Instrument flying completed

The autumn this far has offered mostly warm good weather and everything in school has gone well. Since our fantastic week of fjord flying in Northern Norway we have continued to practice instrument flying. When we do instrument flying in good weather, we wear a large cap (keps) that obstructs our view outside simulating that we're flying in fog. Unfortunately, the weather was generally quite good during the whole period of instrument flying and then deteriorated just in time for our next step - visual night flying - that we're doing simultaneously with the last ATPL theory (theory needed for pilot license as a captain) period of four.

In the last part of instrument flying, among other things, I did an international flight to Odense, Denmark via Roskilde together with another student and the instructor. Since the ATC (air traffic control) procedures differ a little between countries it felt like a valuable experience, and it was of course fun to fly to a new country (even though it's very close I had never been over the Öresund strait before). The last flight was a so-called "final progress check" - a simplified exam testing that we had really understood the important parts of instrument flight during the last 18 hours of flight training and 23 hours of simulator practice.

Visual night flying means what it sounds like - flying at night and under visual flight rules. This is quite an uncommon type of flying since it's difficult to both navigate and see other airplanes during the night. And visual flight rules (VFR) means that it's my own responsibility to know where I am and avoid colliding with other aircraft. Anyway, it's surely a good experience to learn to find places in the dark, since of course we'll all be flying at the airline all times of the day, however under instrument flight rules. I've not yet had the opportunity to try it out together with half of my class - because of the bad weather we have not been able to stay on schedule.

During this last theory block, we'll study four subjects (the previous blocks were three subjects each): human performance and limitations (HPL), flight planning and management (FPM), IFR communications (I-com) and radio navigation (R-nav). HPL is a fairly large subject and parts of it is very interesting talking about how our senses can betray us making us believe the aircraft is behaving in a different way than it actually is.

For example, during an approach in fog of an Airbus A330 jet to Tripoli airport the crew first misinterpret their position before the final descent why they start to descent too early and therefore are on their way of hitting the ground long before the runway. That's not critical as long as you don't continue descent below a certain safe altitude unless you have the runway in sight. When this crew reached this altitude, they decided to abort the landing since they didn't see any runway, and the pilot starts to accelerate and climb in order to prepare for another try. Our sense of balance has a hard time knowing the difference between acceleration and pitching up, and so the pilot felt the acceleration and thought he was climbing while he actually continued to descent and crashed at a high speed straight into the ground. The pilots made many mistakes during the whole procedure, but the most important part is to not trust your senses but your instruments. Instruments in an aircraft rarely fail but the brain is very bad at knowing how you're situated without visual references. See a video (6 minutes) about the crash here:

After we've finished the theory block we'll have our MCC course. It contains some ordinary classes and then mostly simulator training where we'll finally learn to work together as two pilots. In total around 50 hours of training during a period of 1½ month.

Photos:

 

When we had navigated to Växjö there was a Citation Bravo business jet there waiting for their passengers so we talked with the pilots. They were really nice and had interesting stories to tell, one of them had even worked for Norwegian earlier. It must be awesome flying business jets all around the world, staying at luxury hotels, having dinner with all kinds of rich people and having lots of free time on exotic destinations.

On the way back from Växjö with Jesper flying, we climbed to flight level 100 (about 10 000 feet above ground), which is the maximum altitude school allows us to fly at, cool!

This is the Isobar. It's a small bar in the basement of the dormitory and around once a week we meet up here and play games, listen to music etc. Really nice atmosphere!

One of the best things flying IFR is that we can fly through and above clouds why we see all kinds of exciting cloud formations and weathers.

 

 

Incoming Bornholm on my very last daytime visual navigation at TFHS. It's Danish territory but actually belongs to Swedish airspace.

The school mascot Smiley was my co-pilot on the Bornholm flight. He was however too fat to sit in the front seat...

Congratulations to the class of UiT 1101 who informally graduated being finished with all flight-related training and everything in Ljungbyhed. They only have their graduation thesis before they're completely finished. I wish them all luck in their future careers!

Söderåsen national park is so beautiful this time of the year.

In school we have a mock-up of a Boeing 737 simulator that consists of many LCD screens, keyboards, a joystick etc. and an advanced software expansion to MSFSX. We had a long briefing with the IT manager at the school about how it works. 

A page of my logbook. We must always keep  track of every flight and simulator session  so that we can prove we have enough experience for the certificates, qualifications etc.