Exciting times

Hello! Long time since last time as usual...

Now is a very exciting period since we all are supposed to do our practical exams for our Private Pilot's Licenses during this and next week – the first of my classmates already tomorrow! If we pass the exam we will immediately acquire the license with which we are allowed to fly basically any single engine piston (propeller) aircraft on our own responsibility anytime we want. However in reality the school's aircraft are not available for private use and in order to fly at a flight club we will have to learn to fly their specific aircraft in order to get them to allow us to rent it. I will probably learn to fly Ljungbyhed flying club's Piper PA-28 aircraft – the second most common civilian aircraft in the world – as soon as possible.

The exam itself takes 2-3 hours including a short theoretical oral exam, briefing, around one hour of flying and debriefing. Before we are allowed by the school to do the final exam we will have a final progress check flight with a school instructor and a repetition flight for anything that is found at the progress check to need more practice. Generally the school "mock exam" is more difficult than the real one, and it's rare for students to be flunked on the real one.

I've been on a few quite fun and instructive flights lately. Most importantly I've been on solo navigations first to Halmstad, Växjö, Kalmar, Ronneby and back to Ljungbyhed in just over 3 hours. Then to Göteborg City Airport (Säve), Jönköping and Växjö again on the longest trip this far: 620 kilometers in over 4 hours including a short break. Especially Säve was really cool since it's a quite busy airport being an important base for Ryanair and it's located fairly centrally in the city so on the way there I got a good view of most of Göteborg. I have also had 3 more lessons (4 in total) in the simulator where we practice flying in bad weather including resolving abnormal flight conditions. The most difficult part was to get back to stable level flight after the teacher had put me in extreme flight attitudes (e.g. nose pointing almost straight down banking steeply to the left) with no visual references nor the artificial attitude indicator (horizon on the instrument panel)...

Also, another class has graduated: the 2010 entrance class of the University of Tromsø. That is nine Norwegian students, and left on the school are two more Norwegian classes, and my class of course. A little tragic is the fact that of the four girls attending the school until now, three of them are UiT10 students, so from now there will only be one girl left... Though perhaps more poor her than anything else.

Photos:

 

This is Bolmen – a lake on the border between the län of Halland, Kronoberg and Jönköping – shortly before spring finally erased the white color from southern Sweden.

 On my way to Växjö.
 

The instruments up close. Cruising at 1500 feet (450 m) in 111 knots (205 km/h) on a northerly course (024 degrees). Not the same occasion as the photo above.

Göteborg from above.

 

This is our Company Flight Plan in which we enter the most important information such as courses, distances and frequencies to the different air traffic controllers. about the flight and then follow up times and remaining fuel during flight. We also often check on our map that we haven't veered off course. Lakes, highways and churches are especially useful for locating yourself on the map.

Me and a classmate parked at Jönköping airport in late afternoon.

Congratulations on the graduation of the 2010 University of Tromsø class!