as a vectored and full procedure ILS approach and a non-precision 2 NDB approach combined with a tastefull mix of simulated engine failures and recoveries followed by touch-and-goes, go arounds and finally a full stop landing... I was officially declared very-well-suited to maintain my license for another year ;-) and encouraged not to give up in proceeding my aviation-jobseeker's life.

Sometimes that's easier being said than done. However, if we may believe Boeing & the Chinese, 180 000 cockpit seats are to be reserved for pilots the coming decade. Hopefully not as well as we should have believed that a húúúge amount of captains would retire worldwide as from 2009, creating great opportunities for cadet pilots... actually leaving many of those [young] men without a job in 2011. Well... let's wait and see, enjoying an... aviation jobseeker's life! Although, sometimes, I do not understand why companies, requiring motivated and qualified pilots still seem to think they can only find those amongst these guys who have a flying experience of over 500, 1 000 or even more hours... minimum requirements that one, just being graduated from a flightschool, is far from able to comply with.

But sure, although not yet being payed for the job and often wondering why, I do try to enjoy beautifull panoramas from time to time such as the one seen from the left seat last Tuesday at sunset during a ferry flight to Antwerp [Belgium]. The "dark spot" you see portside is a vast, unbuilt piece of Belgium called "the Northsea" ;-)

So far, [not] so good...

2011-04-15T17:04:00.009+02:00

... it has been 7 months ago now since I proudly obtained my ATPL licence after a few years of saving money, hard work in combining the ATPL Integrated training, obtaining the licence in a 36 month timespan, with a fulltime job as a nightshift leader in Volvo's Truck plant here in Ghent. Then I experienced this small setback, losing my job due the credit crisis that hit many of us quite hard in 2010... But I managed to survive as a night auditor in a 4-star hotel, allowing me to still work the night & fly the day and... find a few hours of sleep in between ;-). Due lack of holiday & colleague absenteism it happened that I even had to attend a couple of my ATPL theory exams after a night on the job. Hard times! But amazingly how the dream keeps you going, alive & kicking!

And after that struggle there you find yourself in the middle of a huge crowd of very enthousiastic and young pilots looking for a job. Hoping ardently one of the many resumes sent gets spotted in between a pile of letters and gigabytes of emails. But so far, no positive news from the recruitment front. I did go to a job interview for a 6 month contract as a first officer with no option to extend... and a 21 000 Euros to be self funded [not really a problem if it would concern a good return on investment] but as the company could not even guarantee a minimum of hours on type and as I know how long it takes to earn that money back, I wisely decided not to sign an agreement.

Does it really mean there is no work at all for pilots? No! There still is a lot going on in the skies! But... it seems most of the companies are very cautious in the way they spend their budgets resulting in the recruitment of experienced people only. I didn't see many vacancies where the minimum experience required on jet engines was below 500 hours... and since most of us, except perhaps the rich guy that flies daddy's jet ;-), leave school with about 200 hours on the prop-counter only... I think it's all been said.

Am I too demanding? Well aaaahm... Am I willing to relocate for the job? No doubt, I ám! ... is there a way I may positively nod if a company would ask me to pay the bill of a type rating course in return for a decent contract? Yés again! Can I cope with hard working and heavy rosters? ... think you know the answer, don't you? Can I... ? Yes, I will, I can, I may, I ... in other words: I'm definitely not the most difficult person if it comes to human resources matters ;-).

Maybe the lack of experience or... an unmotivated spirit? Well, I definitely did not throw my stripes in a trash can the day after I obtained my licence... nor did I put my flightbag in a dark and dusty spot on the attic. I joined a flight club to enjoy real life flying with enthousiastic passengers during sunny weekends. And every flight CV that leaves my desk contains a resume & reference letters pointing out my eye for detail, capacities as a coach, a respected teammember, experience in decision making, ... and so much more.

So, wherever I could/can or saw/see an opportunity to get a foot on the doorstep of aviation, I tried to/will try. So far doors stay closed but I hope one day I find one open through which a can see that reaching hand. But in the meantime decisions have to be made to live a life, save some money, ... I am not the kind of person to sit and just watch, you see. That's why I've put those brackets around the "not" in subject... Things cán be good, it's just about how you focus ;-).

Since a few months I am back @ Volvo now as a shiftleader and I must say I really enjoy my job as I did before, coaching people (I count about 50 "heads" in my team now but it will soon most likely expand), the daily challenges in the supply chain, the sometimes unpredictable though fascinating human spirit, ... But one should keep his dream alive and since mine was, is and will be aviation... I keep myself fully ready for the day on which I receive that call! Nevertheless: next September I will have my recheck and next medical. Not that I expect "surprises" (although... you never know). But if I wouldn't have found a job by then, I would consider a flight instructor course and try to make some money out of my "commercial" pilot licence that way.

To be continued soon hopefully! It's all about to be spotted one day and being busy looking around in the meantime!

Multi Crew Coöperation...

2010-10-06T19:07:00.006+02:00

Since most airline companies require a student to prove jet flying skills in a multi-crew environment ánd to obtain the total amount of 115 hours of required instrument time for the frozen atpl licence, Ostend Air College schedules its students for a so called MCC-course (Multi Crew Coöperation).

I chose for the Flight Simulation Company @ Schiphol, the Netherlands. Besides MCC they also provide type ratings, medical examinations, crew training, ...
We were lucky to have Mr Jongbloed - a retired and véry experienced captain on Boeing 747 as well as a talented instructor - assigned to us for the 5-day training on B737NG (the famous Next Generation plane manufactured by Boeing).

As a jet flying is quite different from piloting a twin-prop DA42-size ;-)... the first session was focussed on plane and procedure familiarisation. Quite impressive how real-life it looks and feels in this full-motion simulator!

During the subsequent sessions, as we ought to be feeling home in the 737-cockpit, we focussed on correct procedure and checklist execution during the different phases of flight... from "dark-cockpit" entrance up to full-stop landing at destination.

I was impressed how smooth it feels to steer a plane that large and how stable it behaves even during the failure of an engine and theoretically a 50% power loss. But as I said, the aim of this course was "multi-crew" coöperation, so focus on how 2 persons together could turn the high workload in a cockpit into an achievable task. That is why each flight we were assigned a role as pilot flying or pilot monitoring, where the pilot flying would be able to focus on flying the plane while the pilot monitoring would support the latter in "monitoring" primary flight parameters as well as secondary indications that could point to abnormal behaviour of an engine or imminent danger somewhere. There really is a lot to tell about the highly educational content of this course... but that would take me to write a way too long article on this blog, which I'd better save for the die-hard interested people somewhere behind a beer and a bar ;-). Fact is that many approaches, landings, engine failures and fires, rejected takeoffs, ... later, I was handed over the "Certificate of satisfactory completion of the MCC" and that I left the building with an even bigger admiration for those men and women that manage to safely pilot millions of passengers and tons of cargo through the air each day in a safe way. Al this made possible by constructively coöperating in the small but busy and sometimes unexpectedly stressfull cockpit environment! Can't almost wait to play a role in this challenging story.

With no doubt I would like to conclude this post with a special word of "Thank you very much!" to both father and son Jongbloed, who made the MCC course an unforgettable event in my pilot-career.

Graduated!

2010-09-14T01:40:00.000+02:00

... last weekend was very busy. Since yesterday I had my final exam before graduating, I had to perform 2 checkflights with the "real" Diamond 42 to allow my instructor to evaluate my skills and put stress on weak points eventually.

During the 3 hour flight we reviewed it all: from departure stalls, clean stalls, steep turns, one engine out circuits and landings, dead reckoning navigation and inflight diversion up to the IFR-work such as DME-arc, bearing and radial interceptions, NDB&VOR-holdings and IFR approaches both one engine out and all engines working. The verdict: fully ready and skilled for the exam!

So Monday September 13th 2010, 15h50... the big moment... engines soon running and off I went with the examiner right-seated. Off course I was a little nervous since a lot depended on passing for this exam, my future career! But I can't say at all that I was dying from stress. After all, I had done these things so many times, why would I be afraid to fail? Off course, to stay focussed and alert is to be part of good airmanship. As far as I could objectively judge myself, it felt like all things went smooth and fine. Happily after all my examiner shared the same feelings and declared me fully passed on the exam after engine shutdown about 2 hours later. What a relief, loads of stress tumbling off me. That put a brilliant crown on 3 years of hard work. And yet it is not finished, in fact... it's just beginning. Time to start the jobhunt... after which I hope to get back to you with good news!

I would like to end this chapter with a big "THANK YOU!" for all support received from my parents, sister, friends, employer(s) which supported my choice for a job above the clouds, ... and any body else who I may have forgotten. Thank you all!

Line Operational Flight Training (LOFT)

2010-09-05T22:02:00.000+02:00

The one but last part of the ab initio pilot practical course at OAC consists of a few missions to be flown on the DA42 simulator as if it were "operational" flights, which means in fact "as-real-as-it-gets flights" from one European hub to another. That means that, to fly it close to reality, we are asked to attend the sime session fully prepared with actual weather, notams, navlog and validated [but not filed] flightplan. Concerning the last item, I think they would go completely mad at Euroncontrol if they would also receive simulator flightplans ;-).

So, to get back to the item, over the last 2 weeks I flew a handful of missions during which I was confronted with things that may happen during a real flight. The aim is to see whether a student, being me in this case, can cope with high workload, sound decision making as well as correct usage of the emergencies and abnormals checklist, while maintaining safe control of the aircraft.

The flight which I best remember is that one from Toulouse (Blagnac) to Geneva (Cointrin), where a radio reporter took place in the back seat of the simulator for an "inflight" interview of my instructor and finally myself... after I landed the aircraft safely with a left engine fire (simulated off course ;-)).

Nice one also was the mission which took us on a flight from Barcelona (El Prat) to Nice - what's in a name ;-)... where a plane crashed on the runway at the moment I had passed the initial approach fix already. That off course resulted in a go around and diversion to... Cannes.

Quite a challenge was the flight from München (Germany) to Salzburg (Austria) with a loss of oilpressure on my right engine near destination and the resulting loss of engine on fully established ILS with published circle to land approach on the opposite runway.

I also did one from Brussels to Amsterdam and another one from Stansted to Rotterdam. Luckily after all we don't have to pay landing taxes in the sim ;-).

... and my final CPL/IR check is coming very near now, which means the story that started almost started 3 years from now is almost at its happy end. Fingers crossed for my exam next Monday!

Final countdown...

2010-08-16T18:36:00.004+02:00

Last months have been a busy blend of performing my job as a night auditor, spending hours and hours in my car towards the airport, flying one mission after the other with the Diamond 40, running my household-business as well as trying to find some time for a power-nap in between ;-). It seems that I will be getting my master-degree in Time Management this year, hehe...!

Yes, time has been flying and... so have I! Many of you may be interested what I have been doing between mean sea level and the highest flightlevel obtained so far (for your information: that was a FL090 on a CAVOK VFR-mission to Baden Baden airport [Germany, Black Forrest] last month). Well, let me explain to you...

Since I obtained my first stripes last April, disregarding a few VFR-timebuilding missions, I have been mainly focussing on IFR-flying since my previous post. It all started with tracking of VOR (VHF omni radial) and non-directional beacons, as well as bearing and radial interceptions on these beacons... of utmost importance as correct tracking and intercepting, in combination with good airmanship when it comes to pitch & power control, can with no doubt be called a keystone to succesfull instrument flying. But yet it happens that an airplane is not in correct configuration to start an approach (too high, not within the 30° offset limit from the initial approach fix [point where the feeder route ends and the approach procedure becomes effective], too high mass for landing, ...) or that the aerodrome is not yet ready to receive it (traffic congestion, CB overhead, ...). In such cases there is the option to fly a pattern in the air while the time passes by, time which is needed to configure the aircraft for an approach or time for the CB to pass by or time for the congestion to fade away or ...
There are 2 patterns to be distinguished... they have about the same appearance but are slightly different: at first there is the so called "holding [pattern]". That one is to be found regularly at or near the initial approach fix and allows the aircraft to reposition to fly the correct outbound radial or bearing from the initial approach fix as well as it serves as a holding (stack) where aircraft keep on circling untill they are cleared for their approach or their EAT (estimated approach time) is reached. Apart from this one will also find en-route holdings on airways, some exist for instance at the North-Atlantic crossings to admit aircraft on their destinated NAT track at a pre-determined time. The second pattern is named the "racetrack" and is intended to allow time and space to reconfigure into the approach setting. Where flying a holding pattern takes 4 minutes, a racetrack lasts longer due the extra time to be taken on the outbound course. But it happens that for instrument approaches one must fly a racetrack to intercept a glide slope or to be able to descend at a "human" rate ;-). This is the case in Calais for example where the procedure for the ILS on runway 24 entry happens via the holding but the procedure itself is flown via the racetrack.

At Ostend Air College a practice chapter of 19 missions with an average mission time of 2hrs aids you to turn all this theory into practice. It all takes a good start in the FNPTII DA42 simulator and soon the student finds itself behind the stick for the real stuff in the real airspace, mainly EBOS CTR & TMA.

After the 20th mission, which is a progress check, I found myself back in the simulator to fly full procedure standard intrument departures, standard arrivals and full procedure approaches on EBAW, EBOS, EBCI, EBFN, LFQQ, LFAC, EBBR... a whole bunch of airports, you see. During these missions I learned how correct time management and application of the next-step-methodology (think ahead aloud in other words) turns what seems to be a complicated approach into a tasty bite. Now that I manage (or should so) to correctly read and perform approach plates, got skilled into preparing and giving approach briefings all those tasty bits & pieces get together into IFR-missions from one aerodrome to another across or within Belgian borders.

Still ahead are a few multi engine sessions on the Diamond 42, line operational flight training in the DA42 simulator and final step: the multi crew conversion course next month. Well, final step... actually ánd hopefully it is just the beginning of a challenging and attractive career, that is what I aimed for at the start almost 3 years ago from now. Fingers crossed!

More into advanced IFR...

2010-06-01T05:18:00.007+02:00

Just a small update on the ATPL-practice for now. Since my last post about basic IFR, I have been flying several sessions in the simulator focussing on VOR (VHF Omnidirectional Range) and NDB (Non Directional Beacon) interception techniques as well as flying DME-arcs (polygone arc flying based on Distance Measuring Equipment input).

"Intercepting" stands for the technique of flying to or from a station on one of the 360 radials it is transmitting on. Depending on your location inbound or outbound from a transmitting station, a certain set of interception rules applies to fly the shortest distance and optimal angle to jump from an actual radial to a required radial. These rules do not take wind conditions into account so that's an extra point of focus during the training excercises. Keeping the wind in mind helps you to fly a compass heading which keeps you on the track to your destination.

Radionavigation is of uttermost importance during IFR flights. While, during a VFR flight one keeps a visual reference on terrain, this reference does far from exist when flying in instrument meteo conditions or a very high altitudes with bad visibility as well as on remote locations. The focus is no longer the outside reference but the inside - artificial - reference in the cockpit. That's also where the importance of IFR comes into the picture by flying safely onto a structure of airways, determined by NDB- or VOR-beacons or a combination of these as well as a fix (virtual point determined by VOR-radial and DME-distance from a beacon) - see inset. As it comes to flying there's always a start and a stop... and since it would be useless to fly an airway safely without a guaranteed safe departure or arrival, IFR aerodrome approaches and departures are as well designed around strategically setup radio navigation beacons which guide the IFR aircraft from its airway track down to the final approach point where an ILS (instrument landing system) guarantees a flawless runway approach both in the lateral and the vertical.

There is a lot to tell about this item. But as far as I have introduced it, you may have noticed that both the correct reading of cockpit radio navigation instruments as well as the accurate execution of an interception manoeuver is very important, even vital (... imagine what would happen if you make a wrong turn or get lost in reading your instruments in mountaineous terrain)!

Next part in the IFR-practice will be a focus on entering and maintaining holding patterns...

A single image tells more than a thousand words...

2010-05-30T00:34:00.001+02:00

... imagine what a movie can tell in that case ;-). Below a recording of a full stop landing I made on OAC's "home base", Ostend Airport. It's about 20h50 local time and we are on return from a time building mission to EBLG (Liège Bierset).

Timebuilding LFAT (Le Touquêt Paris Plâge)

2010-05-16T20:47:00.002+02:00

I have been quiiiiiite busy last time, so only a few minutes left to maintain my blog. But especially for the club of fellow visitors, I just have this small post...

Sunday May 16th I flew the leg Ostend - Le Touquêt with a co-student next to me. He grabbed a small cellphone with a superb camera and so was able to film the final approach & landing @ LFAT with me at the controls. Just sit back and relax...

... into IFR basics.

2010-05-05T05:03:00.005+02:00

As from now, with the PPL licence in my pocket, for the remainder of my training I will mainly be focussing on instrument flying aka IFR ("Instrument Flight Rules"). While during a VFR flight a pilot keeps a visual reference to terrain, during IFR one should be able to fly the plane safely and correctly solely based upon instrument input. So, suppose that weather conditions are as such that a large part of flight takes place in dense clouds, an IFR rated pilot should be able to steer the plane from A to B in a safe way & complying with ATC instructions.

When talking about flight instruments, 4 categories can be distinguished between which the pilot in command has to divide his/her scan flow...

The most important category are the control instruments. They consist of the engine load indicator and the attitude indicator, part of the display unit which we refer to as the AHRS (Attitude and Heading Reference System) on our Garmin1000 Glass Cockpit (check the inset, a view on the PFD of Garmin 1000). In case of AHRS-failure there is the artificial horizon backup we could still use.
It says that "power + attitude = performance", meaning that the input from engine and controls determines the plane's behaviour in climb, descent, level flight & bank or a combination of these. During the eye scan of the instrumentation, not less than 70%!!! of total time is devoted to the performance indicators!

A second group of instruments are the performance indicators, which consist of the speed tape, vertical speed indicator (VSI), turn & bank indicator, directional gyro component of the HSI & magnetic compass. These instruments are used to determine how the plane reacts on performance input and whether a change of performance input is needed to cope with the requested or desired manoeuver. For example: suppose a plane is required to descend at a rate of 500fpm to remain on the 3° glideslope of an ILS approach, the VSI would indicate if the plane performs well under the negative pitch angle visible on the attitude indicator.

Off course it would be difficult to get from A to B in dense clouds without directives on where to go. That is what the third category of instruments is meant for: the navigation instruments. They consist of the ADF, SSR, VOR-LOC, DME, GPS, ...

A fourth group are the engine instruments: fuel & oil indicators, temperature gauges, ... These are only checked let's say once every 10 minutes. They get very little attention and in case something abnormal happens, a pilot performing a correct instrument scan, keeping a close look at the control & performance instruments, would very quickly notice any abnormality... By the way, in a modern glass cockpit plane, the engine control unit would immediately display an appropriate warning or caution.

This week I have been and will be flying a handfull of basic IFR missions on the FNPT II simulator. No "real" flights but nevertheless very interesting sessions to learn to manage and master the correct scanflow technique while flying timed patterns and simulated radar-instructions. At the end of my second session today we even did a GCA ("Ground Controlled Approach"), where my instructor vectored me down untill I had a visual on final below the cloudbase at 300ft after a 60 minute flight in IMC. Amazing IFR!

PPL Exam passed!

2010-04-28T20:30:00.003+02:00

Today, April 28th will be known in my personal Aviation History as the day that I earned the first stripe on my shoulders in passing the PPL Exam! After exactly one hour and 48 minutes of flight during which I had to demonstrate about all skills that I had demonstrated during my progress check, diversion to overhead Amougies included, I shut down the engine... and received congratulations from the flight examinator for my "succesfull pass"! Yeah! I hope to find some time soon to get released one a plane of a nearby flight club to take the growing crowd of family, friends, blogreaders, supporters, ... up in the air! You will be noticed soon on how to book your flight ;-).

PPL Progress Check...

2010-04-26T10:45:00.001+02:00

As you can see things advance well these days... only 2 days after my third preparation flight to the PPL Exam, I had been scheduled for the PPL Progress Check already! The weather has been just fine for the better VFR-work and by the end of the week, if the forecasting is correct, weather conditions will get worse (as usual after fair & classy weather :-p).

... fine.. well... euhm... arriving at Ostend & left from under CAVOK skies overhead Ghent, it turned out that the METAR was right about the sea fog conditions over the coastline. Even the idea to leave Ostend TMA under IFR-conditions & perform the VFR-work in a fog free area overhead Flanders turned out to be impossible as the cloud base sank under 200 feet, the IFR minimums. With my PPL exam planned 2 days from now... I definitely wanted to get airborne within the next 48 hours to be able to do my PPL examination. Since the TAF forecast showed improvements for the 2nd half of the day & having a day off from work, I agreed with my instructor's proposal to remain standby. I was given priority on the plane and instruction... so as soon as the first sunrays would break through & cloud base would be high enough for a VFR departure, we would be leaving!

2 hours later... around 13h00 LT, CAVOK! The seafog had gone as fast a it appeared, chased away by strong sunrays. To be able to receive a green flight and consequently a "go" for my PPL exam, I had to show my skills to the instructor during flight. So we started with the local circuit manoeuvers: normal circuit & normal landing, a landing with simulated deffective flaps - which I flew a few knots to slow first time intending to land the plane with the stall horn on while the aim should have been a positive landing at higher speed, 70kts instead of 65. After that a precautionary circuit, followed by joining righthand downwind to leave Ostend TMA for the airwork. It all started with some compass turns at 2000 feet, fairly close to the Eegem antenna. During the compass turn one should take the magnetic compass instead of the AHRS for a heading reference, knowing that a compass in the northern hemisphere behaves sluggish in northerly turns & jumps lively over southern headings (also known as the "never see north always see south rule"). As the compass turns were ok, we proceeded to the next item: the stalls... climbing to 3 000 feet near Roeselare where OAC had a training area located, I demonstrated my skills to recover from a clean stall (without flaps) & approach stall (with flaps landing). When recovering from a stall, one should increase throttle to full asap & pitch the nose only a few degrees underneath the horizon (10° maximum), to recover within an altitude loss of 100 feet only. First time, I pitched to heavy... making my instructor tell me not to fly the DA40 Worldwar One style :-p. We lost 150 feet, which is a bit too much. So, retry, check... ok! After that I was asked to look down and close my eyes while my instructor would bring the plane in an unusual attitude, telling me to open my eyes, define the attitude and recover. He had brought the plane into a spiral dive, almost instinctively I grabbed the throttle, going idle... applied rudder opposite to the turn & pitched up untill the blue horizon became back visible above the darkish brown terrain on my AHRS. All this while focussing on the speed tape, keeping it below Va. Recovery was satisfactory.
Next item: steep turns! First turn was a lefthand steep turn at 1 500 feet where I lost track with my horizon (the real one, not the artificial) having the plane pitching down... and dropping my altitude to 1 350 feet. So, a retry was necessary and turned out to be succesfull. Afther that a righthand turn as steep as the lefthand of which entry, fixing & rollout happened just fine.

As the icing on the cake, a diversion practice couldn't be missing so close to Houthulst, I got the instruction to divert to the grass strip near Zuyenkerke. While my instructor took controls on a heading of 090 and an altitude of 1500 feet, I set out my track from a checkpoint north of Roeselare... heading 005, to be maintained and no noticeable wind correction needed since the wind was coming from 350. The instructor was satisfied about the heading & timing for the diversion track and ordered me to return to Ostend, tracking inbound Torhout. Fullstop landing & except for the small remark to keep focussed on the horizon during steep turns, I was cleared for the PPL Exam!

PPL Preparation flight III, a solo mission.

2010-04-26T05:33:00.000+02:00

Since both PPL Prep 1 & 2 missions had been labelled "green" (which means "pass" indeed), for the third one I was unleashed for a 1h30-solo mission, allowing me the time to practice and focus on the weak points.

As I had once that mission where I got lost during my first steps in overland navigation (happily ever after with an instructor willing to bring me back on track in the right seat) and a few nightmares about this misstep, I had put a short navigation, diversion excercise included, on my personal wishlist. Just to make sure that the nightmare would not become true during my examination...

So I prepared & flew the track Ostend - Torhout - Overboelare (since I know this sometimes is some of the FE's favourite DR-spot it meant to be a perfect occasion for a preliminary field inspection overhead location). Keeping in mind that "somewhere" enroute I would divert to Hamme (South-East of Ghent) or Kluizen (North-East of Ghent). The final destination had to be decided in flight to make it... indeed... "as real as it gets". Since I had only 1h30' to fly the mission, I knew before that I would be unable to stick to the plan... a diversion was inevitable, but wasn't that the intention? ;-)

After a procedure turn overhead Overboelare near Geraardsbergen, I set course to Aalter, according to the plotted track on my map. But guess what, at about 8 minutes from Aalter compulsory, I was about to enter "imagined IMC"... so had to divert to Hamme. I decided to break off the excercise after a succesfull pass overhead 2 crosscheck points to have some remaining HOBBS-time left for local circuit excercises at EBOS (Ostend). Arriving at Ostend TMA, I had 2 6-minute-units left on my HOBBS-counter, sufficient enough to perform a simulated forced landing overhead the airfield & a short circuit followed by full stop landing & taxiing to the apron, well in time to hand over the plane to the next student, scheduled for IFR-holding training @ EBKT.

Hole in the ashcloud & ppl preparation 2...

2010-04-25T01:46:00.001+02:00

With the ASHTAM still valid, but due to more favourable tropospheric conditions, the Belgium government released an updated NOTAM today, allowing VFR traffic to operate from controlled (and non-controlled) airfields provided that an airborne plane would not fly higher than 4 500 feet in VFR conditions. A perfect match with my flightplan, including some stall & incipient spin manoeuvers @ 3 500 feet as well as level navigation & dead reckoning cruising @ 2 000 feet.

With a GAMET forecasting a 5kts variable wind up to 3000 feet and the vast "blocking high" still "overhead" Europe it promised to be a very relaxing flight. And indeed: the Diamond performed as cutting through soft butter, very easy flying after trimout.
... although the slant visibility was very poor. Let's say the volcanic ashes may have been part of the cause... but I guess the major source will always be us, human polluters down there, pumping a lot of rubbish into the skies!

And about my flight: well, I had proposed the instructor that I would prepare a flight via the Poeke castle (a very beautifull castle in the neighbourhood of Aalter, East-Flanders, to Sint-Laureins, which is a small village near Eeklo, also located in East-Flanders (Belgium) near the Dutch border. With a request to surprise me en route with a dead reckoning navigation to a destination kept secret ("as real as it gets", you know... I keep remember how that was printed on the Microsoft Flight Simulator box that I used to open a lot during my younger years, yet a while ago :-p). And so he did... making a 360 overhead the Poeke castle, my instructor asked me to fly us to Langemark and pass overhead the WOI statute located on a roundabout in Poelkapelle. Langemark - Poelkapelle, that sounded West-Flemish to me so I asked my instructor to take controls and keep us level in a constant bank angle 360. That allowed me to comfortably "unfold" West-Flanders on my huge low air chart and start to look for the mark. Connecting present position & destination I decided to fly heading 250, corrected indeed for... exceptionally... no wind, using my prepared & plotted leg "Torhout-Poeke" as a time reference ruler. And off I went after informing Brussels about our diversion excercise. Passing overhead Roeselare, taking the ring & railway crossing north of Roeselare as a reference, the crosscheck showed we were perfectly on track. As I discovered that we were a little ahead of EET I decreased the engine load a little to speed down to a slightly-less-than-cruising-speed 108 knots. And finally the 360 over Langemark, next overhead the Poelkapelle statute, 11 minutes after start of diversion excercise. 11 minutes from Poeke to Poelkapelle, eat that! ;-)

Last things on my 1h30 VFR-flight wishlist were a few practices of incipient spin (the excercise where you slow the plane down untill it starts its stall-boogiewoogie and force it into a wing drop by stepping on the rudder... off course followed by the ailerons-neutral-rudder-opposite-turn recovery within 300 feet altitude dropping... unless you wanted it to end on the graveyard ;-)). Next there was a simulated engine failure above 1 500 feet, so while slowing the plane down to its 73kts best glide speed I had to recall the engine restart procedure... which I simulated to fail ;) as I definitely wanted to practice my in-the-field-landing-skills. I couldn't resist to a rectangle-darkish-green-freshly-grown-cattle-free field on my front righthand side. The approach was a success and we would certainly have made it if flight rules hadn't been there forbidding a pilot to descend to lower than 500 feet, unless in case of emergency. So, at 550 feet, throttle forward... engines first mumbling then roaring, off we went. To Torhout this time, direction EBOS CTR with a request for landing to Ostend Approach.

With the field in sight they let us switch over to the tower where I requested 1 touch and go and 1 full stop landing. The touch & go in flapless conditions, the full stop on short circuit... and since we were approaching on te 08, of which the holding is very close to the GA Apron... I requested my instructor to perform a simulated engine failure below 300 feet... landing just over threshold & saving fuel and hobbs time... you gotta be smart ;-).

Instructor was happy, student pilot was happy, flight was fantastic. Looking forward to the next mission... which will be a solo flight allowing to prepare for the real stuff coming very near now: the PPL examination! To be continued...

PPL preps... & first ASHTAM over Belgium!

2010-04-16T09:35:00.009+02:00

... next step will be obtaining my PPL-licence (aka single-stripe-on-the-shoulder ;-) ). To be well prepared for the examination, the OAC training schedule contains a few hours allowing the student pilot to focus on his/her weak points.

But to be able to focus on ones weak points, these have to be determined first. That is why during the first PPL prep (Private Pilot Licence exam preparation), a student pilot has to perform all manoeuvers & demonstrate his/her skills to fly the plane according to the book. That is what I did yesterday... but but but...

Oringinal plan was to set course to the castle of Poeke (near Aalter) & next to Sint-Laureins near Eeklo and the Dutch border since I had asked my instructor to focus on dead reckoning & lost-position plotting first. However mother nature decided differently. Since a few days a large and stable high pressure area has been extending over the Atlantic southwest of the UK bringing nice and fair weather to our area. Pérfect & very smooth training conditions if it were not the fact that the anticyclonic movement around this vast high pressure area is the perfect means to transport the Eyafjallajokul-volcanic-dust&stone-crap over large areas in Western Europe. Off course this cloud is as good as invisible and many many times thinner than at the location where it escapes from the volcano itself. But it is still there and apparently dangerous enough to cause damage to both propeller and turbine engines. That is why several European authorities (Finland, Danmark, Germany, Poland, Belgium, France, ...) as well as Eurocontrol have publised ASHTAM's (standardized message containing information to airmen about danger zones around erupting volcanoes). Since the dustcloud is covering a vertical area from groundlevel up to 35 000 feet (jetplane cruising altitude) that means nó flight can takeoff for the moment! ... that means total chaos! Thousands of people stuck on airports, pilots and planes grounded... and indeed: student pilots patiently waiting at home untill they get a message or phonecall to come over to the airport for their next mission ;-).

But I was one of the lucky students that had about a small hour left and was already sitting in a smoothly running Diamond 40 at holding FOX in Ostend before the ASHTAM became finally valid over Belgium! I agreed with my instructor to postpone the dead reckoning part over Flanders and to focus on the circuit training part instead. With one hour left, we had plenty of time left to fly some normal circuits, short circuits, a few simulated engine failures overhead the field. And apparently the weather gods had accepted my request for crosswind because they delivered a steady 12 kts from the north so I could focus on crosswind landing technique. We had fun, happy landings and last but not least: parked the plane safely and volcanic-dust-protected in the hangar afterwards.

For those that might be interested, I found this nice Skynews documentary showing a 737 being severely struck by volcanic dust (simulated off course & nice to see for worst-case-lovers ;-))...

ATPL(A) theory exams finished!

2010-04-14T19:24:00.000+02:00

I promised to get back to you once I had my final exam results... so here I am:

Flight Planning & Monitoring: 85,9%
Mass & Balance: 82,4%
General Navigation: 78,7%
Human Performance: 89,6%
Radio Navigation: 78,1%
Airframe / Systems / Powerplant: 77,5%
Instrumentation: 81,7%
IFR Communication: 100%
Meteorology: 93,7%
VFR Communication: 95,8%
Operational Procedures: 89,1%
Performance: 92,3%
Principles of Flight: 90,9%
Air Law: 100%

... and a grand total of 88,2%.

Back in the land of the living...

2010-04-04T16:26:00.004+02:00

Hi there

I didn't die in a car accident, nor did I crash my plane on a remote island. It's just that I have been very busy for quite a while in getting all thousands of pages of ATPL-theory in my head, combining this "hobby" with a fulltime job again. After I lost my Volvo-job due to the economic crisis which hit & will hit many of us, I managed to find a new challenge as night auditor in a ****-hotel in Ghent city centre. I changed my Volvo-teamleader-shirt&tie for the stylish outfit you see on the enclosed image. Apparently it seems that "uniform-jobs" keep attracting me :-). If one day I can add some golden stripes on my shoulders, that would be very nice off course...

Since I am neither the guy nor the specialist in learning questionbanks by heart, it really took any spare time left in my daily rushes to study over 3 000 pages of theory & prepare for the final ATPL(A) examination in Brussels, including liters of ink & meters of pencil making excercises, drawings, ... You should see my courses... they are só (ab)used :-). Except for one re-examination (Airlaw) that I will perform next Monday, I managed to succesfully pass for the remaining 13 subjects (which means scores between 78% and 100%). Once I have my final score, I will keep you posted. I was told that some companies refuse applicants that do not succeed for their examinations at once... which is a pity of course. But ok, if they are willing to take that guy succeeding due to just reading questionbank-books, let it be so then!

Next item on my agenda will be the PPL-examination & the remaining IFR and twin engine hours as well as the cross country dual flights awaiting to destinations across France, Germany and even the Channel Islands. I promise to take my camera with me on these and take some shots or make some small movies when I will be pilot-non-flying.

Although the time lasting has become short, I will be available any day as from now to spread my wings. After all having a job @ night is not bad at all!

Some friends keep asking me when I will be able to take them on a flight over the barn... well, as far as my agenda allows, I am planning to join a flight club in august/september. Anybody willing to make a trip over Flanders and beyond (and willing to participate in the plane-rent), be my guest!

150 nautical miles: EBOS - EBLG - EBAW - EBOS

2009-06-17T23:30:00.006+02:00

I was the lucky guy yesterday: splendid flying weather over Belgium while being planned for a flight... not just "a flight" but my biggest solo-adventure so far. According to OAC's training manual, a student needs to fly 3 "supervised solo" flights. Supervised means: pre flight briefing & preparations check by the instructor on duty as well as his approval signature in the student's logbook.

So, after instructor's approval and with his signature in my logbook, off I went. What makes this 3rd mission so special is that the student is allowed to pick 3 airports of free choice out of the following list: Kortrijk-Wevelgem, Deurne, Charleroi, Liège. Most of my colleagues fly EBAW & EBCI but... as we all fly to EBCI, EBKT & EBAW already during the preceding progress check and fixed airport solo nav's, the only "undiscovered field" is EBLG (Liège).

That would be slightly more than 150NM (almost 200NM on the counter) but... As one day there will be a flight where I will need to fly to an unfamiliar airport... I decided not to postpone this date and opt for Liège. I've never even visited Liège ... so, it was completely new to me. And I definitely wanted to end my day with that "yes-you-can"-feeling so... I went for it ;-).

Although and happily after all a good set of Jeppesen charts had made me mentally prepare for it ;-).

The Diamond 40 really surrounds its occupants with digital luxuary... including the moving map GPS on the MFD-panel, but this flight was intended to be a VFR-flight, so... except as a means of backup after checking my paper chart and outside reference points, I refuse to look at it. Sounds stupid perhaps... but what íf it fails and you have a lack of situationall awareness on a "V"FR-flight!

So, once past Torhout or outside Ostend TMA in other words, I headed for Mackel NDB on a pre-planned heading using the ADF as a reference, showing me that the expected drift was less than the actual drift, which urged me to correct a few degrees more to arrive overhead the beacon... Next: Tubize, passing a few miles west of Zottegem right on time (time tag 6' outbound Mackel) having a clear view on the railroad splitup, a checkpoint on my map. Still on track? Check! Overhead the railway station of Tubize time for a heading change to 081° inbound to the highway intersection between Wavre & Louvain-la-Neuve. All very close to Brussels CTR... so, I maintained a safe altitude of 1 200 feet in this area. With a clear view on the Waterloo statute, I asked Brussels Info for a frequency change to Beauvechain (EBBE) Approach since I had to cross their TMA but the operator told me the militaries would most probably already have left the field since it was close to 17h LT. Anyway, he asked me to give it a try and come back in case of no reply... which I had to. So I was cleared by Brussels Info to head for my next waypoint "Romeo", a few miles outside EBLG CTR. Once on track to Romeo, it was time for listening out the EBLG ATIS... 23R in use, QNH 1025, information Victor, wind 350, 10kts... owkey, crosswind landing. With everything noted I said goodbye to Brussels Info and hello to Liège Approach, confirming Victor & QNH and asking me to report when entering the CTR... which I did a few miles after Romeo, which is just outside the CTR. In the meantime I asked clearance to climb from my 1200ft to 1700ft as the field elevation of EBLG is 659ft and a circuit is flown at 1000ft AGL.

In fact entering the Liege CTR via this route is quite easy as it just requires flying along the right side of the higway. After my confirmation they asked me to enter righthand downwind of the 23R... which was piece of cake with the heading bug set on the runway heading and a clear visual on the field from my location at that time. As I would be joining righthand downwind in the middle, I did start my approach checklist already to be save the time to stay focussed on the field during the remaining downwind. On base I got clearance to land already. A crosswind landing indeed... but it went smooth (stick in the wind, opposite rudder correction). Next runway crossing clearance for 23L at intersection Charlie 2 and at Sierra 3 I was catched up by a tiny marshaller car with a huge "Follow Me"-LED display mounted on the roof. The guy drove that fast that I had to increase my taxi speed up to 22kts, which is 7kts over OAC taxi policy speed! But however, it was a friendly guy who even made some time to make the above picture ;-).

After completing my paperwork in Liège (logs, landing fee registration, ...) it was time to set course to EBAW via St-Truiden (with Brustem airfield as a great reference), then Aarschot & LIERA (compulsory near... Lier!) and finally via KONTI to lefthand downwind of runway 29. While Ostend-Liège took me about 1hr20' flight time, Antwerp soil was reached in only 43'! I won't bother you about how I got back to Ostend from Antwerp as I flew pretty much the same track as you can read about in my previous post.

So, I hope you enjoyed the story as much as I enjoyed this great flight for real. This was the last flight before a series of twin-engine trainings on the FNTP2 simulator are to take place. I guess the next stories will most probably be about those sim-sessions. See you!

EBOS - EBKT - EBAW - EBOS

2009-06-01T09:14:00.006+02:00

Time for an update! Yesterday, May 31st I flew my second solo navigation "triangle".
Although I left home with the intention to arrive at the airport wéll before my estimated off blocks time, I finally discovered that I was not the only one heading for the coast on this sunny Sunday. So, there I stood, completey traffic jammed,... stressing & heating up in my heavy uniform, in between all those light-clothed sea-freaks. You see, being a pilot requires sacrifice ;-).

But I arrived... júst in time, feeling happy that I had filed my flightplans for the 3 legs to be flown well in time at home. So, small stop at OAC to pick up my logbook (for the stamps) & training manual. Since I expected to need a refuel of my plane, for sure I requested a delay in my flight planned EOBT of 15 minutes. For the readers that don't know what "EOBT" stands for, well: "time at which the aircraft starts to move under its own power"... start of taxi in other words. Before leaving I had signed off my logbook by the supervising instructor and off I went... With runway 08 in use, which is very close to the general aviation apron of EBOS things went quick. 1 000 feet initially to Torhout, next the climb to 1 700 feet (a sunny Sunday is mostly a busy flying day for the general aviation business so I picked out a "quiet" level to stay as clear as possible from other traffic). And indeed... it was busy. The most remarkable encounter I had was that with a single seated glider plane near Tielt on my leg back from Antwerp.

From Torhout on I set course to November compulsory of EBKT closely watching the horizon while Moorsele was active. Overhead Izegem I switched frequency from Brussels Info to Kortrijk Radio to inform them about my entry pattern of the zone. Overhead the field I had a clear view on the "T" in the signal square which confirmed runway 06 in use ("fly into the T" as it says). After my procedure turn overhead, I reported joining lefthand downwind, performing my descent checklist and descending to circuit altitude. Then final, clearance to land... nice touch (as I say so myself but believe me despite no withnesses were on board ;-)), rollout, vacating the runway via Echo, park the plane on the very empty GA-parking, paperwork, short chat & METAR update in the tower, stamps aaaand... next leg!

After I had left the zone via November, I set course to Mackel NDB. Overhead the beacon inbound NIK VOR, mainly flying the heading towards the beacon without really tracking the VOR, however, I used it as a backup reference.
After having made my intentions clear to Brussels info and with their approval, I made a short diversion to Gent Zeehaven, performing a few low level orbits overhead my home. Since my sister lives near, she made some pictures, one of them attached to this post (just click once for a larger view). Overhead the city of Lokeren I reported my position and revised ETA at NIK, since I had put some time in the orbits, with a request to tune into Antwerpen Tower where I made my intentions clear to enter for fullstop landing via TANGO & RUPEL compulsory. I received clearance for this and was ordered to report overhead TANGO and once I got there they asked me to report overhead KONTI. Arriving at KONTI, with runway 11 in use at Antwerp, the tower asked my if I could join base directly... which I affirmed promptly as a matter of recovering my Ghentish-orbit-fuel ;-). With still 600 feet to descent - since I hadn't received descent instructions I was still on my entry altitude of 1 600 feet - I started my approach descent right after the turn to "long base". As I was about to arrive a little high on the 45° out FAP, I set flaps to landing somewhat earlier, so loosing the excess altitude at a slightly lower airspeed. As the wind at time of landing had turned even more cross and gusty overhere, this landing contained indeed the required ingredients for a crosswind-technique-demo-challenge ;-). After landing I was assigned to GA parking lot 21 by Antwerpen Ground. First I made myself comfortable on an airport terminal bench and filled my logbook and the aircraft log. Then I went to the navigation office to pay my visit to EBAW: 1 landing + 1 takeoff = 29 Euro's, you can buy a Ryanair ticket to Spain for that price!!! However, the person after the counter was a very friendly man and gave me 2 stamps in my logobook... however, he had a reason to: I am a loyal payer ;-).

From Antwerp it went back to Ostend where I found some time for a turn overhead my parents' home in Eksaarde and my grandparents' roof in Zaffelare... my grandfather waving at me was a véry tiny man from 1 700 feet distance away ;-). Indeed, I did a lot of level-turn practicing this time!

Half an hour later, I arrived safely on Ostend soil, satisfied as I was with again a great solo adventure on my never-to-forget-anymore-list!

Next post will most probably be about my 150 nautical miles trip to 3 airports of free choice ór my first twin-engine simulator session. Stay tuned!

My first solo crosscountry is a fact...

2009-04-28T10:52:00.008+02:00

First of all, sorry for having kept you waiting so long for an update. In fact, besides the fact that I have been unemployed over de last 3 months - finding a job that suits your second life as a student pilot is far from an easy thing in times of economical crisis - and that I have succesfully completed a few more school exams... nothing "big" happened.
So... I kept on gathering highlights in my blog-basket untill now, time to empty it... ;-)

After having lived in patience for exactly 2 months finally on April 11th there was a day where I had been planned ánd the weather was above VFR-minima. So, off I went for my first cross country solo ever, a flight from Ostend to Kortrijk-Wevelgem and back. Happily after all, having been out of the DA40 cockpit for about 8 weeks, I still managed to fly the plane ;-p...

In fact Ostend - Wevelgem is not thát big deal. Since Wevelgem is an uncontrolled field - however, there is a manned and wel equipped tower - all approaches to the field are flown via compulsory reporting points, after which you request to come overhead to read the signal square, located just behind the tower from about 1 500 feet over the field.

There was a little stress before leaving the planning office @ OAC, since I couldn't find the plane's keys. After a few calls airside, some kind instructor went looking for me and it appeared the day before a student had forgotten to remove the keys from the plane (safety?!)...

So, let me tell you about my flight: first off all, there were these WIP's (Works In Progress) at the Kilo taxiway in Ostend, that did not allow me to taxi all along to the Alpha holding, so I had to enter via Delta 1 and perform a little backtracking on the runway to extend my TORA (Takeoff Run Available) to a safe margin. Shortly after, having tuned in into 120.6, Ostend Approach frequency, I was on my way to Torhout executing my acknowledged request to climb to 2 000ft, which was my planned cruising altitude (allowing a safety margin just in case of the feared engine failure...). Overhead Torhout centre, I was cleared to squawk 7000 on my transponder and contact Brussels Information, which I did after having noted my time overhead and having made the compass turn to my precalculated heading. With the timer running and 8 minutes estimated enroute time to the november reporting point, I took the time to run through the performance parameter checks of the engine and set my second com to the Kortrijk Radio frequency. @ 4 minutes, position check: I had to come overhead the crossing of the channel, railway and highway near Izegem... which was the case. At that point I requested Brussels Info my frequency change to Kortrijk Radio where I requested to come overhead at 1500ft via November compulsory point, which was approved. Once overhead, I could see the single yellow bar in the signal square, which is a sign to perform your approach and circuit joining in a cautious way (something álways to take care for when approaching an uncontrolled aerodrome). Once well overhead, with runway 24 in use, I started my turn and approach descent towards the field to join lefthand downwind along the Leie, reporting that position off course and starting my approach checks. End of downwind... base... final... touch! I "escaped" the runway via holding Foxtrot (without performing the name-alike dance in my cockpit ;-)).

I first had to park my plane on the general aviation parking lot to discover how extremely wet my back was! Before you start pannicking: the highest half of it, not the lowest ;-). Stress I suppose and perhaps also the hot&humid ambient temperature that day? Whatever, the fresh breeze outside in the shade of the tower was doing só well! After having received the stamp-&-signature from the tower-official in my logbook, off I went again. I had filed my departure flight plan from Wevelgem with a direct to MACKEL to practice NDB-tracking (bracketing) which was no big deal with the wind in my tail ;-). Near the Eegem antenna I had a small helicopter on an opposite track, passing about 500ft below me. As that may have been usefull for other aircraft in the vicinity I reported this traffic to Brussels Info and they told me they were not aware of any aircraft in the vicinity. So, although it was not an RC-model... this helicopter appeared to fly in stealth mode ;-). As I was approaching Torhout at that time, I said goodbye to Brussels Info and thanked for their always kind coöp. About 10 minutes later, engine shutdown on Apron 3 and... mission accomplished (you know that part via Torhout already from previous posts, so I won't bother you any further ;-)).

Next time I hope to be able to tell you some more details about my second VFR cross country to Antwerp and Wevelgem... if I manage to get scheduled off course ;-).

Greetz!

Open Doors Day @ OAC 07/03/2009

2009-03-01T22:09:00.002+01:00

Hi all

Next Saturday, be welcome on the first open door day - out of 3 this year - being held by Ostend Air College in 2009.
I am on duty with a colleague of mine and part of our job will be showing the audience some basics in VFR flight planning in the operations room as well as our state of the art glass cockpit planes during a guided tour airside.

Dreaming of a career up in the skies? Don't just miss this day! - also check out www.o-a-c.be

Progress check!

2009-02-15T12:02:00.005+01:00

Well, on Thursday February 12th 2009 about 12.00 local time we left Ostend for the big adventure. The weather hadn't been that nice over the past few hours. Half an hour before take-off, Ostend was even hidden in a dense snowstorm... of melting snow happily. The low snow-CB was moving south-eastwards, which made us encounter with it again about 8 miles out of Torhout. But the Diamond was faster this time and after a small course correction Westwards, we could safely pass it at 2000 ft. Then there were these low clouds near Deinze that made me decide to descend to 1300 ft again to avoid flying in IMC, which certainly is not allowed for a VFR-student-pilot. Near Aalst, it appeared that Affligem also was hidden in a dark grey precipitation and so I announced Brussels Info that we would cut a corner and catch up with the 168 QDR of the AFI-VOR to proceed to Tubize. Off course my time and heading calculations on the paper plan didn't match no longer and we joined the track back slightly below Tubize, very near the prison of Ittres... which we overflew on track to my next waypoint, the Lion of Waterloo. Therefrom I set course to point Victor (a gaz bulb container easily recognizable from the air and almost on a 180° heading from the Waterloo statute), contacting Charleroi Approach in the meantime to report entering the CTR zone of the airport and my position. As we had a tailwind, I might probably have decided a bit earlier to join righthand downwind on runway 25 since we ended up a bit close on downwind. However, since I was number 2, my downwind leg was extended to give way to the other aircraft on lefthand downwind to land. Finally it was our turn and since we hadn't time left to actually land on the airport, I asked if I was allowed to perform a go around manoeuver, which I did after being cleared for that option. After that, I flew the pattern for leaving aircraft and over Nijvel I contacted Brussels Information again to report position and my intentions. A few minutes later, my instructor asked me to divert to Overboelare. Over..what? Oh yes, the glider field near Geraardsbergen. As I was heading to AFI VOR-DME, I was quite quickly able to plot my position. After checking the relative bearing to Overboelare, I decided the best option was to fly a 263 ° heading. Once established, I switched on the autopilot to save some minutes to double check for references on the ground. This was difficult as the area between Tubize and Geraardsbergen is quite uncrowded and monotomous seen from above. There was however a railway that we were enclosing. As I had my course on top, I was able to find out that this railway was heading straight to Geraardsbergen where it splits. The field of Overboelare is left of that split. So, I had a perfect landmark and confirmation that we would come exactly overhead. What a relief! Diversion excercise succeeded!

From there on we set course to Torhout and my instructor asked me to put the IMC-glasses on, a special set of glasses that prevent you from seeing any visual reference outside. The only thing you can see is the cockpit. With these glasses on my nose he made me do some level turns, climbs & descents based purely on instruments (since I couldn't see anything else ;)).

Close to Aalter, we set course to Torhout again, which we overflew to get to Diksmuide to demonstrate my simulated forced landing handling skills. We made 4 attempts and all of them were good! The verdict of my instructor was that I had passed for my solo-check. Quite a relief after a non-stop flight of 2hr46'! Next flights will be a series of solo navigations to several airports in Belgium.

I'll keep you informed about these adventure-milestones to come!

Pre-progress check VFR navigation...

2009-02-15T11:40:00.003+01:00

... about 2 months after the navigation-mishap, which lead to a "fail" on my progress check, last Thursday, February 12th 2009, I got my next chance to prove VFR navigation skills.

As almost 2 months had passed since my previous attempt, I had requested the planning office to schedule a refreshment flight just before... which we flew on Wednesday 11th. As this was a navigation almost entirely planned within the vast uncontrolled airspace over West-Flanders, that was quite a relaxed rehearsel for what had to come the day after... On Wednesday, we initially flew a pre-planned track from Ostend to Amougies, via Kortrijk. Once the procedure turn over Amougies was completed, my instructor made me track on the Chievres VOR station with the order not to cross the CTR boundary of that military airforce base. So, I just performed a quick DME (Distance Measuring Equipment, i.e. a technique based on RF receiving apparatus in the plane showing you the distance in nautical miles from the tuned station). All this to find out that we were a few miles north of Ath, on a safe distance from the CTR. Next we went to MAK NDB (non directional beacon near Deinze) to practice an NDB tracking. Finally we went close to Diksmuide to practice a few simulated forced landings... só difficult to pick a good emergency field. Oh yes, there are a lot of acres in Flanders, but taking all factors into account: optimal wind conditions ánd field status [landing on a muddy field would be suicide too!] ánd airplane position [depending on your altitude, with a defective engine... your range is large or can be very limited too, that's by the way why Mr Sullenberger had no other options than a Hudson ditching]. This gets a hard job to accomplish! However, out of 4 attempts 2 were satisfactory and off we went again to Ostend airport.

I felt good during this mission: communications went fine, practices were satisfactory, trackings were good, ... In short: I felt ready for the progress check next day and hoped for weather conditions above the minima so that we could complete the real progress check!

Some updates (as promised)

2009-01-28T19:18:00.002+01:00

Hi all

Not that I have been fully paralyzed over the last month-and-a-half... it's just the fact that nothing special happend that made it worth to post on my blog.

It's a fact that we just have had some very disgusting meteo-weeks. Since I still had to complete my NIGHT VFR chapter @ OAC doing mission 4-1-4, a solo mission containing 5 full-stop landings, together with my planner I was hoping for flyable weather all the time. So, after 5 unsuccesfull attempts, last Monday evening finally appeared to be ok for a good performance.
And off I went... with only a variable wind of about 3 knots, the weather was almost deadly silent. One could already notice upcoming fog that was predicted to torture us on Tuesday. But once up there I had a marvellous view on those cosy lights below... in between the checks on board off course ;). In order to save some engine running time, after the before flying my final circuit, I requested ánd received permission for a long landing, vacating via the FOX-taxiway @ EBOS, which is very close to our fleet hangar. It proved to be a suitable scene to perform a flapless landing with displaced threshold.

It was strange flying alone immediately after a 6-week-break, but once on board of the plane and certainly after an hour flying around the airport... it felt as a homecoming again ;).

Off course I haven't only stared at the weather all the time over the last few weeks. In between I have found the time to fully focus on my theoretical ATPL school-exams. Up to now I have completed 3 exams and all of them were succesfully... Although it is too early to cry victory, I hope I am allowed to state "so far so good".

Next post... let me think... will be about my VFR-mission n°2 to LFQQ I guess.

Keep up!

Study-time

2008-12-17T21:55:00.007+01:00

... a tough time has come right now. For the ones wondering what keeps me busy these days... Well, I am trying hard to get all theory-pieces together into my head in preparing for the ATPL-exam.

I sure will be flying again next year but for now I have decided not to put myself on the training schedule for a short while to stay focussed on the books.

I'll keep you all posted on my progress.
Don't forget to tune in from time to time ;-).

Greetz! - PiEtEr

Night VFR Progress Check

2008-11-26T22:09:00.004+01:00

... the last few weeks - besides getting lost during the day ;-) - I have also been busy in training my nightflying VFR-skills, such as a small overland excercise with diversion, defective cockpit lighting landings, deffective runway lighting landings, flapless & precision landings by night... and even a simulated engine failure in the darkness.

But finally, yesterday, I had a progress check by night, to check these skills. "By night", well... don't imagine me getting up 02.00 in the morning or so... "night" means: after sunset, which is 16.15 these autumn days.
The weather was spléndid... euhm... except that we had a heavy and full cross on the runway, very variable wind speeds and directions which even required a few tailwind landings. To make it even more attractive, the initial takeoff we found ourselves in the middle of a slush-storm (melting snow that is).

First part of the excercise was an overland trip to Wevelgem (EBKT), which I precalculated as a 7' time-leg from Torhout. In order not to get lost, I set my OBI (Omni Bearing Indicator) on the TORHOU-fix of the Garmin1000' embedded coördinates. "Are you sure we will get there that fast?", my instructor asked me. Yes, I was... I had well prepared for this excercise and the wind strength and direction were as expected. And indeed... top 7 minutes later, I made the procedure turn near Wevelgem airfield. "Nice timing!", he said and I was happy ;-).
We didn't go overhead since the runway lighting was switched on, which might have been a sign that they were expecting IFR traffic overthere. So it was safer for us to fly abeam at 1 400 feet, well above circuit height. About 4 miles inbound Torhout on a northerly course, I said goodbye to Brussels Info and contacted Ostend Approach switching to Ostend Tower with a visual on the field about 3 minutes later, where I announced that instead of a full stop landing I still had to do some Night VFR touch&go's. This was the second and perhaps most though part of the progress check due to these severe wind conditions.

We made another 5 landings practising all sorts of failures from flaps to lighting and 1 go-around (engine failure simulation excercise which was stopped just before I could prove a succesfull touchdown on remaining runway). Since the runway in use was on heading 260 and the wind was blowing 360 at a 17 knots velocity with gusts up to 22, the best thing to do was crabbing on final (flying nose windward but however in a straight line to the runway). Next landing stick into the wind-side and rudder opposite to keep the wing low on the side where the wind came from and the plane straight after landing. In smooth weather the plane's stall behaviour just before touchdown is very predictable but these gusts made it hard to trust the plane that far as I would in normal conditions so it happened twice that I landed the plane with very little positive pitch, almost landing on the trycicle as one would do during a precautionary landing.

However, after all my instructor was positively impressed and pulled the green card for this mission... which means that next time I am to fly solo circuits by night. Who knows, maybe at full moon again... that would be romantic! ;-)

Got lost during progress check... (not) m(a)y day!

2008-11-13T10:35:00.005+01:00

Just like it happens to other [trainee] pilots, it has overcome myself: getting LOST... and ending up with a red flight! Not that we crashed, no. Even though I was very well prepared for the flight Ostend-Charleroi [with diversion] - which my instructor confirmed during the debriefing - but perhaps I wasn't fit to fly or too nervous... I don't know the exact reason. As a matter of fact, I made a steering error while looking on my map between Gent and Aalst, on our way to turning point Affligem.

However, since AFI VOR was set on the CDI... after - what appeared in the debriefing afterwards [since my instructor had noted my actual flight path on his own map] - a nice collection of curves - :- - I found my way back. Next leg was outbound the AFI VOR but due to low clouds and a large antenna near Halle very close to the planned route, I had to leave my track again, where... just being in the middle of a badly timed position report to Brussels Information - I failed to note the time where we left the track so that I could't fly a perfect "Dog Leg" (60° turn out for 2 minutes followed by a 120° turn in for 2 minutes) to get both safely around the obstacle and back on the right track. So... due to a little help of the moving map GPS, I succeeded to get the plane back on the intended course after flying a 360 to gain some time to set things right... keeping a clear eye on the altimeter as we were flying in uncontrolled airspace, júst 100 feet (30 meters) below Brussels CTR.
Approaching Nijvel it was time to listen out the ATIS message on Charleroi Info, request the frequency change to Charleroi Approach at Brussels Information ánd request the clearance for a full stop landing. We were cleared to join righthand downwind runway 25 via Victor and Whiskey. Both compulsaries were flown - at last - with sufficient situational awareness from my side. Soon the field was in sight and a few seconds after joining downwind we were given priority to land as number 1 on runway 25. Charleroi Ground cleared us to the Papa 4 apron lot... and next: full stop, relief... I made it (hardly).

On the way back, near Ghent, my instructor made me perform a diversion to EBKT. However that was totally unplanned and not written on my map... this went nicely! After steering to a roughly calculated heading, I finally acted smartly enough to turn the autopilot on for a few minutes while setting out the correct course by use of my rulers and map. Since EBKT was closed for general aviation - like us - we just requested to fly through their airspace and leave via compulsory November, maintaining a safe altitude of 2000 feet. Near November, I calculated my new course to Torhout (about 340 degrees heading). 20 minutes and 1 simulated forced landing later, we touched down at EBOS.

Even though the return flight went a lot better than the first part... I admit myself that some extra practise is needed to fly the plane without nerves and more situational awareness than I just did. Once again I discovered that it is not just as easy as driving your car along the white painted lines on the highway... and since everything looks so similar from up there, getting lost is so damn easy.

However... better to get lost now than during a solo VFR mission!

Last working day!

2008-11-07T07:13:00.006+01:00

Although my employment contract with Volvo Europa Trucks still extends up to December 31st 2008, yesterday was kind of my last working day. Since I took the absolute minimum of days off this year and saved as much as possible of my holidays and overtime, I still have about six weeks of paid leave available... which I am about to grab with both hands right now to dive into my courses to prepare for block B of the ATPL-exams. Actually this means that I am on holiday now untill contract-end!

I must admit that I really had an enjoyable time being my own & 51 co-workers' boss during the past 12 months that I was running the logistics & technical maintenance department overnight in Volvo's truck plant overhere, which truly was a good reason to pay all my colleagues a pizza-bite and an alcohol-free drink... The only thing I wanted them to offer me in return was a souvenir-photograph, which I am happy to share with my blog-reading audience ;-).

EBOS - LFQQ "Next Step" practice...

2008-10-31T23:09:00.007+01:00

One week later than initially planned - due to bad VMC conditions - I was able to fly my first "busy international airport" mission to Lille Lesquin (LFQQ - what's in a name?!).

Since we would practice tracking VOR-beacons, the flightplan was filed as KOK - NOVEMBER (compulsory in Lille TMA), tracking KOK both in- and outbound (from Ostend and to November respectively). So, after takeoff and with clearance from EBOS Tower we soon found ourselves inbound QDR 330 of KOK VOR, contacting KOK radar close to Nieuwpoort with a position report. Overhead KOK, intercepting & reporting QDR 176 outbound, we found ourselves on a straight track to November which lays about 32 NM DME distance... a leg allowing me sufficient time to tune into Brussels Info and LEQ VOR on NAV2 [ánd... set COM1 standby frequency to Lille Approach, which I forgot as well as I forgot to note the time... damn... my "think-ahead-attitude" needed more practice and focus out there!]. However, the position reporting went much smoother than last time... some progress anyway!

Checking my map it still happens sometimes that I loose some altitude ánd intend to turn a few degrees off track. As a flightplan must be followed strictly to allow SAR (Search & Rescue) such "deviations" are not allowed. It is said that ones hand follows ones head and indeed... that ís true! The mistakes I made are typical VFR-starter mistakes according to what my instructor told me during the debriefing. So... as instructors know this, they fly eyes-on HSI, OBS-needle & attitude indicator too. My instructor learned me that good practice consists out of choosing a visual fix ahead between 2 visual markings and frequently check this fix during both instrument scanning & map reading. Ok time had come to tune into Lille ATIS to check the QNH, RWY in use and weather conditions in the vicinity of the field. The ATIS-tape was in the typical Fr-English (with lots of hair on ;-)).

Having forgotten to set my backup frequency to Lille Approach, I quickly did that after frequency change request to Brussels FIR and soon after I made contact with Lille APPR close to the TMA boundary near Comines (Komen) telling them that I was inbound NOVEMBER, 1500 ft. Eyes on inbound 130 on LEQ VOR it went straight to the airfield. As soon as I had a visual on LFQQ we were cleared to Lille Tower, asking us to join righthand downwind 26 abeam the tower. As I was on 1 500 feet QNH and the field elevation is about 200 feet AMSL, circuit joining altitude was about 1 200'. All this happened in quite easily understandable Fr-english. Since number one was just turning final at my end of downwind, I extended a little, being number two cleared on final. Lille Tower asked the landing plane in front of us to expedite runway vacation. How gentle, I thought... until I discovered the other plane which they cleared for takeoff. However, we received clearance to continue approach... which I could do with flaps landing and a low approach speed of 75 knots... saving us a go-around. After our own landing, which we had to expedite too due to traffic on final behind, we were handed over to Lille Ground which directed us kindly to parking stand Whiskey 1. Being of a slightly more international character as EBAW, landing fees cost me less here in Lille. Taxes included I payed "only" 14,60 Euro's.

Less than half an hour later, we were boarding the Diamond again for the track back to EBOS. Enroute I made a touch&go in Wevelgem where one of our instructors was by lucky accident volunteering in the tower that day... allowing us to exchange greetings on the Kortrijk Radio frequency ;-). Closing our flightplan at EBKT, we left the area via Whiskey, terminating another heavy but very instructive session in EBOS after some unusual attitude excercises.

[pictures above show LEQ VOR doppler antenna in close-up & the Lille TMA entry in blue and departure in yellow via NOVEMBER with the LEQ-station red-dotted]

VFR night flying - initial session

2008-10-18T16:56:00.001+02:00

... do you like the picture? I do! That is exactly what I saw yesterday night flying right hand circuits over the Northsea. Part of the excercise was performing the circuit training with failing cockpit lighting... can you imagine how romantic that was ;-).

After some normal circuits and touches on the 26, we did a few approaches with dimmed PAPI's, with all runway lighting shut off - which is literally like diving into a black hole - and a mix of flapless and precautionary landings. 1 hour and 30 minutes and 8 touches later, the romantic night view came to an end shutting down the engine on APRON 3. I am looking forward to the next night session which will be an overland trip to Kortrijk if I am not mistaken. In the meantime I have been planned for a VFR navigation to a "busy" airport: Tuesday next week we'll be heading for LFQQ (Lille "Lesquin", France). Stay tuned for the next blog item!

VFR to Antwerpen...

2008-10-16T20:00:00.000+02:00

Last week wasn't that much to be proud of, talking about the weather... at least, it seemed so untill Wednesday. But the gods seemed to be full of compassion with that nervous student down there and that way it happened that we took off in EBOS under a very scarsely scattered 3 500ft cloudbase only 45' after having filed the flightplans EBOS-EBAW & EBAW-EBOS. Then the usual climb out enroute to Torhout from where we directed to NIK VOR with a small correction lefthand to fight the 300°/25kts tailwind blowing us off-track. As it was a VFR-flight I had fully planned my flight based upon visual references, so I didn't know before what radio station we were going to track... but as Torhout-NIK converged my own track near Gent, I was able to fly very close to the spots I had marked on my VFR-chart. I "tried" to launch my first-time position report overhead Aalter to Brussels FIC... as I forgot my altitude & estimate, the operator finally received my data in 2 pieces.

Soon Molsbroeck nature reserve @ Lokeren [no-fly area GND -> 3 500'] was in sight far enough right of us to be safe of violating air law with our 2 000' cruising altitude. I quit the leg to NIK with a clear view on Tango [the Temse bridge over the Schelde] compulsory and thus requesting frequency change to Antwerpen Tower @ Brussels FIC, next to Rupel compulsory, Konti compulsory (no stop at IKEA this time ;-)) with the field in sight at my niner o'clock. After the field-in-sight report we were cleared to enter the circuit and thus descending to... 1 000', which is approx on our QNH altimeter a 1 040'. I was that focussed on getting to the field that I almost forgot my approach checklist... so quickquick: landing lights on, QNH's all set, flaps takeoff with already reduced speed... directly to flaps landing as the FAP is end of downwind in this close circuit (no noise abatement as we are used to in Ostend when flying the landside circuits). Afraid of sweeping away the cars on the Krijgsbaan with my wake turbulence :-)... I came in a bit high... but thanks to flaps landing, low speed and a steeper glide angle the PAPI's soon turned into the desired config and the OE-DBJ touched down smooooooothly on Antwerp soil. Antwerp Ground gave us the coördinates to stand 02 at general aviation. While my instructor ran away for an urgent sanitary stop, I went to NAV where some Joske-Vermeulen-speak-alike kindly robbed 17 Euro's cash money out of my poor wallet for the landing & takeoff taxes. A few seconds later I found myself at a table in the RAAC canteen where Mr Temmerman, my instructor on duty, debriefed the flight. The time we were finished our watches showed 17h CET already... so, time to leave as probably, we would already be arriving in Ostend after sunset... which makes us pay additional landing taxes... [the picture above shows about the entry circuit to EBAW that I flew this time...]

Job news...

2008-10-12T14:48:00.002+02:00

Last week my own boss's big boss showed up in the office latenight while I was doing some followup conversation with one of my men of the technical maintenance dept. ... if I had some time for a private talk? Sure, I had... He announced that, despite they were happy about my nightly appearance the last 11 months, my temporarely employment contract will not be prolongued. I am part of the 400 people required to leave the company to make it strong enough to survive the current "credit crisis". Actually that means that December 30th is my last working day in Volvo Trucks Oostakker... a job that I have been appreciating a lot! Hereunder you find a copy of the article out of the Belgian newspapers [a link to an English version can be found here: http://www.upi.com/Business_News/2008/09/30/Volvo_trucks_to_cut_1400_jobs/UPI-26201222777605/]:

400 tijdelijke banen bedreigd bij Volvo Trucks Gent DM update De Zweedse vrachtwagenbouwer Volvo Trucks vermindert zijn capaciteit. In Gent zijn 400 tijdelijke banen bedreigd. Tegen eind dit jaar sluit de nachtploeg.Bij de stopzetting van de tijdelijke nachtploeg en het aanpassen van het productievolume van de lijn voor middelzware vrachtwagens, zijn 400 arbeiders en bedienden betrokken. Een deel daarvan zal elders ingezet worden. "Van de mensen van de nachtploeg kunnen er naar een gewone ploeg verplaatst worden. De contracten van een aantal interims en tijdelijke krachten zullen stopgezet worden", legt Vera Bostijn van Volvo Trucks uit. Ook de productie van middelzware vrachtwagens wordt "in lijn gebracht met de huidige marktbehoefte", en ook daar zullen een aantal verschuivingen plaatsvinden. Maar hoeveel mensen effectief ontslagen worden, moet nog besproken worden.NachtploegenDoor de teruglopende vraag wil Volvo Trucks in totaal 1.400 banen schrappen in Gent en de Zweedse vestigingen van Goteborg en Umea. De directie gaat daarover onderhandelingen met de bonden beginnen. Er komt ook een kostenreductieplan om te anticiperen op de dalende vraag en de stijgende grondstofkosten. De voorbije jaren krikte Volvo Trucks de capaciteit geleidelijk op om te voldoen aan de stijgende vraag. Er werden onder meer nachtploegen in het leven geroepen, ook in Gent.Financiële onrustVolvo Trucks zegt dat de negatieve marktomstandigheden werden geaccentueerd door de onrust op de financiële markten, met financiële onrust en kredietbeperkingen tot gevolg. "De klanten zijn terughoudender in de vervanging van voertuigen en sommigen krijgen geen leningen om nieuwe vrachtwagens te financieren", aldus Volvo Trucks.Normaal niveauMet de vermindering van de capaciteit komt het productieniveau weer op normaal niveau. In Gent zijn 400 tijdelijken betrokken en de tijdelijke nachtploeg zal tegen eind dit jaar sluiten. Sociale onderhandelingen zijn volgens Patrick Mertens van de socialistische vakbond niet nodig omdat er bij het oprichten van de ploeg al duidelijke afspraken waren gemaakt. In Goteborg zal de avondploeg worden verminderd, waardoor 610 banen worden bedreigd. In Umea staan 370 banen op de tocht. Een kostenbesparingsplan zal worden doorgevoerd, aldus nog de Zweedse vrachtwagenbouwer. (belga/gb)

VFR navigation EBOS, EBAM, EBUL, EBOS...

2008-10-11T20:40:00.004+02:00

Last Thursday, I was planned for my second VFR-mission to fly the Ostend - Amougies - Ursel - Ostend triangle. On the map you will see it was not really a triangle as I have flown it in about 10 legs. I was a little nervous, let me explain to you why that happened...

Normally, when planning a VFR flight, after setting up your track on the low air chart of Belgium, there is a lot of writing to do on the navigation planning sheets. Apart from setting out your true course on the map, there is also the wind vector to take into account and... last but sure not least: the magnetic course after encalculating the course deviation and magnetic variation. As it's the compass being flown, this is requirement number 1 to have on your personal notes and map. Secondly and vital is the fuel calculation: what will the plane burn during this trip? Is the fuel burn normal during flight or do you suspect a fuel leak? Therefore one calculates its ground speed [= speed moving over the ground... which is faster in tailwind conditions than it is in headwind conditions]. Derived from speed is time on track... and as we know the fuel burning rate per time unit of our plane at a given speed finally it shows us the total fuel burn on track. All tracks added up give us the trip-fuel, which was about 24 litres for the 59' trip. Since the OE-DBJ still had over 80 litres in the tank, no need to panic about taxi-fuel, holding fuel, alternate fuel, contingency fuel, ...

Oh well.. why I did panic? Hmm... I have been writing an excel-macro which does pretty much of the calculations by itself. Instead of a 40' job, it's only 2 minutes work that way. But my macro-project is still in progress and I had been adding and changing a few things without saving. So, there I was in my home-planning-room about an hour before I should have left to Ostend, just woken up from my after-nightshift-quicksleep and preparing for a good breakfast... Everything was prepared: bag, chart ánd plot, notams, ... except my 2' excel-macro thing that had to run still. So, I felt relax, until I ran that excel macro and all tracks showed up with a 90 degree heading... so, apparently my excel-program was corrupted after moving around with some cells! And I didn't make a backup!!! Help!!! As quick as I could, grabbing my pooley, protractor, calculator & balpoint pen together, as well as the airtam for the altitude winds... I started putting my navigation log together manually. As soon as it was finished, it appeared to be time to jump into my pilot suit asap and low-fly to Ostend. The only thing left of my breakfast was the dream... so, the ones that saw me chewing like a horse on the E40... that was a dry piece of gingerbread. I was just in time for my mission and praying almost aloud that my calculations were correct. What a big relief it was to fly straight over Amougies (EBAM) about 5 tracks later and halfway down the track... my calculations were álmost perfect... although the 10' leg between Torhout and Kortrijk seemed to take only 8'... but I think that might have been due to the temporarely 125kts, slightly over the 110kts (calculated) cruise. Soon Aalter and Ursel (EBUL) were in sight and it felt quite familiar to me flying over the place again (ref. farewell party Ab Initio 9). From Ursel it went back to Aalter, than straight to Torhout, Gistel and for a straight arrival on lefthand base RWY 26, performing the new requirement to set flaps landing on FAP to perform a stabilized approach, there were, before, we set flaps LDG on final at 300 feet. And indeed, the approach was stable, the landing smooth.

The instructor was happy about my preparations and planning, which seemed to be pérfect - pffff... happily after all my brain-macro didn't crash - but also had some remarks also concerning the think ahead principle in performing the 4 T's (Time Check & set / Turn / Tune /Talk. Indeed, after leaving that almost automated circuit flying... it requires some adaptation to think ahead again... surely when Ostend Approach sends you the transponder code during a turn: what to do first... write down or forget? Must have been the stress but I was turning and talking simultaneously while keeping an eye on my compass, map on my knees, scrabbling on the kneeboard... but apparently I wasn't watching my altimeter, which had counted down to 1850 feet... below the 2000 feet track altitude off course. After all, that seem to be issues any beginner struggles with... however, something to keep in mind during the next VFR mission: Ostend - Antwerp (fullstop landing at EBAW) - Wevelgem (touch-and-go) - Ostend. As the track passes over Ghent, I will plan the turning point right over my own home ;-).

Farewell-party Ab Initio 9 Weekend...

2008-09-29T18:52:00.004+02:00

Although we wíll see eachother again a lot of times - I suppose - end of the theory course deserved a remarkable "farewell-party". So, we kept a good tradition in honour by surprising Bob Stevens, founder of A², the FTO taking care of our Ab Initio theory.

Last year he received quite a remarkable present: a unique piece of art in a photo frame. We couldn't do less this year, so I started thinking... and came to the idea of organising a flight trip to Le Touquet, France (LFAT), dinner and beach-walk included. Primary condition of course for this was CAVOK weather. The date was fixed on September 28th, planes and pilots were reserved, I personally booked the restaurant also and... meteo services predicted the most beautiful early-autumn day of the month. Quite superb conditions... but we ended up in a huge layer of haze, preventing any VFR departure from Ostend. Even the Jetair and Freebird flights from the Canaries & Turkey were diverted that morning.

And so it happened that we went for plan-B: a local dinner in Ostend harbour. And believe it or not... only a few hours later the sun broke through that layer of haze and a blue sky appeared. Since many of us wanted to fly we decided to do the 30 minute track from EBOS to EBUL, local coffee break included.

So, around 14.30 zulu off we went with the OO-NZV & OO-NZF in loose formation and enjoyed CAVOK panoramic views above late-afnternoon Flanders.

Bob, who joined us all day, was happily impressed by this surprise... so, in other words: mission succesfully completed!

ps: photo shows us in sunny Ursel with the blue Robin OO-NZV parked behind; more story-telling pic's can be found following the picasa-link on the right

VFR navigation to EBKT and back...

2008-09-27T21:25:00.002+02:00

After about 7 hours briefing in the past few weeks, I was planned on this CAVOK-Saturday for my first navigation flight!

A bit nervous of getting lost or having made a miscalculation in my chart plottings, I woke up several times tonight. But that wasn't all: due to a series of accidents on the E40 in the direction of the coast with over 10km of jams, I preferred to "divert" my car over West-Flanders' countryside instea of getting stuck. However, I got stuck a few times after slow moving tractors. So, I arrived júst in time at the airport to fly my mission... Happily after all, my instructor got a delay himself, so: no stress needed!

First of all we went through my preflight planning and plotting. Besides some small details on the chart plot, my instructor was satisfied with my preps and off we went! With the starting point of Gistel soon behind, we headed for the 2000 feet climb and confirmed "overhead Torhout" to Ostend Approach, part of the four T's: 1. Time Check 2. Turn 3. Tune (radios) and 4. Talk (to the radio operator). With the wind conditions of 10 kts at 2000 feet, I had pre-calculated a track time of 4 minutes between Gistel & Torhout and an 8 minutes track from Torhout to Kortrijk. Calculations very much seemed to cover reality as exactly 12'35" later, we were overhead Kortrijk, where I got the question if I could see Wevelgem airport? According to my map with us heading straight towards the Leie-river, it should have showed up at about 3 o'clock... which was indeed correct. What a relief to find out that we were really above Kortrijk ;-). I can imagine that some people get lost in the air sometimes: things all look pretty much the same out there, which is the reason why accurate checking is a necessity during VFR.

So, overhead Wevelgem airfield, I was asked to turn the plane to Roeselare... short map check... which should have been about 330 degrees compass heading. I did my next time check abeam the Roeselare-intersection of the E403 to estimate the arrival at Lichtervelde 15h44, or 13h44 zulu. Overthere I was asked to excercise some steep turns [45° bank!] and compass turns, applying the "never see north always see south"-rule for a timely escape of the turn.

After that it went back to EBOS... end of the very first VFR-navigation.
Next week and íf the Mr Weather allows us, I am scheduled for a VFR-flight to Amougies [EBAM] then to Ursel [EBUL]... which will certainly invoke more plotting- and stress ;-)... !

Visit open door days 15de Wing smaldeel @ Melsbroek

2008-09-14T18:55:00.003+02:00

Today we enjoyed a - rare - though amazingly beautiful late-summer's day on the Belgian Airforce tarmac @ Melsbroek. I have tried to summarize some of the most majestic moments in the Picasa-slideshow visible in the additionals section on the right... such as standing back to front with an F-16 ;-) or sitting in the cockpit of the royal Falcon as well as Queen Fabiola's favourite spot in the passenger lounge. All I can say is that our royals travel in a comfortable though modest way... see and look for yourself.

Greetz! - Pieter

Precautionary landing

2008-09-13T23:23:00.003+02:00

During the current set of training missions I will be focussing on precautionary landings. Some explanation...

Suppose, during a flight over a vast & desolate area, about 60 miles from your destination airport, you experience adversive weather... Severe icing on the wings makes your aircraft heavy and changes the lift profile of your wings in a negative sense. Or even worse... clear ice starts to form on your canopy and windshield and reduces visibility to nill!

Or, due to a mistake in fuel calculation you suddenly discover that your engine will run out before reaching destination.

In such circumstances, there is no better decision to take than saving both your own & passengers' lifes as well as much as possible of the aircraft.

A precautionary landing is characterised by a very low approach speed, very precise touchdown zone and a short ground roll. Before performing it an appropriate landing site must be chosen. From best to worse: highway road [not an option in Belgim], an evenly green field with cattle, field with small crops, freshly ploughed field, maze field, lake or open sea.

After a choice has been made, the field's condition is thoroughly examined during a series of circling flights. At last, the final circuit is started with a 600ft heigh crosswind leg. 45° out of the imaginary runway a 30° bank is made towards downwind. On downwind the descent checklist is executed and 45° out of the imaginary threshold a turn to final is initiated again with a 30° bank angle while loosing altitude. The turn is made with an idle engine.
Once established on final, flaps are moved into landing configuration and the approach speed is maintained on a 60 knots steady glidepath descent.

It is quite normal that during this manoeuvre the glide speed is that slow that the stall horn warns from time to time. As the speed is that slow, it's necessary to fly hands on the throttle to be able to intervene as soon as required.

I must say that, during my first few attempts to make a precautionary landing according to the book, I was that afraid of compacting the landing gear that droplets op cold sweat were all running over my back! But again... yes you know already... I survived! And so did the landing gear!

Theory finished... exam preparations started!

2008-09-06T08:00:00.000+02:00

Today, September 6th, exactly 51 weeks after the first lesson... we all put a full stop after the theoretical part of our ATPL(A).

It was exactly 45' past three in the afternoon when Nicolas, our teacher Flight Planning & Performance [parts 3 & 4] & Ryanair co-pilot, concluded the last lesson. With the new class (Ab Initio 10) starting September 13th... whát a lucky date... we gave them way in time.

It's now time to fully focus on the school & JAA examn preparation. I wish I were already half a year later if I observe the pile of papers still to get through before finishing my theory examn!

But I really can't say that the things we saw were extremely hard to imagine or impossible to study... however, it's just that huge amount of knowledge to pump into my small head.

Good thing is: I absolutely wánt to get there... may the force be with me!

Simulated forced landing...

2008-08-23T16:09:00.003+02:00

Thé prerequisite for performing a forced landing is having a QNH of minimum 1 500ft. Whichever altitude you have when obliged to perform a forced landing, the starting point of the forced landing procedure is 1 500 feet, the so called "high-key" point. In case you would be higher, altitude can be lost abeam the high-key by diving spiralwise.

So, when finally arriving high-key, just upwind and abeam the threshold - i.e. the intended landing spot - it is the aim to trim the aircraft for its best glide speed first (73kts in the Diamond) and then position the aircraft nose upwind.

As a simulated forced landing happens with a failing engine, during our excercices we set the throttle idle at this point and it is not to be moved anymore for the rest of the excercise. The plane will automatically commence the descent since there is a failing thrust-factor. At 1 200 feet, the downwind turn is initiated. If planned well, this is about 45° out of an imaginary vertical line through the threshold zone. During the downwind leg, the descent & approach checklists should be run through as far as they still are applicable, where I mean it would be useless to panic for low oilpressure while you are experiencing an engine failure. There is one thing we do not move, which is the flap setting. During a forced landing, flap use is delayed up to the last moment as flaps are used only to extend the float in case you see you won't make it up to your landing spot.

At an altitude of 800 feet, there is the so called "low-key" of the forced pattern, which is the spot where the base turn is initiated.

At 500 feet, overhead the so called "final-key", the plane is aligned with the final leg of the intended landing strip, which was the 26 in my case yesterday. At that moment one should concentrate on the PAPI-lighting on the runway. In case it shows 4 reds, undershooting, there will be no need to set flaps as the plane is too low already - i.e. "flapless landing". In that case a less steeper glide is flown, however néver decrease below the best-glide speed. Trim the plane for a 1-PAPI-white-descent and aim about 50 - 75 metres before the threshold, the point where you would start your flare. In that case a nice landing is assured.

I had the luck to be planned on an early morning flight in very stable, weak wind, non-gusty & no-crosswind conditions so, I was able to fly the procedures according to the book. In case of gusts or strong winds however, it is necessary to adapt leg and approach speeds accordingly. Would there be 14kts gusts, this would for example require us to increase the best glide speed with 7kts... asking a steeper pitch and thus also displaced key-points. My instructor told me that this chapter is somehow the nicest part of flying as it requires control of the plane up to the absolute limit and he was right... I really enjoyed this session, 2 more to go!

Simulated forced, flapless & precision landing...

2008-08-23T00:06:00.002+02:00

Hello all!

As I have completed my supervised solo traffic patterns, time to get on to the next item: emergencies. In fact this is just a rather small chapter since, what you do when experiencing an emergency requiring an asap landing is basically the same for any type of problem causing it (such as: engine fire, electrical fire, loss of oilpressure, loss of coolant, ...). However... I can imagine that setting down the Diamond in a field is far more easy than doing the same thing with a fully loaded wide-body jet.

Next to emergency landings, there is also what is called the "precautionary landing". As the term states, it's a precautious landing meaning that you land the aircraft in a field or on a quite piece of straight road or ... just to avoid bringing passengers, yourself and the plane in imminent danger. This can happen for example when flying in adverse weather conditions causing severe icing on your wings, prop blades or hood. Dense haze may also be a reason to terminate a VFR flight as soon as possible. In order to save your own life and that of your passengers, best thing you can do is make a 180°-turn towards better weather and try to reach an alternate airport or just land somewhere safely instead of ending up in a pair of high tension power cables...

In order to land safely in a meadow or on a road, a pilot should in that case first inspect the selected landing spot for suitability. This happens by circling around the landing spot with ever decreasing altitude while trying to observe any possible obstacle that would make the intended landing strip to be unsuitable. At about 600 feet above the field, the final downwind leg is flown. In this stage the plane is prepared for landing (approach and descent checklists are performed) and flown as slow as possible (75kts in the Diamond) as what follows is a precision landing where a pilot can not permit to float another 100 metres further over the touchdown area [a luxuary that we cán permit on the 3 kilometres runway @ EBOS ;-)].

Depending on what systems have failed, the conditions in which an emergency landing is made can also vary: suppose that you have an electrical failure and your flaps are operated by battery power (like in the Diamond and most other small planes), that would imply that you land flapless and under quite different aerodynamical conditions than when landing with flaps in landing configuration.

This is somehow the general explanation about why we make this kind of training excercises. I'll get back to you with some technical details soon...

2008-08-06T23:54:00.003+02:00

... and yet another picutre, showing you how the OE-KVK is made for a perfect fit ;-).

Just behind you can see the pre-historic "hangars" where we store the planes for the night.

As I had the last flight ánd it was a solo [my instructor was supervising landside], towing the plane inside was up to me alone.

Unlike driving a car into a garage, this is a manual pushing job... and I guess I don't have to make a picture how much sweat this cost me on a hot and humid day of this kind (33° in the sun).

Flyin' Solo

2008-08-06T23:38:00.010+02:00

Long time no speak ;-). Some of you may have wondered what happened after my first solo,

described below. Well, I did not crash nor did I need to fight myself out of an accident-coma the last few weeks. I just kept on flying... solo. A quick count shows that meanwhile I have passed about 4 hours alone in the cockpit, performing around 20 touch and go's, about 6 go-arounds and around 6 full-stop-landings.

You may think: let this guy here tell what he wants... but does he really fly in fact? Or is this just a matter of playing blufpoker? Well, for the last few ones hesitating, I found some person near the flight hangar today willing to shoot some digital stills from me at my "desk" just after the engine shutdown of my 214H-mission... (hint: click the image to have it shown up larger, so you can check any detail in the cockpit if you like).

Ok... right: literally spoken I am not flying at that moment. For the die-hard non-believers... I will ever post a YouTube movie of some flight-recording, ok? ;-)

First solo! Champaign?! ... or rather chicken-pie-coca-cola?!

2008-07-23T12:54:00.006+02:00

... it had to happen one time, but I didn't expect it to happen thát fast actually, however: on July 22nd 2008, I signed my first very own solo-entry in the logbook ;-)!

First there was a progress check, where I had to show mastering the capabilities of flying normal circuits and counteracting emergencies the right way [we revised the engine failure on takeoff, downwind, displaced threshold landing, ...].

After this my instructor quit the plane as he judged that I was well prepared for my first solo now. My mission: fly about 2 circuits, one touch&go and one full stop landing.

... and off I went after running through the checklist items all alone and a few moments later, after departure clearance, I found myself running down the 26 with "fullthrottle" ;-).

How it felt up there whole alone? First thing I noticed was how the plane reacted so differently with an empty right seat, it somehow responded quicker or more directly to the controls input. Besides that it was indeed very quiet up there, except my own voice sometimes interrupting the silence to perform the required checks aloud ;-).

If I was nervous for that very first time? Hopefully that is not a bad sign, but in fact I can't say that I was nervous at all. In fact, I had been over all checks, communications, etc for a dozen of times. Perhaps I even dreamt about the circuit the night before. Why would I still worry or get nervous? Maybe the most captivating moment was the approach on final, experiencing a little fear factor of flying that plane into bits and pieces or nose into the surface due to an overdelayed flare ;-)... but none of that happened. Not even the second time after full stop landing and vacating via intersection Delta.

Exactly half an hour later on the HOBBS counter (i.e. the engine runtime counter), I shut down the engine and filled the aircraft logbook under a blue and sunny sky on the apron. Indeed, weather conditions were just fine. There wás a 10kt crosswind but since it was measured from direction 300, normal and smooth landing on 260 sure was no problem at all.

The ones who saw my headphone equipment already will have noticed the "Wise Guy"-mark above my left ear. Being wise is what I always hope to be when flying and driving, so... I brought an alcohol-free champaign-substitute to celebrate with my instructor after the debriefing.

That evening I still had to fetch my dad from "Brussels South" airport and we held a discrete after-party in Carestel Nivelles where I ordered - since I had to drive him home in a wisely manner - a chicken pie ("vol au vent") with a bottle of coca-cola ;-).

And next... the solo!

2008-07-14T23:39:00.005+02:00

Due to a flat tire on the plane where I was scheduled on, today's mission had been postponed from 1600 zulu to 1800 zulu (20h local time) on the "spare" Diamond (OE-KVK).

It was the first time that I had the last flight of the day. And what kind of a flight! When we were finally airborne, it was already about 20h30 and sunset is about 21h45 these days. Imagine a large and steady high pressure area, the nearest fronts many hundreds of kilometres away... clear skies, still air, 100% wonderfull view on Flanders' fields. Ain't it superb, that fantastic view from our panoramic office up there? Off course I can only tell you... but sure some of you reading this blog will once sit next to me in the cockpit, enjoying the same scene. Believe me: it's worth the patience you still need to have untill I obtain my licence.

As this mission was intended to refresh the circuit for a last time before the consolidation check, immediately followed by... the first solo, I used both my time for sightseeing and circuit annex communications review and practice.

4 touch-and-go's and a full-stop-landing later, my instructor's verdict sounded very hopefully to me: if next time, the weather is within the limits... be prepared for your first solo! Whow!

I must say... if I think about it, I am a bit nervous already. On the other hand, many thousands of pilots have preceded in finishing their first solo with magnae cum laude. At least bring that plane safely back is what I am going to try...

To be continued, for sure!

On the way to my first solo...

2008-07-13T14:33:00.005+02:00

As always my alarm clock went off waaaaay to early this morning! ... but opening up one eye and glazing at a clear and blue sky above the Ghent area, I knew that only 20 minutes later I would feel "fit to fly"! On my way to Ostend and in between listening to the Tour De France news on Sporza, I found some time to repeat the new checklist that we received for the Diamond as well as to skip through the different types of stall and ways to recover from it.

As I was second to fly today and the plane had already had its fuel drain checks, I thought to be ready in no time... untill I discovered very low oil after checking the level. It took me a while to walk all the distance to the hangar and back to get the refill bottles. But once that was done, I quickly did the remaining checks and in no time we were cleared for departure on the 26. Since today I was planned for the second session of spin & stall training, I had requested a climb to 3000 feet to right of De Haan above the sea. With blue skies above it, the coastline made me dream of holidays and a Mediterranean costa...! This year I will have to leave it to dreaming alone I fear. There is no time and money left as the flying business takes it all. But one day... I am sure that once I have my wings, I will become a Globetrotter!
So, my instructor asked me to perform a clean, approach and climb stall. If I remembered how to fly a spiral dive? Oh yes, no problem! With only half an hour on the counter and my instructor feeling confident about my skills, I was left some time to perform the manoeuvres of my own choice, "à la carte" as we use to say... I went for some right and left spiral dives... groooovy! ;-)

Time had passed quickly again so... time to tell Ostend Approach that excercising finished and those guys were to return to base. Just after reporting EBOS in sight, approach handed me over to tower that, on its turn, cleared me for a base turn after reporting point Ostend Harbour. As we and another plane were joining base at about the same time ánd I was declared number 2, we set full flaps to slowdown and create some more time and space between us and the preceding aircraft. I hadn't lost sufficient altitude during the cruise descent so apart from slowing us down the flap setting also helped us to loose excessive altitude.

Shortly after, crossing the threshold, slowing down... stick in the wind, rudder for the last small corrections, stall horn... a gentle touchdown on the 26... mission 127H finished! My instructor was happy and had NO remarks! ... he made me aware that in 2 hours from this mission, I will hopefully have my first solo flight noted in the logs! I am getting nervous already, although I know how it feels to fly a first solo in a plane from my past as a sailplaner at EZAC (http://www.ezac.nl/). This time I have a powerfull engine on board... so, unless it fails, no need to panic ;-).

Good luck with the weather!

2008-06-30T23:35:00.003+02:00

3rd time good time! This afternoon I finally took the chance to take-off in Ostend with CAVOK. Instructor on duty this time was Mr De Sutter.
As the Diamond's flight manual has recently changed, we need to apply the new version, so... today I got a small briefing in using it while I did the preflight checks. Not that it has changed a lot, but there sure are some important differences to keep an eye on. Mr De Sutter also took some extra time to explain some details about the COM's and the FMS, where I learned to set a 258° track on the 26 to focus on a GPS-guided approach for during the return to "base".

After leaving a righthand circuit on the 26, we headed over the Northsea along the coastline. This was the first time I flew both a circuit and a track above the Northsea!
As we were cleared for a 3000ft level at De Haan, I directed the plane that direction, trying to keep the nose on the horizon for a steady climb rate. Soon the time had come to observe and practice the incipient stall, deep stall, incipient spin and the high speed dive. Experiencing the negative and positive G's, it felt somehow like being in a rollercoaster.
Maybe I owe some of you a small explanation about the different kinds of stall and spin? Well, here it comes...

A stall in general happens as soon as the drag on your wing overcomes the lift effect. As soon as the drag wins the "fight", it causes that much turbulence on top of your wing that the suction effect of low pressurized air on the wing disappears. Hence the wing looses it's ability to keep the plane flying and the latter drops towards its center of gravity... the stall.

When counter acting an incipient stall, you don't really feel the buffetting effect on the wings as the stall horn warns you well in advance. So there is no big deal in getting your plane out of an incipient stall: slightly lower the nose before your plane does. Once the nose passes over the horizon line, apply full power on the throttle in a gentle move and out of the stall warning, re-establish your course altitude. The "deep stall" has exactly the same recovery procedure. The only difference here is that a pilot neglects the stall horn warning and keeps pulling the nose untill the aircraft starts shaking due to the off-hooking effect of lift (this is called "buffetting").
When forcing a plane into a stall it is important to leave the stick centered and fix since any down-movement of the aileron enlarges the angle of attack on a wing thus even increasing stall and leading to spinnings!

Concerning the incipient spin, it's induced much like deep stall, except that at the very moment of buffeting some extra force is applied to the rudder. Suppose that you apply left rudder, your plane would shift to the left, putting more of the right wing into the duct of the air. This wing will receive more lift than the left wing, which is than forced into stall first and suddenly drops. This makes your plane start to roll to the left while the nose steeply drops. At this moment it is very important to counteract immediately ánd correctly. After only 3 spinning turns, you get into a full uncontrollable spin which ends... on the earths surface, an end about which you can't speak your friends about anymore. Besides: 1 single turn makes you loose about 500 feet or more - which is why acroplanes always perform spin manoeuvres at sufficient hight... and which is why today we needed enough altitude! Back to the point now: how to get out of an incipient spin? Well, once the wing drops the plane starts to turn around its longitudinal axis and dives at the same time. First thing to do is stop the turning by applying rudder opposite to the turn until the plane stabilizes. Than pull the stick to pitch up and passing the horizon line... indeed: apply full power gently and bring the plane back to its cruising level. Just like the stall recovery.

A last item on today's flight menu was the spiral dive. Difference with stall and spin is that a spiral dive is not happening in low speed or stall conditions. To get into a spiral dive, fly the plane level at a 30% load (no cruise load since than we would to quickly reach overspeed limits). On a level and steady flight path, move stick left or right and release it. The plane starts rolling along its longitudinal axis again and the nose is diving. To recover: throttle idle and very gentle backward moving of the stick combined with sideward moving of the stick in the direction opposite of the turn. Gentlyness is top priority since the plane has increased speed up to or above its fly safe speed. Excessive steering would damage the controls.

That was that... after a very bumpy ride consisting of climbs, descents, stalls, ... the flight time had quickly passed away and we had to go back to base, which I did. It was kind of an easy approach as we were cleared for a straight long final to the 26, which I flew based upon the GPS track on the Garmin 1000. I came in with 2 papi's white and the 2 others red, correcting for some light gusty crosswind from overseas. According to my opinion I flared just a bit too early... but after all the runway touch was soft and no bouncing occured. Sure, finetuning is still needed in my flight skills... but if I may believe my instructors, this is something that has to grow untill it's "Fingerspitzengefühl".

I prepared the practice theory at home but the look and feel made it "as real as it gets", to end with that famous Microsoft Flight Simulator statement ;-).

Bad luck with the weather...

2008-06-28T08:28:00.007+02:00

For 2 subsequent days now I have been scheduled on the OE-KVK... and it has been cancelled twice. You will understand why if tell you that there was some spin and stall awareness training on the agenda.

This is how the METAR for EBOS reads at this very moment:

METAR EBOS 280550Z 24012KT 6000 BKN006 15/15 Q1018 NOSIG= .

In the last hour the cloudbase has lowered from 800 ft to 600ft. If the windspeed had only been half of what it is like now, we had even been in foggy conditions since temperature and dewpoint have become equal. And since there is a coldfront closing in - or better: has closed in already since the QNH is indicating an ambient pressure over 1013 hPa - I fear that what we see above our heads today is a huge nimbostratus layer. However, for those wanting to organise a barbeque tonight, this strong wind is advantageous: the faster it blows the front forward, the quicker we will be in the fair weather conditions behind. It just looks fantastic for the next few days.

So, I would say: come and see next Monday where my next flight is scheduled in hopefully... still better weather conditions.

Contract offer extended!

2008-06-23T07:13:00.005+02:00

Off the record I already knew it for some days... but now it's official: Volvo has decided to extend the period of my [temporarely] contract as a logistics dept. shiftleader with another six months!

My boss was happy and surprised how an ex-IT'er - only able to talk to computers and cope with system errors and extremely abstract logic - managed to run this nightly business on his own. To be honest... I wasn't that surprised. Since my first day in the company I had that feeling telling me: this is it! And untill today - almost 7 months later - I like this teamspirit and highly people oriented job very very very much. There was not a single day up to now that going to work felt like going to hell. I hope my boss reads this and offers me another 6 month extention :-p.

I must admit: it is not always easy to please everybody, but... so far I think we have realised some very nice progress on several terrains. There is still quite a long road to travel, but I believe in walking it step by step, the final aim will be reached. To be continued...

ps: picture was taken by surprise last night by one of the teamleaders under my lead during a "very serious" conversation as you can see. The camera it was taken with is normally intended to take photographs to attach to incident/accident reports... should I become superstitious right now?!

Finishing meteo, airlaw and IFR coms...

2008-06-22T03:08:00.006+02:00

In a few weeks theory is over @ OAC.
That was again noticeable yesterday when we put a full stop after yet another pair of courses.

It started in the morning with meteo... in fact, there was not much new stuff to be seen during this lesson. It was rather an occasion to ask Mr Bombeeck some last questions in class. Although I don't think I will have to expect serious problems in studying this course, perhaps some questions may raise when thoroughly revising the course, which is something I have started with already. After all: we have Willy's phone number and email-address ánd his proposal to contact him whenever there are additional questions. Soon the moment had come that we gave Willy a standing ovation for all his efforts put into making us wise in meteo-basics. I must confess that, since I got submerged into this meteo-business, I am looking above my head differently now. So, it certainly has been worth attending the course!

Usually I only manage to sleep a few hours on Fridaynight as I my body tends to remain in the Volvo-nightlife. And since Saturday noon I was awake but my stomach still asleep, I reduced my meal to a couple of small yoghurts while the others went to McDonalds to hunt for some cholesterol-damaging-burgers. And since Jenny from the Noordzee-vliegclub canteen is on holiday, there is no one to make us a small croque-monsieur these weeks... the only McDonald-alternative by the way, except maybe the over-budget Belair restaurant at the airport.

In the afternoon we saw the few remaining pages of Airlaw: runway marking laws, operational stuff. Much of this is related to the more detailed part of it in Aircraft Operations, a separate course. So, we went over it quite quickly since we were already familiar with this stuff.
And so it happened that - one session ahead on schedule - there came an end to the airlaw course. Applause again for Frank!

We ended quite smooth with a few pages of Communications for IFR flying. As there are only a few differences with VFR-flying communications many things are quite self-explaining. With only about 10 pages left for the next lesson COMI is also as well as completed.

My next flight is scheduled on Friday morning. It will be mission 6 of chapter 2 where I will perform stall- and spin-recoveries. As I will need a safe altitude to perform these, this will most likely imply that we will quit the circuit pattern to go to the manoeuvering area past Torhout... which is a longtime ago ;-).

Airborne again!

2008-06-20T02:47:00.004+02:00

Last Wednesday I was expected at Apron 3 again - after full month of inactivity due to the Diamond-story. I arrived a little later since the marshaller that was expected to drive me up there had to wait for leaving cargo-planes. I was happy since I was standing at the cargo-terminal in front of the airport building [close to the navigation office, airside off course]. Right in front of me, some 200 meters away, an Egyptair Airbus A300 was doing the engine startup and a little furter an Atlas cargo 747-400 performed likewise. There sure was some closeby spectacle to see ;-).

Instructor on duty was Mr Mullier. Although I had prepared at home for this flight, I noticed some small hesitation during the first circuit. As the wind came from a westerly direction and was quite gusty, I had to fly lefthand circuits on the 26. Since the wind was almost straight on the runway direction... thus being 95% not that much stick & rudder corrections were needed to land the plane. But the wind blowing that fast did require some drift correction by applying right rudder and stick on crosswind ánd calling out the descent-and-approach checklist at a higher rate of speech ;-) on downwind. Just before the second touch-and-go, on very short final, I noticed that I didn't extend the flaps from takeoff-mode into landing configuration. With less drag on my wings, this resulted in a very smooth flare and touchdown. It must have been the confirming call on final to Ostend Tower that made me forget to callout the 300 feet check aloud and thus skipping the flap extention. Except this stupidity it went wonderfully well after a 4.5 week break.

So I went home with a satisfied feeling and another green flight in my logs. And since I had only slept 4 hours after coming home from my fixed nightroster at Volvo Trucks that morning and getting up again to get to Ostend... I plunged into my bed for another small hour to prepare for the next nightshift. That's part of the sacrifice I guess ;-).

Kruger leaves Ostend...

2008-06-20T02:29:00.004+02:00

Last Saturday I was surprised to see a lot more 747-400's with the MK (Mike Kruger) tailregistration being parked on apron 1 at EBOS.

If, four days later, you see the same cargo-planes still at their same locations on the very same airport... there most probably is something very wrong.

And indeed: it seems that - due to the fuel-cost, which is way too high nowadays, Mike Kruger has decided to cease all activities on the 747-fleet. Since EBOS was an important hub to MK ánd MK was EBOS' major client, things aren't going that well these days! Sure to be continued...

The wiki-article about MK can be found overhere: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MK_Airlines.
If you're suffering from MK-nostalgia, Youtube will sure serve your needs showing a short run takeoff out of these good old days: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXwq8IRR39Q.

Jet propulsion illustrated...

2008-06-15T18:13:00.004+02:00

The following link was recently brought under my attention:
http://www.rolls-royce.com/education/schools/how_things_work/journey02/flash.html

It beautifully shows the journey of an air particle through a jet engine. Note how incoming air gets compressed and thus preheated by a series of rotor/stator levels. Since each level has a pressure building ratio of 1/2.5, which means 1 Mbar input = 2.5 Mbar output, air is seriously compressed before it gets mixed with fuel and detonated. At this level temperatures are reaching levels of almost 1 400°C!

Pay attention also to the change in alloys used for the rotor and engine construction, determined by the pressure, temperature, friction, ... it is confronted with in that particular part of the design.

... it can't be explained better to you than in this short movie. It seriously is a must-see for interested people.

A big "bravo" for Paula and Erwin...

2008-06-14T22:22:00.002+02:00

Today wasn't a course day as busy as usual... since for 2 of the 3 courses, there only were a few remaining pages to see.
This morning we finished the A-part of Aircraf Operations & Procedures. Since this was our teacher Erwin's last session for the ab initio 9 weekend-class ánd he had appeared to be a very well-prepared and helpfull person all the time, we gave him a big applause. I must say, Operations is far from the most attractive course to give... but he succeeded wonderwell in making it quite attractive to us!
In the late afternoon, just after Geert, teacher Aircraft Instruments / General Knowledge / Electricity and Engines, raced through another 130 pages of that massive course - just like he uses to do every session again ;-) - we quicky scanned over the remaining 20 pages of Human Performance & Limitations, concerning fatigue and the human nervous system.
After that it was time to thank Paula for all the efforts that she put in teaching us the human factor in flying.
The end is really near, you see! Remaining parts are a few chapters of Operations part B and the remainder of what Geert still needs to speed-tell us about electricity and engines. Oh yes, I almost forgot that we also have a remaining part of Flight Planning & Performance, concerning JAR-requirements and jet aircraft.

Our scheduler was able to estimate the end of the academic year on August 23... after which most of us will take a short break or vacation. I think I will just relax for a few days under a - hopefully - bright sun over my green garden [oh yeah... dream on!]. And almost immediately after that, I will most probably pick up my ascetic life again to master áll these 5 000+ pages of rules, formulas, theorems, laws, calculations, training notes, excercices, ... Not that I still need to study it all... most of it is already quite familiar... however, I still need to give it a safe place in my long term memory :-).

Back on track!

2008-06-13T23:10:00.003+02:00

Just to let you all know that the Diamonds are back on the base and ready to fly... I am scheduled on the OE-DBJ next week. The show must go on... after a 1 month break ;-).

Yessssss!

Stranded with Diamond...

2008-06-07T00:12:00.005+02:00

It's about 2 weeks now since I have flown the DA40 for the last time. This time it was not the weather or serious technical damage to our planes that made flying impossible.

But it has something to do with our planes anyway. More specific: there are some sad issues ongoing @ Thielert, the company delivering the Thielert-diesel engine for all Diamond planes. Less than a month ago, it was discovered that the Thielert-company had done some tricky things in their accountancy in 2004/2005.

A short article can be read on Luchtvaartnieuws.nl (it's in Dutch for those who are interested):
http://www.luchtvaartnieuws.nl/news/?id=25671

Since an aircraft needs regular maintenance and replacement of critical parts, there is a constant need of spare parts. Since we have 2 planes close to service, our CEO was quite unhappy in hearing that there would be a shortage in spare parts:
http://www.luchtvaartnieuws.nl/news/?id=26058

However, after all I received the message today that the gearbox part needed for the OE-DBJ & OE-KVK maintenance has finally arrived in the service centre at EBAW. That seems to confirm the statements made in the following article:
http://www.luchtvaartnieuws.nl/news/?id=26072

... so that means we will be flying again very soon. However, since our CEO has ordered an additional pair of brand new DA40 planes to extend the training fleet to 4 DA40 and 2 DA42, there still is some fear about the future. But marketing-wise it would be very stupid - loss of confidence, loss of investors, ... - and even maffia-like, so as good as unreal, of Diamond to drop al its +800 DA40/DA42 customers with a Thielert engine. Besides, very soon Diamond will be certifying it's own retro-fittable Diesel engine (http://www.luchtvaartnieuws.nl/news/?id=25878)... and that may perhaps take away all remaining worries.

Even if a worst-case scenario would become true, we still have a fleet of 2 Pipers and 3 Grob's available... however, without glass-cockpit. But I can live with that... besides, if we all end up as bush-flyers in the middle of Africa, I guess this non-glasscockpit experience will be more than welcome ;-).

Theory progress status...

2008-06-06T23:47:00.002+02:00

While reading all these stories about me flying around in EBOS TMA, some of you have wondered perhaps how I am doing with the theoretical part of the course.

Well, that huge stack of courses to go that I had on my desk last September has shrunken a lot these days! Less than a month ago we finished both Navigation and Radio Navigation as well as Aircraft Instrumentation & General Knowledge. Last week Mr Moens received a standing ovation for completing his Human Performance & Limitations course within time. Tomorrow morning our one but last lesson of Meteo is planned.

This means that only a few lessons of Airlaw are lasting as well as the biggest part of Operations & Procedures (JAR-stuff) ánd some chapters of Aircraft Engines & Electricity.

... no difficulties experienced so far to understand the course. However, I am wondering how I will ever be able to store this all again for the 2-day-exam in Brussels?! Miracles sometimes happen and this time, perhaps, I will need one.

Concerning the quality standard at A², I can hardly make a negative remark. In French they would say "chapeau" (hat off!) for the way Mr Stevens and his team manage to teach us all principles of flying. In the meantime I had the ability to cross-check the Oxford ATPL-course, which does contain many marvellous pictures, but sometimes lacks theoretical explanation. A² own course does not... and although it doesn't contain that much illustrations everywhere, it is somehow better. There is a course even better than ours, which is Nordian's... but I don't think there is a school in Belgium teaching these.

Recently I saw some blog-pictures of SFA students PROM8 making class excercises... out of the Jeppesen Airway manual, just as we do. It made me feel comfortable, where I mean: if you read on internet fora, it's easy to find comments of - jealous? - people that try to be negative about those "small, low-profilish FTO's", but... comparing myself now, I can't find many differences between OAC and let's say, SFA. And concerning smaller chances of employment: all 3 graduates of AI8W (our "PROM8" weekend-sessioners) have a job already.

Kalitta continued...

2008-06-03T06:49:00.004+02:00

If we may believe what the newspapers tell about the incident, it all had to do with the pilots having a dispute whether to continue takeoff or abort it.
I quoted the idea I heard from people more closely involved to the investigation in a previous post... but apparently this was not appreciated by some "anonymous" reader.
So, in order to make even the most critical individual happy, I leave it up to you to read the newspaper article - in Dutch by the way - and make your own decisions...

http://www.hbvl.be/nieuws/binnenland/default.asp?art={873F1720-8C10-47A3-AC12-5FD289F4B9F6}}

Kalitta Air N704CK crash @ EBBR

2008-05-30T18:03:00.003+02:00

Crashing an airplane into pieces is not something to be fond of... even if it is a small airplane.
Although I don't like plane crashes and I would never want to have one myself - flying the plane as safe as possible is the aim of any pilot I hope - I had some spectacular pictures mailed in today.

The newspapers tried to get as close as possible to the Kalitta wreckage, but you ain't see it this close yet: http://www.i-f-p.be/kalitta/kalitta.htm.

Notice how a "simple" runway overshoot turned this 30 year old Boeing 747 into a useless stack of iron. I hope the pilot knew what he did when he made the choice not to continue takeoff. If what they say about only one engine flaming during roll - a birdstrike maybe - I would have continued and landed the plane back again... but, indeed, who am I to decide since I was not flying it.

Greetz!

OAC holds its doors wide open...

2008-05-27T17:25:00.005+02:00

... next Saturday, May 31st, OAC sets its doors wide open again to welcome future pilots.
Anybody showing interest in a career in the air is welcome for a sneak peek.
Visitors will be allowed into our classrooms & close to the apron for having a look into the cockpits of our training fleet.

It was on such an open-day-occasion that I decided to choose for OAC last year. So, perhaps this time it will be your turn? ;-)

Some details:

Where? OAC, Nieuwpoortsesteenweg 945B, Ostend, Belgium

When? Saturday May 31st: 10 AM - 4 PM

Why to come? Share your worries and questions with us, the students, and our teachers, instructors, ...

... parents joining can always stop in Icarus next door for a loungy coffee-intermezzo ;-). See you all next Saturday!

Windy landings...

2008-05-19T19:38:00.004+02:00

Nothing "big" or really "amazing" happened during the last weeks. Where I was impressed about the liftoff or the panoramic view on Flanders from our cockpit only a month ago, I have been focussing on circuit flying the last few weeks... and also notice that even the most amazing things get routineous ;-). However, no panic... the person writing still loves flying!

In the meantime the workload in the cockpit has increased quite a bit: from good circuit flying up to the biggest part of radio communications with Ostend Tower, checklists... In the beginning this seems like an unclimbable mountain of work but gradually most of the things have become a good habit... and every flight reveals new hints and tips to pay attention to. And since I am not perfect - like most of human beings except Mr Nobody - I still make [stupid] errors... but this is part of the learning job. For example I am still struggling with readback of clearances from the Tower. Not everything they say is read back... and it seems all that simple to do on the ground... but it's a world of difference up there in the air in turbulent winds shaking you all way up and down, while keeping an eye on the altimeter to maintain on a 1 000 feet circuit altitude, keep your speed steady, do the lookout, scan the instruments from time to time, being blown away from the correct track by strong winds, ... Indeed, one would call that "multitasking" in the biggest sense of the word.

Flying a good circuit ends in a smooth landing off course... and in normal no-wind or full headwind conditions it is quite easy to execute... in fact, landing is a feeling based upon outside observations. Off course there is an eye to be kept on the speed, but knowing that a throttle is reduced to idle power, you are sure that the plane will land somehow. Most important is to focus on the outside: where is my touchdown zone, how high am I, based on what visual perception I will start my flare manoeuvre [which means flying level to slight nose up to get the last lift out of the wings... untill the plane stalls only some centimeters above the runway pavement, ... This part of training should - in the most favourable conditions - be executed in no-wind conditions. Since the last weeks I have never flown below a full crosswind speed of 15 knots and sometimes even gusty'er... I had to play it all at a higher skill-level from the first time on. Best thing to do in such conditions, although that seems to be weird as you would expect the lateral axis to be parallel with the runway, is to land the plane on it's wheel in the windward side first to compensate for the forces of the wind and thus avoid to make a roll on the runway concrete and turn the plane into a thousand pieces.

After all, I am still alive holding all pieces of my body where they belong, including the brains hopefully... and the Diamond is still perfectly flyable at the moment of writing... so far so good I would say!

I don't have much to say about the theoretical part of the course, except that it is still ongoing and that we're on schedule. If we keep the pace like we do now, the end may be estimated before the first week of September... as it was normally expected to be.

Stay tuned for some future news, there sure is!

Pieter

My garden...

2008-05-06T16:00:00.009+02:00

This is my garden, although... part of it. One that would read my profile will know that gardening is one the other things I really like besides flying the plane. The garden is of my own design, based on some ideas I stole with my eyes visiting many garden fairs over the years. Plantation, including lawn, the trees, flower beds (photo is yet to come), ... is all my own job. Since I did not have the "tools", after buying bluestone, I hired some fantastic professional to dig the pond and lay the terrace.

Testing that digital camera from previous post on my own now... I took some pictures of the terrace setup last weekend.

My little nephew and me...

2008-05-06T15:40:00.003+02:00

A few days ago my brother in law bought himself a new digital camera... a hightech pocket-size apparatus. I was one of the testing objects... in this occasion together with my little nephew attentively looking where the little bird would exactly occur ;-).

Touch & go's for traffic pattern practice...

2008-04-30T13:20:00.003+02:00

Hi there!

I just skipped a week of flying since the plane I was scheduled onto was in maintenance last week. Anyway... the day I was scheduled wasn't much flyable due to the bad weather conditions.

This wasn't much different yesterday... but since the plane was in top condition as well as my instructor and myself, we decided to give it a go. As this was a traffic pattern flying lesson whereas the max. pattern height to be reached for EBOS (Ostend Airport) is 1 000 feet above ground level (AGL), we didn't care a lot about the broken cloud base at 1 400 feet.

So, after towing the plane out of the hangar I did the regular checks and very soon after we were ready for takeoff at the 26 runway for a lefthand circuit training. As I am still in VFR-practice (VFR = Visual Flight Rules), any turning point to a pattern leg in the circuit is based on visual reference. For the Ostend area, when flying lefthand circuits from the 26 or a righthand circuit from the 08, it's quite obvious that the crosswind turn is started when climbing over the 500 feet barrier with no more runway available under the plane. The next reference is the channel passing through Leffinge right of which [for a lefthand circuit] is flown the downwind leg. With the Europa Tower at 90° to your left [again for a lefthand circuit], the baseleg turn is to be initiated.

Aim of the practice was to become more self-confident in doing the com's with Ostend Tower & Approach, which resulted in me doing the initial communication with the tower, request engine startup for my callsign, request taxi clearance & clearance for departure. So far, the readback was still done by my instructor. As part of the preflight checks, I also did the crew briefing this time, which went rather smoothly since I prepared well for this lesson ;-). Other aim off course was to get familiar with the traffic pattern and the actions to be taken while flying it... and last but not least: controlling the plane during takeoff and in the landing.

The start wasn't that nice since I gave too much rudder from the start already, causing the plane to divert from the centerline... happily ever after, my instructor reacted in time and set us back on track... and I had learned a lot already about gently applying rudder and gradually increasing rudder during the ground roll. Since there was a 15 knots crosswind component, stick had to be applied in the direction of the wind to avoid rolling the plane on the runway. Since the couterclockwise rotor torque forces intend to divert the plane to the left, a lot of right rudder had to be applied upon full performance of the screw.

My instructor also taught me the nice trick to say next steps aloud before actually reaching the level where they need to be applied... so, just after roll I saw the rotor performance was 100%, calling out "Power Available" and the HSI-needle was moving clockwise calling out "Speed Alive", next step "rotate at 59 knots", which.. a few seconds after, when reaching the rotation speed... I actually had to do, keeping the nose on horizon to acknowledge a climbing speed of 70 knots. Next step "at 200 feet, flaps up", now keeping the nose 1 finger more up above the horizon to reach the 75 knots climbing speed without flap extention... next step "at 500 feet landing lights off and turning left - crosswind - when no more runway available" (and after the lookout off course). On crosswind leg, climb was continued to 950 feet where - remembering previous lesson techniques - I started level off for 1 000 feet. Once on 1 000 feet, power setting was reduced to 50% load and 105 knots. After the turn to downwind leg - where I lost about 40 feet height... still need to keep my eyes on compensating a little pitch up in the turns!!! - I initiated the checklist calls on downwind: landing light back on, checking the alternate, PFD & autopilot QNH's, instrumentation in the greens, flaps in takeoff mode while compensating the ballooning effect with a little backpressure on the stick, brake check and reducing load to reach a speed of 90 knots.

Some 45° out of the runway treshold... the base turn was initiated and about the FAP (final approach point) we left circuit altitude of 1 000 feet with a steady approach descent. This is somehow the most difficult part I find... getting the plane on the desired altitudes at those predefined checkpoints on base and final leg. One time I loose to much altitude, another time - in fact most of the time - I arrive with all PAPI's white, which means: too high.
However, the aim was 750 feet about halfway down between the FAP and turning point to final... 500 feet on final. Trick is to fly a steady 85 knots in a descent keeping 7 fingers below the horizon. Perhaps my fingers are too small since I arrive too high all the time ;-).

And finally, once on final and descending through 300 feet AGL (above ground level)... I set the flap configuration to land... experiencing more drag on the wings and the speed reducing back to 75 knots with a slightly larger descent rate. Once over the threshold... gently reducing power to idle and performing the last rudder corrections to fight the crosswind and put the plane as good as possible on the runway centerline... about 1 meter above the runway starting to flare... feeling the groundeffect for a very short while untill the stallhorn let me know that the plane was loosing the last portion of lift... gently touching down on the runway... Again immediate reaction was needed to fight the crosswind on the ground roll by putting the stick fully into the wind and providing opposite rudder. While my instructor put the flaps back in T/O configuration... I did the trim work... full power... and gone again for the next ride! ... or flight ;-). We did this a five times performing the same circuit doing touch and go's. Very soon another interesting and satisfying hour of flight had passed!

Progress check n° 1

2008-04-18T00:19:00.002+02:00

... as I am writing... this busy week has almost passed.
In between the preparations of 2 quite huge tests, I was also scheduled for my progress check flight last Wednesday.

Since I could use all time available both to prepare for the tests and head to Ostend for the flight... I only slept for about 2 hours in between Tuesday and Wednesday. Althoug I had asked my boss for half a night off... finally I ended up in my bed around 3 o'clock in Thursdaymorning due to some extended planning meeting with one of the teamcoaches under my lead at Volvo. I woke up with a severe headache this morning :-(... so, I sought some relief in my garden, mowing the lawn and planting water lilly's... which helped to get the pain away!

However, due to that crazy Wednesday... I had to choose between well preparing the test or heading for a green progress check in Ostend. I opted for the last... and still succeeded in getting a 6/10 - one of my worst scores ever - on the online test for Radionav that expired Wednesday evening 12 o'clock.

As told, the progress check was just ok. In fact, it wasn't much more that we did than the lesson before, except that - now - my instructor didn't instruct me the how-to's but only the where-to's ;-)... giving him the time to evaluate my cockpit-actions. As we still had some time left after the progress check, we did a circuit-flight with a touch-and-go where my instructor explained me everything concerning the techniques and TMA requirements to fly a perfect landing circuit onto the 08 or 26 at Ostend. I had to fly the second downwind, base and final leg... Ahuhm... my circuit was more a trapezium-like than rectangular... and I came it with all PAPI's white... which meant: too high! But with idle throttle and a smaller pitchdown... thus a slightly lower speed, the aircraft became on a good descent path... and once passing the 300 feet barrier we could use the full drag of our landing-flaps config, having even a higher rate of descent. Shortly before touchdown, my instructor took over control... and put the plane right on the landing markers when it started to produce the stall warning. Then it was my turn again to bring the plane to halt and take the taxiway exit... I won't tell you the rest of the story since you already know it from previous posts.

The climbing & descending turns...

2008-04-15T17:49:00.002+02:00

Yesterday I was expected in Ostend again for a flight scheduled at 14.30 UTC.
My instructor was Stijn Maenhout, member of the famous Ghentish family of pilots.

Earlier in the afternoon I had some worries about the weather since the EBOS METAR as well as the EBFN METAR predicted towering cumulus and even CB's at a 1 500 feet cloudbase... so I decided to call my instructor if we would risk the trip in our small Diamond. According to Stijn, it was just fine to give it a go.

After leaving Ghent in some severe hail-storm (happily ever after my car was held together ;-))... I could see the cloud layer becomming thinner and thinner towards the coastal area... which gave me a quite comfortable feeling. During the briefing of the former student pilot, one of my weekend-colleagues, I was already sent to the APRON to perform the exterior and interior preflight checklist... where everything proved to be fine... except some oil waste at the trim tab cover... but according to my instructor this was nothing to worry about. A few seconds later, after performing the before engine startup checklist, we were cleared to the 08 by Ostend Tower... next break check, taxi... twice an instrument check both in a left and right turn... and close after the before takeoff checklist (since the 08 is close to our APRON), the lineup procedure... and airborne! 200 feet, flap retraction... 500 feet landing light off... after takoff procedure completed. Once over reporting point Torhout and outside TMA I was asked to perform som cruise climbs, turns, approach descents, ... to check how good I had retained the "tricks" from previous lessons. It was less bumpy than last Friday and climbing out to 3 500 feet, I had a spectacular view on the green Flanders fields below our wings... flying nearby and through big white cumulus clouds. Wonderfull!
While, up to now, I had mostly flown level turns, I was told and shown how to fly a turn in descent and climb. Since we were above clouds sometime, I was given compass headings instead of a visual reference point. Closer to the ground switching back to visual marks. The fact is that a beginning pilot - inlcuding me - is usually pulling up the nose when making a right bank in a turn. Due to parallax - visual misleading due to point of view - one would think the plane is sinking too fast when banking left in a descending turn. Time flies in the air... so close to one hour flying we returned to base... where I was taught how to fly the 08-circuit. Circuit flying in VFR is off course based on taking both visual landscape references and keeping an eye on the intrument. So, after having reported over Torhout again, we headed right of Torhoutse Steenweg and close to the channel turned on downwind leg, descending to 1 000 feet with an engine load of 50% and flaps in T/O-mode and a speed of 90 KIAS. Ostend Approach data received, landing lights on, QNH's [altimeter pressure settings] checked, radio's, nav's & FMS set ready for landing config... 45° out of the 08 runway threshold banking left (left hand circuit) onto the base further descending to 500 feet... and at an angle of 12° making the final turn to final (which is above the coastline... amazing!) ... descending further to 300 feet with flaps in LDG configuration and reducing speed to 75 KIAS at a throttle load of about 30%. In the meantime keeping an eye on the VSI for correct descending rate and another eye on the runway PAPI's if I was not approaching too high or too low... it seemed that I had lost too much hight already so all PAPI's were in the red... which was solved by a short level flight. Shortly before touchdown, my instructor took over control again to perform the landing. It was me again controlling the plane for runway exit, doing the after landing checklist, taxi to the APRON, performing the before engine shutdown checklist... and finally shutting down the engine and doing the after engine shutdown checklist. Quickquick debriefing and heading home to prepare for a next Volvo-nightshift ;-).

Flying the approach descent...

2008-04-13T11:51:00.003+02:00

Landing the plane is part of circuit flying... and since climbing won't bring you down, my instructor taught me the approach descent too... which implies descending the plane to a lower level.

To prepare the plane for the approach descent, set POwer to idle by gently moving the throttle backwards. The cruise speed starts lowering immediately while, since thrust is reduced to zero... the plane becomes nose heavy and tends to lower its nose down... as the level flight still has to be maintained for a short while it requires backforce on the stick.
Once the IAS needle is passing 108 knots, set FLaps in T/O (takeoff position)... Since pulling the flaps pitches up the plane's nose, give gentle stickforce forward (push). The speed now starts moving down gradually since the flaps are inducing extra drag on the wings. Once passing the 80 knots, descend the plane maintaining an angle of about 8° negative PItch at a speed of 75 knots. Trim the plane by rolling the trim forwards and thus removing push force from your stick.

50 feet before reaching the desired altitude, stick is pulled backward again in a gentle move to create a 0° PItching moment. At exactly the same time full throttle is given (remember we were only descending at a speed of 75 knots, which is much closer to stalling speed than 118 kts!) to regain Speed! Since speed increases, lift will increase... so mind pushing the stick forward to remain leveled.
If the HSI indicates a positive speed tendency [speed is expected to continue incresig] passing the near the end of the white arc, pull up FLaps to 0°. Once the speed is above 110kts, set Power back to a 70% load factor and Trim out the plane for loose stick flying on the level... and take some time for relaxed sightseeing again ;-).

All this went quite well: I did the steps correctly, leveled off in time and arrived on level... resulting in a green flight. Although my last solo-flight in the AK-8 sailplane is close to 10 years ago, there are some flying techniques that you never forget it seems. It's like ice skating: once you've done it, things come back quickly when back in the scating arena... no matter how many years there are in between.

Next startup in Ostend is planned for tomorrow. We will be practicing circuit flying, 1 touch-and-go included. If this is a green one too, there will be a progress check flight next Wednesday.

I still have to practice a bit on my checklists... some checks are by heart & related to a specific point in the circuit... however, before I still have to complete some theory-tests for meteo & radionav. Next week will be extremely busy I fear!!! I hope I'll get back to you still quite alive a bit in a few days...

Flying the PISPOT by heart...

2008-04-13T11:05:00.003+02:00

Hi Folks!

It have been very quiet days on my blog the past few weeks... which is because not much of big interest happened during these weeks. I was scheduled over 3 times last week but cancelled any time due to bad meteorologic flying conditions - as we use to call this 'shitty' weather over Belgium ;-). Happily ever after I don't have to drive to Ostend and back again each time just to go check the weather... my Belgocontrol login allows me to check TAF (Terminal Aerodrome Forecast) & METAR's (Meteo To Airmen) as well as satellite images over 245 NM ranges to scan for clouds and precipitation. Indeed... one has to be equipped well when pre-planning a flight.

And finally... last Friday - although first we had feared for it - the weather was quite nice: visibility over 9999 feet (which is over 10 km), scattered cloudbase at 2 500 feet, some small rain showers [Grrr... had one of them over me while doing the plane exterior check].
We had a warmfront passing over Flanders, which meant: cumulus formation, quite a lot of turbulence under cloudbases, ... Since 14.00, departure time of my flight, is quite early for a nightworker... I had left home in Ghent around 12 o'clock in quite a sleepy mood... without taking lunch... which I really started feeling in my empty stomach somewhere close to Kortemark.

Perhaps you will wonder how exactly one flies a "PISPOT by heart"? Well, I indeed owe you some explanation: PISPOT stands for the actions to perform when initiating and performing a cruise climb (max. performance climb to a higher flight level). A cruise climb is started from a straight and level flight path at 118 knots speed. As always, before manoeuvering, look around for other traffic. Next PItch up the nose somehow around 8° positive pitch, focussing on the visual horizon in VFR conditions. Next let the Speed come back to 80 knots [which happens automatically under this pitching angle and an eninge load of 70%]. Since for max. performance climb a speed setting of 75 knots is required, passing the 80 knots bug, full POwer (100% load) is required by sliding the trottle gently forwards. As this happens, the torque forces induced by the blade tend to roll the aircraft to the left (engine is turning counterclockwise), so at the same time right rudder input is required to overcome this effect. If you don't react immediately - like I did first time - the plane gradually gets out off course.
Next step in climb is to make it a bit easier to yourself in removing the pulling stickforces by Trimming the plane in climb.

Starting to feel the need for a toilet yet? No? Well, here comes the next PISPOT! Once about to be reaching the next flight level... the plane has to be prepared for continuing on straight and level flight again. This is done by progressively PItching down the nose - not too brutal to avoid ballooning [hopping] - about 50 feet before reaching the desired flight level climbing to. As the plane flies level again, it is now gaining Speed... needle starts climbing up from 75 knots. The full power running engine generates extra thrust and thus extra lift on the wings... which is being felt on increasing stick forces. Idea is to hold the plane on the same straight & level fly path so... push the stick forward: pithdown to overcome lift. Once passing the 110 knots, POwer is lowerd again by pulling back the throttle to reach the 70% load again that is required for straight and level flight. Since the trim is still in climb config, it is now time to turn the trim forward untill the stick can be held loosely without pitching the plane. ... meantime we are nearby the wonderfull castle of Wijnendale where king Leopold III surrendered to the Germans in 1940. Not much time to look however, since we are heading North towards the sea... and passing Wijnendale this direction means leaving training area and entering Ostend TMA... so time for a couple of turns ;-).

To avoid making this post way too long, I will explain the approach descent (not that PISPOT'ty) in a next post...

First flight!

2008-03-18T15:23:00.003+01:00

Yep, as promised... and thanks to the weather, yesterday was my first day of practice flying in Ostend.

My instructor in duty was Mr Ryckx. Opposite to a lot of other instructors, this is Mr Ryckx' only job. Others tend to combine instructing with their daily job on an airliner or in the army.
Since it appeared that I was one of the first to start flying in the aftnernoon, we were first charged to perform a small system update on the Garmin 1000 of both OO-KVK and OO-DBJ Diamonds. Normally I was scheduled to fly the OO-DBJ but since this one has been coping with an alternator problem for the last few days, we put it back in the hangar.

After opening op the second hangar, giving shelter to the DA42, the OO-KVK and some other private planes, there was enough light provided to start the preflight checklist, based upon Diamond's checklist manual. As it was the first time doing this, Mr Ryckx explained me everything quite in detail. After checking landing, strobe, position & nav lights, we did the plane walkaround to check the primary control surfaces for ditches & cracks, the cabling for strenght, tyre pressure, hydraulics, the static-pitot cover to be removed, fuel drain to check if the fuel tank did not contain any water [in that case to be removed]. Except to the tailscrape plate being scratched a little and 1 of the position lights not working, we found no major issues that would prevent us from flying.

After we towed the aircraft out of the hangar and towbar was removed we were ready to enter the DA40 cockpit to perform our pre-taxi checklist in cockpit. There are a lot of items to check before effectively starting the engines, such as: levers in correct positions, electrics switches on or off depending on their functioning, next the Garmin 1000 system powerup to check engine & system controls, carb preheating cycling by switching the engine master on/off for a few times... and finally startup! Since the battery voltage level was rather low, starting up the plane didn't go smooth from the first time but after a second try we got the engine running. We did some headset checkup... it appeared that I was hearing Mr Ryckx perfectly through my brand new Beyerdynamics headset... but he didn't hear me. Happily after all turning the squelch knob (filtering out background noise), my mike came up too.

As, in the beginning, I am only supposed to do the basic manoeuvres, my instructor would handle all radio communication with Ostend tower. But before doing that we listened out the Ostend ATIS frequency to receive weather and airport information as information Oscar.
We knew now that runway 26 was in use, there was a 13KT crosswind (within the 20KT limit for the plane), QNH settings were 1017hPa (needed to set altimeters: primary, autopilot and secondary). After we had put the final settings into our instrument panel, my instructor requested a departure clearance to the tower based on the information Oscar. As I was to practice the taxiing, he asked permission to do some taxi manoeuvres in the vicinity of the APRON where our aircraft was parked. That was no problem... and after some practice to master the turning of a plane with pedals, we set course to the 26 using the taxiway along, me having control.

Right before the runway we turned nose in the wind to perform the before-takeoff checklist a last brake-test... after which I lined up the plane and Mr Ryckx took back control to perform takeoff en climbout. We went just outside Ostend TMA in southerly direction, towards the training area past Torhout where I was asked to do some coordinated turns & a straight and level, which ran smooth due to my previous experience on glider planes. Finally I aligned for the basewind leg of the Ostend traffic circuit after which Mr Ryckx took back over the controls to prepare us for landing in quite heavy crosswind. After a succesfull decrab manoeuvre we touched down at about 14.38 UTC. Once the speed was back to a safe and controllable pace control was handed over to me again. Once the runway was left we performed the after-landing checklist and finally continued taxiing towards the apron where, finally... the before-shutdown checklist was executed.

... as a last bu not least item I was asked to complete my logbook on the ethernetsite ánd fill my personal logbook with the first entry ever ;-).

Things went just fine... however, I have learned a lot already during this first lesson!

The Volvo-way ;-)

2008-03-18T15:15:00.002+01:00

... if you may ever wonder what a shiftleader clothed according to the Volvo-way looks like... well, this picture was taken last night by one of the teamcoaches under my lead. We were just on-site to take some actions for a packaging incident near a pre-kitting zone.

Especially pay attention to my haircut please ;-)

The DA-40D Diamond Star TDI

2008-03-15T01:47:00.002+01:00

You already saw the interior of the plane in a previous post but this is what it will look like from the exterior...

The picture was taken in Ostend by Barry Van Geerdeghom. The plane on photo carries a German callsign, D-EOCO (Delta Echo Oscar Charlie Oscar).

The most special thing about this plane will perhaps be the horsepower under the hood... delivered by a Thielert engine. This bi-fuel engine runs both on JET A1 and Diesel... one of the first ones to do so. But our planes, still carrying the Austrian callsign, are always fueled with JET A1. The main reason is that JET A1 is far more resistant to the cold temperatures up where we fly.

So far the update concerning the Diamond.

Fly time!

2008-03-14T20:10:00.005+01:00

Last Saturday and yesterday we received our first two pre-flight briefings.

The first briefing was about the general manoeuvers we are about to practice during our first few flight lessons, including taxiing from apron to holding point off course, cruise climb, banking, level flight, trimming, horizon-focussing in the cockpit, descent and traffic circuit flying into the approach to Ostend.

In other words these lessons will be focussing on both primary flight controls management (rudder, ailerons, ...) combined with the thrust factor of the Tielert-engine. For instance extra throttle will exert a rolling moment on the plane's longitudinal axis, so it's not just a matter of steering straight and levelling off correctly but also anticipation on what you expect the engine to do.

After all, it seems that taxiing the plane is one of the most difficult things to learn... as a plane is in fact designed to... fly, it's a hard thing to drive. There is no such thing as a steering wheel in a plane to direct the wheels. This is done by applying rudder, which activates the differential breaking system. Depending on the brake power and wheel you apply the braking on, the plane will take smooth or heavier turns on the ground. So, opposite to what you might think, it's not stick force but pedal force that directs the plane on the ground.

Yesterday we were introduced into the wonderfull world of glass cockpit Garmin 1000 or the EFIS (Electronic Flight Information System). This is both the present and future of flying. Being a pilot is no longer a matter of observing analogue measuring systems. Since everything is digitally processed by the flight computer, the last decade a cockpit interior has quite changed a lot. As you will notice on the included picture of our Diamond DA40 only the basics of flight controlling devices are still present, which includes the HSI, altimeter, compass and speed indicator. The remainder (charting, digital versions of HSI, altimeter, compass, speed, VOR, NDB, engine temperature, fuel indicator, oil indicator, coolant indicator, stormscope, ...) is available on an electronic display provided by the Garmin 1000 system. The user manual of this system consists out of a huge stack of paper... so, there ís a lot still to learn.

I guess any minute of the coming 2 years of flight training will count to get used to my new desk environment ;-).

By the way... my first flight is scheduled on Monday March 17th @ 14.00. I'll certainly keep you updated on that experience!

Haircut...

2008-03-14T19:45:00.004+01:00

Yes, it's all clear... my haircut wasn't that appreciated after all. I must say that I fully understand and even agree with that.

I will take the necessary coutermeasures by means of using a more adhesive, strong, style-shaping gell-mousse next time to avoid that, during college-day and whenever a camera-team jumps in again... my haircut has degraded to some flattened out bless. Some of my colleagues call me Heinrich the German since that day... why would that be? :-)
Perhaps let us put it to the clear statement that still it is my aim to become a commercial airline pilot and not a Luftwaffe-commander.

Thanks by the way for your massive participation in this hairy poll ;-). So, up to the next poll I would say, where I will have you voting on the DA40 glass cockpit!

Courchevel...

2008-03-02T11:07:00.003+01:00

One of my classmates joined a private-skifligt to Courchevel in the French Alps. It's his boss's friend's plane, who is the PIC in this plane.

Being behind the camera, he put the approach and landing on YouTube. Check: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYD6NO1ONDc.

The Courchevel altiport is a crazy thing to land at... there is only one approach, which is uphill. To access the circuit, another mountain in front has to be flown around and landing is just millimeterwork. There is no questioning of go-around since the aircraft being able to land in Courchevel are not capable of performing the steep clim to overshoot the mountain uphill.

That's why specially skilled pilots only are allowed to land in Courchevel...

When leaving Courchevel, it's the extra speed gained by the steep runway slope that creates aerly lift, which is the reason why the runway shouldn't be that long in high altitude and thus less dense air. If you want to have an idea about how steep that is... check the takeoff scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIaJVnZSGCM.

However, it's worth looking at!

Performing in VTM Late Evening News...

2008-03-01T21:26:00.004+01:00

... well, I promised to post some pictures in uniform overhere. For those expecting more than just pictures, I was even performing in VTM news last night :-).

Since the pilot-business is booming and flight training organisations can't even fulfill the huge market demand for pilots, we're even getting the news these days. What a difference with '99 when I first attempted to start my career as an airline pilot... but finally decided to study IT due to the low demand for pilots only a few years ago.
I had to answer a question about how young people like me manage to pay the 75 000€ bill to complete this training. Sure not by dealing drugs... just asked the bank some help, that was kindly offered in return for a nice interest to be paid...

You can check the newsflash by clicking this link: http://www.iwatch.be/2007/player.html?category_id=hetnieuws&item_id=hetnieuws_6_19 (the item about OAC starts at 14min55").

Just one thing... I suppose had a bad hairday!!! Do yóu think so? Please vote on the right!

Miscellany...

2008-02-29T13:07:00.002+01:00

With first of March approaching we're officially starting the 7th month of ground instruction @ OAC. I told you earlier in this blog... time flies... as well as we will in the coming weeks.
In the meantime we have made nice progress in Aircraft General Knowledge (system knowledge), finished Aerodynamics, are almost halfway down the Airlaw and approaching the end of General Navigation, on track in Radio Navigation, Psycholoy and Physical Human Performance. Off course this resulted in a series of tests... about 30 now. My average score over all Training Notes is about 87%, which gives me a good feeling about being on a good or a side track.

Tomorrow is our first pre-flight briefing, which requires us to appear all in uniform for the first time. Be sure... I will have some pictures taken and post them since this is getting easy on this new blog's maintenance backend.

In case you would be interested to learn more about Ostend Air College and see us in action, tomorrow, March 1st doors are wide open due to are open days. In case you will come over... hold tight... as we are expecting heavy gusts near the coast tomorrow.

In the meanime my headset has been ordered... since I haven't received it yet, I can't tell you much about how it feels and so on... but I have a good feeling about it. Since it is a custom made headset it has my name on it as well as my callsign. However - in aviation - you have to obtain you nickname after having prooved good or bad flying qualities... there was no time left to do it this time as the headset is required before the hocus pocus. So, I decided to give myself the Whiskey Golf callsign, which stands for "Wise Guy". Let's hope I make this true ;-).

Since this blog is flying-related in the first place, you would almost forget there still is my job as a teamcoach in Volvo Trucks. Some of you, being my former colleagues at work, may wonder how I do there... Well, the answer is simple and positive: just fine! I really like my job since it's seriously more human compared to my life behind computer screens the past 4 years, which is something - meaning the human thing - that I really missed, I have the feeling to have been on a sidetrack the past 4 years. And oh yes, there are "bugs", sometimes far more difficult to solve than a computer bug and any of my 50 teammembers is a different person... but that's the wonderfull challenge of people management. Last week I was on the other side of the recruitment process, this time as a recruiter myself... Next week I will be focussing on process capacity planning in my team... After that I will be doing followup and coaching sessions with my people... The weekly TQM (constant improvement meeting) I have with my people... For sure I have been doing a lot of things and learned a wide spectrum of new things on the job. But... in case you might still doubt: it's top, it's varying, it's rewardfull, ...! It has convinced me never to return to an IT-job again... perhaps unless it can be in a coaching function, who knows.

So far all these miscelaneous things I was thinking of to tell you about.

Sure stay tuned for the next picture-session ;-)!

Headset...

2008-02-20T16:50:00.005+01:00

Since both hearing and to be heard well is vital in the air... I have been surfing around on the Internet to watch out for a comfortable pair of ears... untill I found out more about Beyerdynamic, a well known quality brand under audiophiles.

This is the result of what I configured and what I am about to order. As I am a die-hard blues-fan I guess the choice of color won't surprise you ;-). Those of you being blessed with eyes for detail will perhaps even notice my name on the silver tag.

Still it's an expensive thing... but a lot cheaper than Bose's Aviation X and Lightspeed Zulu ANR models. This left me some money to pay my pilot's insurance. You may have noticed there is some financial sacrifice required... and I am not even in the air for heaven's sake!

Practice starts earlier than forseen!

2008-02-08T22:25:00.000+01:00

... today we all received an email from OAC's flight scheduler. My class is expected to start the practice one month ealier than foreseen.

That's good news as it means we will be starting in almost 2 weeks from now, end of February 2008. The earlier we end the course, the quicker we can obtain our licences... and start our new job!

My classmates and me...

2008-02-06T07:01:00.001+01:00

... this picture was taken on one of the many sunshiny days we already had in Ostend. Since we were still together at with the 8th year at that time, you will count 11 of us on the picture. One guy, Wim, is missing at the moment since he went home to fetch some course things I guess. And the other missing person is Samuel... most probably out to buy himself a RedBull.
In the meantime, since Ab Initio 8 graduated, we're now down to 8 (including the 2 missers on photo).
For the people who don't know me yet... I am the third from the right behind, in between the 'men in black', which are the Lagast-brothers.

In case you would wonder what the large concrete area behind us is... it is not a Carrefour-parking lot... it's the APRON 3 for small aircraft and helicopters and behind it the taxiway of the 080/260 runway at Ostend Airport. We're all on the terrace of Noordzee Vliegclub, where we use to consume our croque monsieurs or Jenny's homemade spaghetti. I do participate... but rather exceptionally since I get rather sleepy after heavy lunches. However, being part of the gang is the most important thing!

... in uniform!

2008-01-19T23:00:00.000+01:00

One of the final steps prior to boarding our aircraft and starting the practice training has been the receiving of our pilot uniforms, including a set of snow-white shirts, trousers, tie, coat and those emblems to attach to the shoulders. It still suits well, except the trousers... which have become a little tight. The trousers were ordered in the beginning of September... which was a wile before the traffic-stress and early-leaving late home-coming; stress-booming and sleep-taking life added over 7 kilo's to my boy mass! Since my pants don't fit me anymore... guess where I stored these extra kilo's?! Happily ever after, since I have retrieved "equilibrum", overweight is creeping back away now... and again replaced by fitness muscles and brainpower. I prefer putting the weight in my head instead of somewhere in my pants if you ask me .
It's somehow strange to switch again from job-nightlife to school-daylife on Saturdays. However, these past rainy weeks, I haven't missed daylife a second! By the way, for those that might wonder how I am doing at Volvo Europa Truck: my job is just fantastic and my boss is - still - happy about the way I manage things at night. So are the people under my lead... however, I guess they will even be more when I manage to solute some manpower shortage issue. I'm right on it for the moment, investigating and comparing some producitivity figures. If I have to convince my boss, I'd better be well prepared, wouldn't I?
And oh yeah... there is still fun in the weekend... like attending that 6-hour-lasting-airlaw session today. It was hard to stay awake, believe me... but, you heard me last time... indeed, what would with skies full of outlaws. Stay on ground level, indeed. Today we focussed on structure and duties of the tower, air traffic controllers, reqion controllers, traffic separation rules and laws and exceptions in Belgium [a lot!... why didn't this surprise me?].
Next to this we had our second session of Radio Navigation. In this course we were first introduced into radio-magnetism and how messages are bound to carrier waves and sent from ground antennae to an aeroplane and back. In early days there was dead reckoning without any radio aid... then came the first radio beacons after which we gradually evolved to VOR and DME, TACAN beacons to exactly determine a location by the aid of radiowaves in the VHF and UHF band (Very High Frequency and Ultra High Frequency). We closed the session with study of the Sierra type of secondary surveillance radio as an aid to air traffic controllers to guid the aircraft through busy airspace.
And now GPS is already standing on the doorstep and knocking on our cockpit doors. However, since GPS is owned by US and some PENTAGON general may disengage the whole system in case of a war... it should be clear that there are some serious doubts about how far to integrate this system into navigation and become dependant of one single button to be pressed or not. Therefore it's only used as an aid while radio navigation is still prominently present. The question is off course: for how long?
The passed night was short and the day that followed today very long compared to it and above all mind-consuming. I am quite tired, just cooked my meal... and now there is still a pile of dishes to be washed... So, if I don't fall asleep behind that pile it will most probably be in the sofa, listening some smooth jazz music.
Bye bye!

New year = new stuff

2008-01-06T16:08:00.000+01:00

Yesterday we made our first appearance back in Ostend Air College for 2008. Since we're back down to 8 now after half of the class graduated a few weeks ago (see previous post), it was quite empty and cold... perhaps also due to the thermostate one forgot to set on Saturday morning. That may explain why we experienced a FL40 ISA temperature of about 7°C.
All this was soon forgotten as soon as Paula, who is a surgeon in real life and when not teaching classes to us - I was told - introduced us in human physiologies. Some quick revision of the cardiovascular system in the body and heamoglobin oxygen exchange was helped us to understand the importance of keeping an eye on cabin depressurization, the danger of pre- and inflight cigarette smoking, use of alcohol, ... all this to avoid hypoxia. We also learnt how important it is to quickly interact when symptoms of hypoxia appear. Did you know that - at 40 000 feet, which is about 12 kilometres above sea level - one has only 2 seconds time to grab an oxygen mask in case of cabin pressure since TUC (Time of Usefull Conciousness) is only that few seconds!
As gaseous volumen inside of our body interact as well as the pressurized cabin in case of a sudden pressure drop [i.e. when the pressure inside the airplane drops to atmosphere pressure at heigh altitude due to fuselage damage]. Even slight changes in pressure may make one feel uncomfortable in abdomen after eating gas forming foods like cabbage, raw apples, peas, fizzy drinks, ... Or a baromtrauma at middle ear in case one has a heavy cold and nose/throat constipation. I didn't notice... but suddenly my own stomach started making trauma's too! ... how could that happen since I was on ground level? Ah... it appeared to be lunchtime!
After lunch, we met with Frank, former director of Brussels ATC and still member of "directoraat luchtvaart" and responsible for air incidents over Belgian territory our abroad for incidents with planes of Belgian companies... and, last but not least: teacher of perhaps the most boring course we will ever receive as ab initio pilots: Airlaw! But, and I admit, what would be do in case no air law would exist? Perhaps it would be one big mess of collisions above our heads! Since an airplanes captain is the only boss aboard, even if the king or the president of the US is a passenger, it is very important that such a person thoroughly knows and obeys the airlaw. This introduction lesson was mainly a focus on the big - and rather slow, burocratic - law organisations ruling the air: ICAO, JAA, Eurocontrol. How they were founded, how they are structured, ... Each country has its own specific "law book" conerning airlaws, so called AIP's, containing both ICAO law (SARP's) statements and country-specific extentions. The JAA bundles its laws in JAR's, divided in specific law "chapters" by scope: crew laws, airplane laws, airport infrastructure laws, licencing, ... 18 chapters in total... all to know by heart .
Last phase of a day that passed at supersonic pace again was meteo with Willy Bombeeck, senior meteorologist! As this was the first lesson too it contained mainly an introduction to meteo, which off course started with a "radioscopy" of our atmosphere, explanation of the greanhouse effect, sun radiation, ozone layer structure, temperature measurement above ground and a couple of other interesting things. Soon it was 19h30... time to pack our bags and go home. I am happy I survived well since I feared I would have problems to adapt to a day-scheme being a Volvo nightowl...
And off course my compliments to A² to provide us from a couple of very motivated, experienced and pleasant new teachers! So far, no complaints at all about the course and the way it's given! ... except perhaps that the startup temperature could have been better... but I am sure this will be worked on .

Holidays!

2007-12-29T22:12:00.001+01:00

It's has been a while now since my last post on the pilot-thing-blog.However, I am still healthy and alive...
Since my company closes down between Christmass and New Year's day, I have had some days off the last week. Today, I had my first and last day off from aviation school too... which made it the first Saturday at home since the beginning of September.In the old days, while still practising my IT job in Brussels, I have lost many many precious hours of time to spend on my course. I am glad I have these day off now to keep up with the pace again.
Believe me or not but there I am overwhelmed with a happy feeling when waking up at 8 in the morning after a latenight shift, listening to a traffic bulletin annoucing the daily hell around Brussels, which I was part off untill a few weeks ago. But now, living closest to work ever possible, I have finally retrieved my "old" life again. I must admit: feels top! I can say the same thing about my job in Volvo. Most of the companies téll you that you will receive a lot of training and so on (blablabla)... and you may be amazed... but practice shows that in many cases they will put you in front of a pc where you will follow the most idiot "e-learning" courses or even worse: the trial and error way, also known as "on the job training". In Volvo however, I received the bést pérsonal coaching I ever had. Of course there is still a lot to be learned, but this small effort they made for me over the past four weeks is certainly worth a big compliment!!!
It's right, I all owe you some updates concerning my training program.After almost 3 full months on the go, we have now finished aerodynamics course as well as the major parts of mass and balance calculations. In the mean time the first 300 pages of Aircraft General Knowledge Systems are also history. This course contains the basics about how a plane fuselage is constructed, about how the hydraulics on landing gear and primary and secondary controls exactly function, about what liquids are suited to duct through the airplane's "vanes"... and how extremely dangerous and toxic some of these are! Did you know for instance that modern planes are made of carbon structures [light weight --> less fuel consumption and more economic flying]? These carbon fibres are treated with blue acid, which... once it gets into your blood, kills you in 8 seconds time !
Lesson learned: néver touch a broken wing... íf you still can after a crash off course! There is a lot to tell about aircraft general knowledge... but this would lead me too far, and some parts may be boring to you.
Last week we lost 6 of our fellow classmates in OAC. No, not in an aircrash or so... it's just that they have been following this course since january 2007... and their end date was fixed on end december. We will be missing them since they already had quite a lot of experiece out of previous courses... which sometimes lead us to interesting discussions. Most of them were PPL already and shared their air-stories with us. I wish them good luck with both their school exam and the ATPL-exam in Brussels.
Again some of you will still be wondering: isn't he flying yet?! And right you are since I promised I soon would be flying. However, due to the growing number of ab initio pilots during the last 2 years, flight schools are a booming business. So is ours... but when a number of candidates more than doubles, there is a problem when the infrastructure does not. Very soon a third new DA40 will arrive after the two brand new ones that are already delivered. End of March we will get some new instructors and existing instructors again available since the 7th class will graduate at that time. The start for newcomers, such as me, has been fixed around that date. Some extra patience will be required for all of you to hear about my first experiences in the air ;-). But, stay tuned... I may not be flying already, but time does! End of March may be nearer than you think!
I will save post some pictures that time... stay tuned!
Best regards,
Pieter

My current job

2007-12-04T11:49:00.000+01:00

... for the ones that may be interested in the content of my current job: it's no longer an IT-job. Although I may need my IT-knowledge to automate some of our daily paperwork, my current assignement is somehow completely different.
Currently I am still on training but as from January 2008, I will be shift-lead of the logistics department in Volvo Truck Europe's plant in Oostakker by Ghent. My job includes a wide range of things with the one and single aim to motivate my team to maximum performance and job satisfaction. I will coördinate 40 people split up in 3 teams. My shift is responsible for every process which has something to do with "fuelling" the production line. This may include parts delivery as well as removing empty crates, searching for missing parts, emptying trailers, loading trailers... Apart from doing the closest possible followup, I also need to coach and evaluate my people for best performance. So far I experienced the job as very varying and somehow stressing in a positive way. Sure I'll get back to you with some job-items from time to time.
As I am assigned to a fixed night roster, this will change somehow my social night-life ;-)... I will turn into a real night-owl I suppose. Since the plant is only 2 kms away from my home, there is plenty of time left now to concentrate on the fly-theory in a more relaxed way than it was while still commuting to Brussels and losing about 3 hours and more a day in traffic and/or public transport.
... thumbs up, I would say!

Back @ work

2007-11-27T13:30:00.000+01:00

... yesterday late in the evening... it was half past nine, I received a call from what I had hoped to be my future employer.
... and yes: I am hired! So, as from next Thursday, I will start on my new assignment next door!
Best regards
Pieter

Medical obtained while job lost

2007-11-26T17:12:00.000+01:00

Hello hello!
If I would clean my home at the same rate I am currently posting new messages on this forum... I guess nobody would like to visit anymore ;-)...
Yes, you read well... and it's not a joke! I am currently applying for a new job somewhere in the neighbourhood. The plan is to put my IT-life on hold for a while since commuting to Brussels and back had slightly become a deadly cocktail to my physical-human-being. To keep up with the pace of OAC classes, I had to excercise and make tests untill early in the morning... not that I am the kind of person that starts crying from fatigueness once midnight approaches... but I do am the one the starts severely torturing the clockradio when it starts yelling at me a quarter past five in the morning.
I have survived several weeks like this untill my body warned me to put an end to this... so this is what I very recently did... actually... I first tempted to explain my employer... which ended worse in receiving a C4 last Friday (not the car but the paper). I will save you the details but perhaps you will be happy if I say I did not leave with slamming doors. Anyway... I conclude this was the best solution to say farewell forgood to traffic jams and busy Brussels. However it's not already 100% certain... there might be a chance to get into a fixed night roster as teamcoach into the logistics department of a huge factory near the place where I live. I will be able to combine both a far more social job with. To be continued!!!
In the meantime we ae booking very nice progress in ground instruction at OAC. Last Saturday Mass & Balance part 1 was put to an end with a large excercise making us fill out a loading sheet for a specific plane configuration. In navigation matters of speed where introduced [although we had seen a bit already concerning these in Performance of Flight]. However it ís the purpouse to get high during flight, speed is not referring to the drug for those that might wonder... but just speed as a factor of velocity. As fast as we are proceeding, speed is already way behind us since we have passed through magnetic and compass navigation and variation resp. deviation matters... or in more comprehensible words: howcome that the magnetic north pole is not equal to the true north pole... and howcome that even a compass is not always correctly pointing to the magnetic north due to influence of a planes instrument equipment and metal fuselage. I didn't even lose north... so I was able to skip to the next chapter about wind-air-ground vectors and derived solutions. What the hell...? Well, if you tear it all apart: a plane is flying at a certain speed, called true airspeed (TAS). All this flying happens inside of a huge moving airmass (wind vector; WV). Putting these 2 vectors together gives us the ground speed resultant (GS)... or in other words: the track travelled across a ground traject during the same unit of time where the TAS was accomplished... where the angle between the TAS and GS is called the angle of drift since it shows how much a plane has been drifting from its original track under influence of wind.
This week I am trying to keep up the pace with Performance of Flight and its physics content by thoroughly re-reading part of the course and making excercices.
I will also soon do the necessary paperwork to transform my medical licence into a training licence. My name is already on the practice participant list... so I am halfway down to the start ;-).
So far the most recent updates to this blog.
... stay tuned for the next info-briefing!

Pieter

Intermediate Update

2007-11-04T11:28:00.000+01:00

Hi all!
Some of you have been asking about the results of my medical checkup in Brussels. Since it is an initial medical checkup for a class 1 licence... this usually takes a while. There is a board of responsibles sitting together every 14 days on Thursday to validate any medical checkup. ... as last Thursday was meeting-time but also November 1st, the next meeting has been postponed with another fortnight.
To satisfy some of you I already made a phone call to the secretary in Brussels to ask them to lift up the curtain already concerning the known results. All were perfect... except that I do not know about the thorax scan and EEG-scan for now. But the treating medecin convinced me that this wouldn't be a problem at all. So, off the record I can tell you already: pass!
What else can I tell you at this moment? ... Perhaps that yesterday I had the initial briefing on the approaching practical instruction. Fact is that, as soon as I obtain my medical licence, I have to contact the "Directoraat voor Luchtvaart" to obtain a training licence annex flight logbook (ping ping $$$). Without these I cannot start the practice anyway. Shortly after, I will be starting basic manoeuvres on the Diamond 40 Glasscockpit trainer (Glasscockpit has nothing to do with the canopy but stands for the fully GPS [Garmin 1000] equipped instrument panel). Some information about the plane can be found on the manufacturers product sheet: http://www.diamondair.com/aircraft/da40fp_ds.php#. The aim is that, after about 15 to 20 hours of flight on this aircraft I will be able to start my first solo touch&go's in Ostend. If I could start in about a month I should be solo next year in March. Another 170+ hours of required flight will be lasting then for navigation training, cross country flights, twin-eninge training, simulator training, instrument rating, night flying, .... During simulator training, the stress will be on how to recover from all kinds of emergency: e.g. how to land a twin with only one engine working. More details, I guess, will follow once I am fully involved.
In the meantime, the practice sessions keep on going. Mass&Balance, the course about ideal balance of mass in a plane for performant and safe flying, is now almost finished. How should I summarize this course? Well, it's a matter of moment and datum and keeping the arm in between two predetermined borders on the wing's mean aerodynamic chord. Once your arm is longer or shorter and thus outside of these borders... start praying because laws of aerodynamics force your plane to crash or fall into pieces... A pilot can play with the lenght of the arm on the datum by both optimally dividing masses in the plane and respecting the plane's technical limits. Since a plane burns fuel and fuel=mass... there is a loss of mass (converted into energy) during flight. Consequently to the mass decrease there will be a change in armlength on the datum. Pre-flight incalculations need to ensure that even with increase or decrease of arm during flight, the limits are always respected. As you see: a very important bundle of training notes!
But so far so good: what seemed to be huge and complicated in the beginning is starting to get together. It's all logical, you see, and that's why! I have succesfully completed some initial tests. There is a lot of homework to complete every week but every excercise solved is one step closer to get used to quickly and automatically applying the correct formula. Every correct solution appearing at the end of lines and lines of calculations is a moment of joy. I suppose the must sound freaky somehow? Believe me, it is! ;-).
... the most freaky story-end for today will perhaps be the announcement that I have to go for now as a lot of new Navigation-time excercises are expected to be solved...
See you next time!

Stressed but satisfied...

2007-10-21T11:53:00.000+02:00

Since past Monday I am launched on my first Accenture project @ KBC. Normally I am located in the head office in Brussels (Havenlaan) but since I need to get in line with the KBC-specs for the mainframe platform I have been sent to their training dept. in Leuven for the past and coming week.
... and believe me... this have been véry long days! Not that the learning stuff is that heavy since I am returning to my mainframe and Cobol roots.
It's just that I have to get through the busiest part of the Brussels "ring" each morning, there is the choice to dive into it really early [when traffic starts jamming]... or get stuck and queue all morning when leaving late. ... I thought I was a peaceful person but... when my alarm clock starts ringing at 05.20 AM, I'd rather like to knock it down or even kill it. Just in time, I seem to remember each time that I will need my clock next morning, so... finally I keep it alive. ... in the evening, there is no choice: traffic jams are a fact as from 15.30 PM. It has even become worse since these damn road works on the E40 direction Brussels! That means... when leaving at half past four I usually get home in Ghent at half past six or a quarter to seven... I believe I will be quite happy when returning to Havenlaan and thus escaping from that ring-track along Vilvoorde.
... however, all this suffering ecourages me even more to get airborne as soon as possible! Imagine wat a relief it will be when overflying these bumping cars with a significant higher mileage on the aircraft speedometer.
Luckily ever after just working and jamming are not my only occupations! Time flies and before I realise, another Saturday at OAC approaches...
In the mean time, loxodromic and orthodromic navigation have no more secrets to hide to me. Depending on the lattitude navigating on there is a choice to be made between distance/departure formula along the equator. A first set is applied to the area between 15 00.0 NH and 15 00.0 SH can be regarded as a flat area in which the characteristics of the triangle of Pythagoras can be applied to calculate both departure and arrival as well as distance. The hemisphere part in between 15° and 70° is a bit more complicated. Since circles of longitude are converging to the poles, the measured distance lowers gradually in relation to the distance at the equator. As all meridians converge to a single point (pole), this means that a mile is 1,852 Kilometres at the equator but only zero kilometres at the poles! This can be solved by applying a function of cosinus for loxodromes and a function of sinus/cosinus on orthodromes. This is the second set.And last there is the polar area... norht as well as south. This is a flat area again... but a bit more complicated than the area around the equator since crossing the 000° or 180° semi-great-circles determines the way angles have to be measured and expressed. That is why we are using a visual plot for calculations in this area. However, in real life grid navigation is used. Flying on compass above the polar area is a very bad idea since magnetism is instable in that area. That is where gyroscopic navigation gets into scope. It's quite difficult to put all details in a blog but believe me... it's all very logical!
In "Principles of Flight" (aerodynamics) we have been seeing a lot more in detail about lift and drag and factors influencing these. It would bring me way too far to explain all this... and I still have to dive into these chapters as some things still need clarification to me.
And... yes... we had a newcomer on our course list: VFR Communications, given by Hilde Goossenaerts. VFR communcications is all about Visual Flight Rules communication. Things like the Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Gulf, Hotel, India, Juliet, Kilo, Mike, November, Oscar, Pappa, Quebec, Roger, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Whiskey, Xray, Yankee, Zulu alphabet but also how to request permissions, howto readback, howto identify on the secondary surveillance radar with trasponder, about receiving clearance to holding points, howto understand ATIS (Air Trafic Information Serives), Metars, ... and a lot more. Bot very interesting and important as communicating and knowing how to do that is vital in our business.
I hope your head is not exploding after all this. This was what I feared in the beginning too... but it's all that logic that it fits together like a puzzle.
... and oh yes, before I forget... I just finished my home-office-project, meaning that right now I am no longer working from my small dressroom but inside of my larger office! It's comfortable! As soon as I find out how to link this blog to a good online and free photo-album, I will get back to my audience with a set of pictures.
Well... that was a lot to tell. I hope this compensates your patience to a satisfactory level.
Stay tuned for the next post!

MedEx

2007-10-10T14:12:00.000+02:00

More than 2 months after registering, I could finally attend to the medical examn class 1 that was held in Brussels as from 8.45 AM yesterday.
Since I know that traffic goes that slow on the E40 from Aalst to Brussels, I jumped out of bed @ 5.20 AM... which was a small effort since I use to wake up @ 5.40 AM for work every day.
Despite severe traffic jams in Brussels centre, I arrived perfectly on time in WTCIII @ Simon Bolivar avenue. In the invitation I received from the department of "Volksgezondheid", it was stated that participants should not eat or drink anything within 7 hrs before investigation... only water was allowed. To deliver a sample for the... euhm... you know... proof, I had been drinking a lot of water in the car that morning. I was almost exploding and fearing not to accomplish my mission to the toilet when.... aaaaaaah.... finally I was offered the sample-cup. Ok, enough details so far .
Next there was the lung-capacity-test where I had to blow into a special device, measuring the "exhaust"-power of my lungs. I did cross the limit-graph, but I must say that I am used to play an alto saxophone and thus my lungs are already "tuned" in giving high performance. I was weighed, measured, blood was taken from my vains, completely "stethoscopized" when finally the doctor concluded that things were just fine.
After that I was expected for the NKO-examn (nose, throat, ear). It all started with a small device sending pressure pulses to my tympanum, using it in fact as some kind of trampoline. Just for checking if things were still moving correctly overthere. The nicest thing certainly was step 2 where the doctor was pooring water at about 44°C into my ears with a needle thát big to anaesthetise an elephant, while I had to count down from 300 to 0 in steps of 3 to keep myself concentrated, sitting in a black & shaking chair. During this process a plotter-needle was printing the pulses arriving via a set of cables attached to my head. Hereafter I was put in a large, microwave-lookalike cage. Happily after all it was not a microwave they put me in but just an isolated cube where my hearing capacity could be tested without any interference from the "outside world". Same verdict overhere: everything was ok, especially my hearing... so take care about what you whisper behind my back!
Last step to take in the morning: the eyes. I was checked against color blindness, scope of sight, sharpness in observing nearby and far-away... except that one line-checking test on my right eye didn't go well. I didn't even see the line! After all it appeared that there was a defect with the device, not with my eye! Verdict: sight is eagle-sharp!
... in the afternoon I was expected in the Leopold-hospital in Etterbeek for both a thorax scan and EEG. Especially for the EEG, it was important to have a big meal.... so, just after the thorax-scan, I escaped to IKEA Zaventem for a "steak-frites-mayonaise", apple pie, berry-drink... before returning to Etterbeek again. The annoying women's voice on my GPS kept me well awake on backtrack, which was a good thing since I started to feel a bit sleepy!
After sitting almost 1 hour in an overheated waiting room, I finally heard the doctor calling my name. We were entering a small room and some hair-net lookalike tool was put over my head and tiny needles were plugged into my head. I had to open and close my eyes repeatedly on the doctor's command... and after a while a fastly flashing bulb was hung right before my eyes. It was kind of weird and it made me think of the Frankenstein movie... But there was a happy ending: I left the room just being myself with the doctor confirming that I am not epilleptic.
... it was about 15.30 PM when I left Brussels, bad luck again... since that is the time that the working class tends to escape Brussels....
I was pretty tired when arriving home around 17.30 PM... and I slept as a rose tonight! Within 2 weeks the results of blood and pp-sample will be known... confirming whether I am medically suited for piloting aircraft or not.

Action = Reaction

2007-10-08T22:57:00.000+02:00

"... for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." - Sir Iscaac Newton's 3rd law.
Let's apply this law to the blog overhere. As you can see at the bottom of any message posted overhere, there is a possibility to vote by giving it a quotation or... even better... posting a comment! So, what about making this blog a bit more interactive? Ok, it just all started... but yet the time has come to react...
What about the messages: do you like the content, the stories? What else do you want to know about a particular message? Just shout! ... and I will try to provide a satisfying answer.

A lost fight with Mr Microbe

2007-10-04T12:15:00.000+02:00

... yes, Mr Microbe, he has been in town for a few weeks now. And he finally got me! I am dealing with a bad cold right now.
So I am writing this short notice in between sniveling and blowing my nose. As usual this only lasts only a couple of days. So hopefully, by the weekend, this will all be almost forgotten. Whatever, it took me a lot of effort and courage to come to Brussels this morning and surviving the traffic jams with half-open eyes.
Apart from this bad news from health-point-of-view, I have some good news too: it is now official that the tailor will pay us a visit next Saturday. And soon after, all pilot-bodies will be clothed I suppose.
In between I found some time to paint 2 walls of my new "office" into Boss' "gris sucré". And yesterday I ordered the remainder of paint I will need to paint the opposite walls in "natural linen" plus the magnetic/blackboard paint that I will use to put the 3 write-able/magnetic squares onto the wall where my desk will be. The idea is to use these to stick navigation maps onto the wall and thus plan my trips somehow in a structured way.
Snivle snivle... bye bye

Open Company Days...

2007-10-02T09:32:00.000+02:00

Next Sunday, October 7th, our flight academy will be opened to the public as we are participating at the "Open Company Day". Anyone that is interested in knowing how things exactly pass on overhere is kindly invited to pay us a visit. Also, if you want to see our fleet... this is the place to be!
The gates will be open from 9.00 AM to 05.00 PM and the address is this one:
OACNieuwpoortsesteenweg 945 b8400 Oostende
The Northsea is about 2 miles away from here and there is a fantastic restaurant next door (http://www.deltaweb.be/index.php?l=n&k=z&i=2033).
So, be welcome!

Mass & Balance...

2007-10-01T21:10:00.000+02:00

No... opposite to what you may think reading this post's header, I did not join a local Weight Watchers club. It's just the subject of an additional and rather small part that was added to the theory last weekend.
Performer in duty was Frederic Lampens, who is flying on B737-8OONG @ Ryanair and based in Sjaléwa (which is phonetic Irish for "Charleroi").
This first session was all about the essential things needed to calculate a plane's mass and balance... that way that your point of pressure does not get out of the restricted area on a wing's chord. If it does, your wing will not or no longer generate lift... and I don't even want to think about what happens next... unless you are piloting a rocket ! But it's far more than just keeping your point of pressure on the wing's chord... in fact it's more a matter of "perfection"... or better: ensuring that your aircraft is balanced that way that, while in cruise, the point of pressure is located just there where an aerofoil generates most of lift... and fuel burning is minimum.
So, this time we refreshed any thing to know about how to summarize vectors & caculate momentum... Next week there will be some spotlight on how all this applies to an aircraft.
Yes, after all... Perhaps there may be a thing that Weight Watchers and pilots have in common: we are both aiming for perfection!

Tadaam

2007-09-27T13:32:00.000+02:00

... still alive & kicking!
Hi there!
It have been quite busy days the last 2 weeks... which is why I had to postpone the blogging-thing overhere.
Fact is that on September 15th, a bright and sunny day (in Ostend anyway), we were introduced into the theoretical part of the ATPL-course. After a short briefing by our chief ground instructor, Mr Robert 'Bob' Stevens, we received our course manuals... an amazing stack of paper weighing about 45 pounds!
Shortly after the briefing - since we had an airman's coffee break in between - things really got started !
We headed for a 3-hour introduction in General Navigation... in other words: how to get from A to B with your plane in the best possible way [orthodromic!]. It was about 1PM when my stomach started to warn me that it had been very empty for the past few hours... time for a break! In the afternoon Robert was replaced by Geert Catrysse for our first session of Principles of Flight (or howcome that a wing generates lift and things like that).
Huphup! Since a professional pilot must be good in doing a lot in no time: by the end of the day we had seen about 70 pages of really interesting stuff and formulas and we all went home... sleeping very well, dreaming about Newton's Laws, the ideal gas equations, circular slide conversions, Boyle, Guy Laussac (Charles) ...
... a few days later - still crunching the theory - I received a huge postpack containing my orders from procura-nv.be's pilot shop. Like one happy child I started tearing the cardboard box apart. Yep! ...it contained the tools I will need as from now to do the necessary pre-flight calculations & navigation plotting:
an AVIAT circular slide rule to perform fast and accurate logarithmic conversions;
protractor (in fact this is kind of a duplicated geometric triangle to perform one-shot 360° measurements)
navigation plotter in order to fasttrack geographic locations
the Jeppesen airfly manual
a NGI map of Belgium... that I will certainly need during the upcoming cross-country navigation flights
The coming weeks will be much like the past one... nonono, not that I will be receiving post packages any day... but just concerning the theory.
In the few hours left between work and studies... I am trying to turn the last-unpainted and un-decorated room in my house into a comfortable pilot's office @ sea-level. Yesterday I put the very first layer of "Manhattan white" on the ceiling... I promise that - as soon as it is all decorated and finished - I will put some pictures out here showing the room, the "tower" of manuals, the "tarmac" of tools, ...
And as soon as I receive my pilot's uniform, I will reveil some image of the person behind all this... be prepared!

Sometimes dreams come true...

2007-09-16T18:58:00.000+02:00

Imagine how it feels to have a dream made come true! This is what happened to me last week after registering for the ATPL ab initio @ OAC in Ostend (Belgium).
Only the kick-off off course: some busy months, not to say years... are ahead, that's sure. But I am quite certain that - once I will manage the things in my small office about 30 000 feet above sea-level - this huge effort will be rewarded a dozen times more!
Whatever, I am heading straight forward for the sky... my new limit!