An ordinary day at TFHS

Hello! We're now in the beginning of our fourth week of flying, and while we have some theory and final tests in between we have at least another four fun weeks in the sky before the long Swedish winter and only theory studies. The final tests are on September 13th, all eight or so of them in one day. If we fail any of the tests we will do re-exams the following week, and in both cases around September 20th we will do the offical theory exams for Transportstyrelsen (The Transportation Bureau) that are neccessary for our Private Pilot Licenses (PPL). After that, the theory lessons will become more advanced as we'll start studying what an airline pilot needs to know, as opposed to a pilot who only flies small airplanes in his free time.

I thought I could make an example on how our daily schedule on flight weeks looks like:

• 06:50 – I wake up, eat breakfast.
• 07:35 – I do the 10 minute walk to the school's hangar for weather briefing.
• 07:45-08:10 – One of us students (taking turns) shows weather maps and weather forecasts for the day with the projector and discusses whether we will be able to fly as scheduled or not. Afterwards each flight instructor meets his/her three students and we have a short briefing about today's flight lessons. The student who is scheduled to fly in the morning stays, the rest of us walk home.
• 09:45 – If I'm flying the second round, I'll walk back to the hangar and meet my instructor personally, and if there's no questions about the weather or the flight lesson we'll immediately walk out to the airplane. I do a ”Pre-flight check”, checking that nothing seems damaged on the fuselage, that air vents are not obstructed and that there's fuel and oil.
• 10:15 – While reading the checklists so that everything is checked and ok, I start up the engine, ask the airport tower for fresh weather information, and then ask for clearance to taxi (=drive on the ground) to the runway holding point.
• 10:25-11:10 – I ask the tower for permission to depart, then do the take-off mostly from Runway 29R (the right runway in the direction 290 degrees). I fly at 200 m altitude most often west to the coast north of Helsingborg and then do the scheduled exercises. For example having climbed to 700 meters, the instructor turns the power to idle (pretending that the engine has stopped) and I'm then supposed to find a suitable field on the ground for emergency landing and then ”try” (pretending to try) to re-start the engine while I'm flying towards the field and prepare to land. When we're approaching ground, the instructor gives full power again and I climb back to the original altitude. When the exercises are finished, I head back to Ljungbyhed, gets permission to land and then do the landing.
• 11:15 – Having taxied back to the parking area outside the hangar I shut down the engine and I have debriefing with the instructor about how it went, and fill out my log book etc.
• 11:40 – Back home I eat lunch (usually leftovers from yesterday's dinner) and the rest of the day I study with my theory books and/or play videgames etc, and of course eat dinner. 1-2 days a week I do some exercise, in the gym or playing football etc.

As you can see, we have quite a calm schedule when we're flying – as opposed to the theory weeks with classes from 08:00 to 16:30 most days. However, of course we are supposed to prepare for each flight lesson by reading about the exercises and learn checklists etc. by heart.

If the weather is bad and we can't fly, then we usually are free the whole day. Of course we all want to fly though, so we're not exactly happy when it happens. In the three weeks this far I've done 13 lessons, which means two lessons were cancelled because of bad weather. In the very unstable weather that this summer has given us, that is quite a good record I think.

Please ask if you wonder anything, or just leave a comment anyway!

Photos:

 

The parking area in front of the hangar. A PA-31, that we will just fly a little in fall next year up front, and five Cirrus SR-20 that we fly during most of our training in Ljungbyhed. The school owns six PA-31 and six SR-20.

The interior of Cirrus SR-20. Four seats, a 200 horsepower engine, 200 km/h cruise speed, 100 km/h stall speed (minimum flying speed), 212 liters gasoline gives a range of 1450 km.

 

 

Passing Åstorp at 200 meters towards Öresund. It is actually pouring down straight ahead (first picture) which we passed through a few seconds.

At 1500 meters at the coast, amazing clouds.

 

My textbooks for Private Pilot License – we're supposed to memorize all of this in about three months. Also the map I use when flying, folded around the areas we usually use. The heights in black digits (2500, 65(00) ) are the maximum heights in feet (30 cm) that we don't need to ask the Air Traffic Control for clearance for.