Seeing the world upside down

Blue skies!

- Would be nice right now... I'm now halfway into my very last week of flying in 2012 before a long winter break filled with theory studies. Since we've still not had any theory classes after the exams these five weeks have been very relaxing and I've spent a lot of time into playing video games and taking naps during the day... Because of unstable weather I've been in the air about half of the weekdays, which I should be satisfied with since many classmates have not been able to fly as much. The last week have included two highlights in my pilot career. One was when I yesterday landed my first time at another airport than Ljungbyhed, namely Malmö Sturup and Kristianstad airport. It was really instructive and fun to land at a large airport such as Sturup! The other highlight is the main topic of today's blog post.

In Ljungbyhed we will fly two types of airplanes besides the four-seat Cirrus we usually use. One of them is a Scottish Aviation Bulldog, also known within the Swedish military as SK-61. It's a single-engine two-seat airplane first built in 1969 with an important difference from our other airplanes: it's certified for advanced maneuvers. That means we are allowed to fly it in any direction including straight up, straight down and upside-down (for a short while). Last week I flew the Bulldog for two hours – the only two hours I'll have this privilege at TFHS. That's because the objective of the exercises in the Bulldog are just to get a basic feeling of being in abnormal situations, and knowing the counter-measures if it would happen in an airliner.

During the first of these two flight lessons we mainly practised deep stall, i.e. slowing down and/or turning too steep until the plane falls vertically. Then the instructor put the plane into abnormal attitudes – a 90 degree bank, a very steep climb, upside-down etc – and I practiced getting back to a normal attitude. During the second lesson we practised spin: trying to turn sharply when stalling so that the plane starts rotating while falling rapidly. Obviously all this was performed at high altitudes under full control by the flight instructor. For safety we also wore parachutes so that we could leave the airplane if necessary.

When we were finished with the mandatory part the teacher simply asked me what kind of maneuver I'd like to try out, wow! In the two lessons I performed myself five barrel rolls and three loopings and the teacher showed even cooler stunts like the hammerhead, avalanche, the Cuban eight etc. I felt like a 12 year old being at the the best amusement park on the planet, hehe. Watch the videos!

On a side note, an unexpected scenario unveiled last week during a night flight lesson (practicing flying in dark) when a Norwegian student and his instructor happened to see a fire in a storehouse on the ground close to Ljungbyhed. They alerted the fire authority and circled the area until the fire squad arrived which could prevent the fire to spread to the adjacent house.
http://hd.se/klippan/2012/10/18/flygplan-upptackte-brand-i-uthus/ (Swedish)

Videos:

Boarding the Bulldog (short clip)

During the first maneuver, a half-roll, half-loop, I get a grey-out (I see only grey) because of the high g-force, so after that I strain (spänner mig) as much as I can...

My instructor enters spin and then exits it.

The teacher shows loops and rolls and then I try. The fun starts after 0:50.

Temporarily demoted to passenger

Yo!

I really hate Swedish climate... Recently it has become cold, windy and rained a lot, and because of that we've stayed on the ground most days. There are mainly three weather properties that highly affects flying small airplanes by visual flight rules (VFR): visibility, cloud height and wind. While driving a car in heavy fog usually only means you should slow down a bit and be careful, flying in fog is a larger problem since there's no road to follow (you don't know where you are) and on collision course without another aircraft you will often not know it before it's too late. Legally we usually need 5 km of horizontal visibility to fly, while preferably we want much more – 20 km to be able to navigate without difficulties.

Since we're not allowed to fly inside clouds by VFR, we need the cloud height to be higher than our planned flying altitude with some margin. In the end that means the clouds must be around 500 meters above ground or more. Finally, the wind can make a very good-looking day for flying (blue clear skies) a bad one. But while we must fly for a longer time in headwind, or be heading for a different place than we want to go to in side-wind, the only moment the wind is a flight safety issue is at landing (and sometimes however seldom on take-off). Since we want to come to a quick stop on the runway while we can't fly slower than our current stall speed in the air (because then we'll simply fall down), an airplane always land and take off in headwind (so that the speed over the ground is as low as possible).

There's always two directions in which you can land on a runway, but how to do if the wind is coming from the side and there's no different-angled runways? Then we have to fly partly sideways and just before touch-down we turn fast so that the wheels come down straight. This is a little tricky, why we are not allowed to fly unless the wind from the side is extremely low (maximum 2,5 m/s) until we have more experience. Anyway, lately the wind has often been strong and in the wrong direction, why most days the lessons have been cancelled.

While I'll explain that later, the opposite to VFR is instrumental flight rules, IFR, which allows airplanes to fly in clouds and in fog, but only exactly the paths that the air traffic control tells us. We will learn such flying much later on.

Photos:

Klippan from above soon after take-off

Approach Ljungbyhed. The short runways are out of use, but 10 years ago when they weren't Ljungbyhed had four paved runways – more than Arlanda!

 

 Last week most of us could ride in the back seat on another's flight lesson because we practiced flying with maximum weight allowed. This is my classmate Petter's first touch and go-landing of three. We often practice landings by landing and then quickly taking off again without stopping.

 Myself flying, the footage taken by Niklas in the back seat. Just level flight.

How to land in crosswind.