January 29, 2013

Back in busyness



Long time no blog update!

Sorry for not writing anything for two months... I've been busy with various things. In December I studied a lot for the exams in my first three subjects of ATPL theory (for commercial pilot license). I finished the exams with good results on December 17th and could then go to Falun for Christmas holiday. I enjoyed my one week in Dalarna a lot and could relax a bit before my anticipated trip to Japan.

About the exams in Air law, Meteorology and General Navigation, they were about 1 hour, 2 hours and 2½ hours long. All questions are four-choice questions and the pass rates are 80% on the school exam and 75% on the Swedish Transport Agency exams (same as PPL private pilot's licence). The agency exams are taken on a computer at an approved test facility, which is usually a flight school or simply someone's house. I did everything in one day to be able to go home to Falun as soon as possible, which I can't really recommend since I was quite exhausted afterwards...

I went to Japan on December 26th and returned home on January 15th, one day before school started again in Ljungbyhed. During my 20 days in Japan I met lots of friends and traveled to a couple of new regions and did sightseeing. Most of the time not traveling I was in Tokyo area staying partly at a Swedish friend's house and partly at my host family's (from my exchange year in high school) house in Chiba. When traveling I visited Shikoku, Tottori, Mie, Shizuoka and Osaka where I also met two more friends. Finally I went to Sendai where I've also been exchange studying in order to meet more friends and see my school etc. In all it was a great trip and I'm already longing for my next opportunity to go back "home". I definitely want to find a job in Japan when I've finished my studies, I hope it won't be too difficult...

Back in Ljungbyhed we immediately began with three new subjects at full pace. For eight weeks including the exams we will study Aircraft General Knowledge about airframe systems, powerplants (engines) and electrics of an airplane. And Principles of Flight and (Aircraft) Performance. The General Knowledge course spans over lots of knowledge and I feel that it will be the hard part. Both Principles of Flight and Performance are quite related to basic physics so it shouldn't be too difficult for me.

When we've finished these subjects in the middle of March, we will start flying again, which of course we're all very excited about. Let's just hope that the spring weather isn't too typically Swedish.

By the way, the 2010 class of my school TFHS are graduating on Friday, congratulations to them! They've all got contracts to work at Norwegian so a huge good luck!

For pictures from Japan, see Facebook. I'll just post the edited version of the video from my aerobatics flight in October (same as has been posted on Facebook). Oh I'm so looking forward to return to the skies!