Learning to fly, or thinking of learning? Post your questions, comments and experiences here

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By Milty
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1886558
This just reminded me that I initialled the aircraft log yesterday and completely forgot that I’d done it. I now recall that my hands were shaking so much, there is no way it looked like my initials. Might have to take a look at the log next week to see just how bad it was. I blame the fact it was cold :lol:
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By jcal
#1887083
Lesson 23

Got another first for the books! (So the log is a little longer than usual...)

This last Saturday I found this rare opportunity of a double slot on a weekend afternoon. We've been trying to get time to get those 3hrs of solo circuits in but weather hasn't been kind, so I thought maybe with a 2 hour slot we might be able to squeeze in some solo in there!

The winds had a different plan, with 13kts crosswind my FI suggested we instead went out and did our first navigation lesson. The double session was perfect to allow for the extended briefing and we had plenty of time to get back before sunset.

Having done some reading and playing around in simulators, some nav was familiar to me, but most of the process was new. We started the lesson by fairly quickly going through the flying parts of navigation, such as what to do at turning points and enroute, and left a more in depth look at pre-planning for after the flying to avoid racing the sun.

Once we're off everything was fairly straight forward, the x-winds were rough but seemed manageable when not doing circuits and got calmer as we got higher up. Cross referencing landmarks with the charts came easy to me, I always loved reading maps so this is right in my ballpark, and the rest of the flying was essentially straight and level with the addition of keeping an eye on the times, traffic and airspace infringements (we had basic service from Southend throughout the trip - something I've now learned a lot from in that other thread! :lol:).

The biggest difficulties I had on the trip was:

1. The sun glare! Finding it very hard to spot landmarks at times when the sun shines right in the eyes and reflects on the windshield. I wear glasses so I don't have sunglasses at hand, but I'm seriously reconsidering this for the future (any advice from specs wearers?). Although I have to say, much of the difficulty came from windshield glare and cloud haze that just killed our visibility.

2. Keeping time :lol:. Like I'm not talking about complicated maths or anything, literally just looking at my watch and reading the time correctly. I failed so many times it was embarrassing! I'm not much of a watch user and the watch I have right now is something I bought specifically for flying. It's a pretty simple watch, but without numbers on the face, and on a normal day that's fine for me, never thought it'd be an issue. But when it came to reading it in a slightly more stressful situation like flying a plane I really wasn't able to :roll:. Maybe it's just practice, or I should reconsider and get a simple digital watch with big numbers.


And then we were back on the ground, only 1:17 on the tacho timer so marginally longer than my usual 1h lessons, and I was expecting I was going to have a quick debrief and off I go. But no. Next was almost a whole hour of basically ground school with my instructor. He gave me a thorough intro to pre-flight planning, we sat down and retroactively "planned" the flight we just had, he taught me how to use the different rulers, the CRP, the charts, and the VFR flight log, as well as a short refresher on getting clearances and basic service.

I loved every bit of it. My instructor kept apologising for having to learn all this "boring" stuff, doing maths with a calculator, etc, but for me this is in big part of what I was looking forward to when learning to fly. Yeah sure, the actual flying of the aircraft is amazing, but, maybe as an engineer by trade, drawing on maps, measuring drift, using the awesome but insane CRP computer, cross-referencing charts, etc is just pure bliss :D.


Next time he said I should plan the same flight again before coming in to the lesson and have everything except the current wind pre-planned. The nerd that I am, I couldn't be happier with that homework.


Oh, and finally, I also wanted to mention that despite spending a good ~3 hours at the school, I only spent 1:17h on the tacho timer, meaning I only got charged for that by the school. Not sure if that's standard, but I found that incredibly generous, given my instructor spent so much time with me I thought I would be paying twice that!
T6Harvard, Milty, bladerunner911 and 1 others liked this
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By TrickyWoo
#1887086
What a great write-up!

I'm always amazed that with regular DI checks the PLOG heading actually pretty much works. I was second-guessing the wind and making mistakes - had to learn to trust the DI and maths. My trouble with Nav is towns - they all look the bleedin' same (well they do here in the Cotswolds anyway) and few high things to spot also. It's usually buildings that help (and defunct airfields are as it says in one of the books not ideal).

Re keeping time - lesson learnt was not to use an Apple watch. On 10%. :-)

Certainly sounds like a great club / school

Oh and just for info in case it's of use, I read about and now always use paper Wind Stars using this (really handy for PFL and diversions etc to find a field roughly into the wind in a hurry - cos I struggled with that too)

https://www.lopezshackleford.co.uk/wind ... alculator/
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By VRB_20kt
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1887089
TrickyWoo wrote:My trouble with Nav is towns - they all look the bleedin' same...


The stopwatch is your friend. If the time hasn't expired, it's unlikely that you've arrived!!

I'm guessing you've already been told to work from big to small?

Having said that, it can be fiendishly difficult to get it right so don't beat yourself up about it.
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By TrickyWoo
#1887092
What's big to small? If it's like 'that's Banbury so that must be x to the west' then the problem is Ban is the only town other than Oxford and at 2500' it's often not visible. I've got Brize, Kemble and Fairford off pat but they're obv. not ideal as actual VRPs :-)

There are many excellent reasons to live in the Cotswolds - almost immediate access to red trousers, ex-prime ministers to shout at in the street and the £15 white loaf but visual flying isn't on the list.
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By GrahamB
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1887095
TrickyWoo wrote: I've got Brize, Kemble and Fairford off pat but they're obv. not ideal as actual VRPs :-)

If you can see them, they probably -are- ideal as a Visual Reference Point, which is what VRP denotes. You can report a position ‘two miles west of …’ or ‘passing North to South four miles East abeam …’ a VRP. You don’t have to fly overhead it.
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By TrickyWoo
#1887096
Yes indeed and I do see that although if geographically confused then Brize looming 'by mistake' isn't great. (This happened. And I told my instructor 'it's ok - it's Oxford Kidlington'. Yes really. Then Brize confirmed it wasn't the alma mater's cricket pitch airfield after all).

Joking apart I do get your point and thank you
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By Milty
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1887103
@jcal - nice report and sounds fun. Looking forward to getting into a bit of that too. I think this is how it's likely to pan out over the next few weeks and months with variable weather. Circuits if possible, nav practice if not.

I have done a little bit of nav by basically following a straight line drawn on a map and trying to keep roughly on course. Local area was fine as I recognised the M5, River Severn and the A449 between Worcester and Kidderminster. When we got a bit further than that, it was more by luck than judgement.

I'm finding that when I get close to the target airfield, on the 3 occasions I've approached, I'm always looking futher in the distance to where the airfield is. On our short bimble to Kemble, the instructor seemed a bit surprised that I couldn't see the airfield - if fairness, it was about 75% closer than where I was looking for it. It was also a very sunny day in my defense. I was given the tip to use your map to shield the sun from your eyes. My instructor also talked about getting/making a small suction cup sun visor that you can quickly stick on the screen where the sun is. As long as you're not moving about too much, it should help.
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By NDB_hold
#1887105
TrickyWoo wrote:What's big to small? If it's like 'that's Banbury so that must be x to the west' then the problem is Ban is the only town other than Oxford and at 2500' it's often not visible. I've got Brize, Kemble and Fairford off pat but they're obv. not ideal as actual VRPs :-)

There are many excellent reasons to live in the Cotswolds - almost immediate access to red trousers, ex-prime ministers to shout at in the street and the £15 white loaf but visual flying isn't on the list.

This is definitely something (like spotting airfields) which gets better with time. Banbury itself isn’t easy to spot but the sheds by the M40 junction are, for example, as is Barford St John to the SW.
Mind you, my instructor at Welshpool was a bit nonplussed when he tried to get me lost over Shropshire, then asked me to work out where I was; I looked down and said ‘Well, that’s Pitchford Hall, so…’
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By VRB_20kt
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1887106
TrickyWoo wrote:What's big to small?


It’s the concept that big things are fewer and therefore easier to identify - especially from a distance. And from those, smaller things can be identified.

TBH there are perhaps a dozen tricks for making map, heading and stopwatch navigation easier - all of diminishing usefulness as GPS becomes ubiquitous.
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By TrickyWoo
#1887107
Barford Donald Sinden spook house is my go to place on the way back to Enstone. There's been one occasion when returning and I knew Ens was ahead on the right but couldn't see it (it is difficult to see) and for 45 secs or so just hummed and not quite hoped but it was more stressful than expected. All good learning. And sure enough there it was. On the left. (joke)
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By VRB_20kt
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1887115
Well WRT your test AIUI only one leg now needs to be completed without the aid of GPS.

Potentially helpful things for map, stopwatch and compass include:

Ensure you pick a start point for the leg where you are actually at cruising speed - it makes the stopwatch even more reliable.

The starting point for the first leg doesn't have to be at the airfield. If there's somewhere easy and unmistakeable a few miles away then get to cruise height and use that.

Be sure you don't start the stopwatch until you're actually at your start point.

You can use a part of the airframe as a reference marker - eg the strut on a C150/152.

Fly slightly to the right of the line on the chart (airspace permitting) - it puts everything of interest in the front left quadrant.

Try to set a cruise speed of 90kt - it makes the maths a lot easier.

In most training aircraft, anything just on the nose is about 3 miles away - about two minutes.

The stopwatch is pretty good at telling you how far you've travelled if the wind is anything like forecast.

Keep your eyes out of the window. It's far more important to look out than to follow everything on the map (indeed, you'll be marked down if you do feature following)

High ground (eg ridges and hill tops) can be quite useful for identification.

Line features - and particularly intersecting line features are manna from heaven!!

As ever, check with your instructor.
Milty, T6Harvard, Rob P and 3 others liked this
By jcal
#1887128
TrickyWoo wrote:I'm always amazed that with regular DI checks the PLOG heading actually pretty much works.

I admit I only now realise what the PLOG is! I've seen that acronym loads but never quite knew what it meant! The dots have been connected! :mrgreen:

TrickyWoo wrote:Re keeping time - lesson learnt was not to use an Apple watch. On 10%. :-)

Certainly sounds like a great club / school

Oh and just for info in case it's of use, I read about and now always use paper Wind Stars using this (really handy for PFL and diversions etc to find a field roughly into the wind in a hurry - cos I struggled with that too)

https://www.lopezshackleford.co.uk/wind ... alculator/

Good point about the Apple watch! If I were to replace this one, I'd probably get one of those low tech 80's Casio, I hear they're in style now anyway :wink:

And woah, that wind star is super neat! It'll be a good exercise to add to my next pre-flight planning!

Milty wrote:@jcal - nice report and sounds fun. Looking forward to getting into a bit of that too. I think this is how it's likely to pan out over the next few weeks and months with variable weather. Circuits if possible, nav practice if not.

It's a pretty good situation to be in to be honest. Some good flexibilty when it comes to weather.


I admit I also found towns to be the more difficult of visual references. Around Essex where I fly they all seem to blend together, but maybe that's just a matter of practice. There's a couple of lakes and reservoires around that help, but mainly roads which in combination with towns really helped. Much easier to identify the town if I could see where the A-something or another intersected with it.
By jcal
#1887129
Milty wrote:I'm finding that when I get close to the target airfield, on the 3 occasions I've approached, I'm always looking futher in the distance to where the airfield is. On our short bimble to Kemble, the instructor seemed a bit surprised that I couldn't see the airfield - if fairness, it was about 75% closer than where I was looking for it. It was also a very sunny day in my defense. I was given the tip to use your map to shield the sun from your eyes. My instructor also talked about getting/making a small suction cup sun visor that you can quickly stick on the screen where the sun is. As long as you're not moving about too much, it should help.

It's funny how hard it is to spot something when your brain is telling you for SURE it's somewhere it's not :lol: . I've also found on occasion returning to the airfield that I've stared myself blind at a spot in the distance and just couldn't spot the airfield when it was basically right in front of my nose!

And thanks for the tip about the sun. I might also get those clip on sunglasses, as uncool as they are, they might be handy. Properly cleaning the windshield before taking off would probably have helped as well :roll:
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By Milty
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1887130
I was wearing sunglasses a couple of weeks ago but in the low morning sun, they honestly didn’t help much. I’m planning on trying the multi-use map next time.
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