Short break for everything but resting

Hello again! My second of three consecutive weeks of dedicated flying has just ended, and while I will talk about the latest experiences and some photos from that later, first I'll talk about my vacation in July.

In the end of June I had just completed four flight lessons and had a week of theory studies before the holiday. On Wednesday July 5th, we had our last theory class, and on the next day I packed my rucksack and took bus and train to Lund, changed to the train for Denmark and went to Copenhagen. There I met my friend Jacob from Uppsala and we boarded another train to Hamburg, this time using our Interrail passes for (mostly) free travel in all of Western Europe.

After having changed train again in Hamburg we arrived in Berlin in the evening (Thursday), and took the U-Bahn (metro) to Alexanderplatz, where our hostel was located. Then we spent two days sightseeing in Berlin. We climbed the TV tower, saw a lot of Berlin wall graffiti, ate currywurst, visited the stasi museum and more. Satisfied on Saturday evening, we boarded the night train to Basel on the border to Swtizerland. Having arrived on Sunday morning, we continued to Bern for a calm day of sightseeing in a city that unfortunately didn't offer much on a Sunday except nice weather.

On the next day we climbed the cathedral of Bern and then the nearby mountain Gurten, and otherwise mostly relaxed walking around in the very beautiful town. I even swam in the intensely green river dividing the city, it was quite cold and also rapid. After two days in Bern, on Tuesday morning we head south again. Because our train from Bern to Milano was delayed we missed our connection to the French border and we had to wait a while for a slower train why our arrival was delayed three whole hours... Around 11 hours after departure from Bern we finally arrived in Monaco and spent the evening there.

Monaco was really fascinating being a beautiful and modern tiny city. It felt like someone dug up two square kilometers of the finest parts of Paris and put them on a steep hill by the French riviera coastline. The view was fantastic indeed. Satisfied after just a few hours in Monaco, we took the local train for 20 minutes to Nice, and checked in at the hostel there. And we were relieved that the only hostel we used with air-conditioner was the place where we needed it the most.

On Wednesday we stayed in Nice, walked around the Old town, climbed a hill by the sea and just relaxed on the beach with a few swims in the warm water. The weather was really warm and sunny so it was a great day. Then on Thursday morning we took the TGV to Paris. Being the fastest conventional rail service on earth right now it was a highlight, really nice. In Paris where I've visited before, we climbed the Eiffel tower to the second floor, walked the Champs-Élysées, climbed the Arc de triomphe and saw the Louvre.

On Friday around lunch, after seeing Notre dame, we took the last train of our joint travel: Thalys to Amsterdam. In Amsterdam I only had an afternoon and evening, so we hurriedly saw some parks, museums, governmental buildings and statues etc., finishing by visiting the Red light district, without entering anywhere... While Jacob stayed in Amsterdam two more days before taking another train back to Sweden, I left on Saturday morning flying with Ryanair from Weeze to Skavsta. Weeze being located past the border to Germany 3.5 hours by bus from Amsterdam, and Skavsta 4 hours from Falun by bus+train it was a quite tiring end of the trip.

In Falun for the remaining two weeks of my summer holidays, I did a few skydives, visited friends and family and returned via Uppsala to Ljungbyhed on Saturday-Sunday July 28-29.

Photos:

Berlin TV tower in Alexanderplatz close to our hostel. As most of you know, I love high places so I could not *not* go up there.

A part of the Berlin wall. On the other side there was a lot of art with political satire etc.

The former Stasi headquarters, now a pretty interesting museum. Stasi was a very scary organisation...

The legendary Tempelhof airport is a huge park since a couple of months only. Quite popular it seemed.

Bern. The unestimated Swiss capital. Small city but very beautiful.

 

Monaco. Really nice, unfortunately most people will never have the privilege of being able to live here.

 

Nice. Very touristy but still really nice place for relaxing and sea swimming.

TGV, the pride of France.

 

Paris was as superb a tourist destination as ever.

 

My friend Rembrandt and a part of the Red light district.

 

I'm still not sure if the extra 5 hours of travel by choosing Ryanair instead of another airline was worth the saved roughly 500 kronor... Anyway, I'm so looking forward to work in such a beauty, with this surrealistic but fantastic view.

Back home in Dalarna again. We do have a very beautiful landscape as well, even though I'm quite used to it.

Canoeing in Runn, it's nice to do this kind of fun simple activities about once a year.

My grandmother visited me on the skydiving camp in Orsa in northern Dalarna. My family's dog Zorro came along.

 

New semester, tons of new things to learn

Finally back in business! Now I've been in Ljungbyhed a week and flown every day! We've practised climbing, descending, navigating manually (not GPS), using flaps (for slow flying), avoiding stall (when you fly too slow so that the airplane begins to fall down/störta), flying at max-speed (370 km/h in our plane) and most importantly, landing. On Thursday I did my first landing ever, safely, and on Friday we flew back and forth around the runway doing 7 landings and take-offs in a row. So now, for the first time, I feel that I could fly without any help and still be fine, if nothing unusual happens.

So this has been a very fun week and I've learnt so much. I haven't hesitated a bit about choosing this course, it's so fun and I'm so excited about the rest of the course!

Apart from flying one hour a day and doing self studies we've been educated in airplane washing this week. We do it completely by hand spraying detergent (rengöringsmedel) and rubbing with a fabric cloth (tygtrasa). Every day we have to clean the wings, the hood (motorhuv), the tail and the wheel legs, and once a week the whole class gathers to clean the rest as well – the roof, the sides and underneath the body and wings.

Next week the military will come to Ljungbyhed for a few weeks of fighter pilot training – so we will not be alone in the air the next two weeks. Even though the fighter pilot students fly old planes, it'll be cool to see a lot of jet airplanes around. My class will have another two weeks of just flight lessons, then two weeks theory and another week of flying before our theory final exams in the middle of September. While we stop all flying before the winter (our planes are not certified for flying in cold weather) I think we'll have time to do our first solo flights before that.

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask in the comments! Next update will probably be about my three weeks summer vacation, and come up in a few days.

Photos:

Three Cirrus SR-20 ready to be boarded for another lesson.

Some of the military's SK-60 share hangar with us. Next week we will see them in action.

The school main building as seen from the airport tower.

 

A student on landing final and another two students queing for start.

 

We visited the tower to learn how they work and get some tips on radio communication.

Everyday life in the sky

A very exciting week has come to an end. This was our first flight week, which means we start each day by having a weather briefing at 07:45 in the hangar. Since some of the Norwegians also had flight week they presented the forecasts for the day in front of all students and the flight instructors. For pilots it's not enough to know if it's going to rain or be sunny, but we check forecasts for most importantly clouds (types, altitudes and degree of sky coverage), winds and visibility. Since we should learn how to fly visually (by looking on the terrain) we need to see were we're flying. For us students that usually means the visibility must be near-perfect (at least 8 km), if there are many clouds they have to be on at least 700 meters height and there must not be more than about 10 m/s wind perpendicular (vinkelrätt) to the runway – because then it's too difficult to land. Also, it must not be thunder and it must not be so cold there is a risk of ice forming on the wings (which is very dangerous).

During the weekend, the forecasts for Monday looked quite bad, but when we gathered in the morning, it was just acceptable. The wind was strong, but parallel to the runway (so it didn't bother us), it was raining in some places but the visibility was ok, and the clouds were precisely on an acceptable height. Tuesday to Thursday were also unstable, but generally better so it was not a problem for any of us. However on Friday afternoon the visibility narrowed so some of us, including me, were not allowed to fly... Which means half of the class has done one more flight lesson than the other half. But we will have to get used anyway to the weather obstructing us.

On Monday I just controlled for a few minutes testing turns, ascents and descents. On Tuesday I controlled for a little longer, doing exercises to learn the effects of the different rudders. On an airplane there are three rudders: ailerons (skevroder) for tilting left/right, elevators (höjdroder) for ascending/descending, and a rudder (sidoroder) for turning left/right. In practise, a pilot need to use all three rudders when turning, which is considerably more difficult than turning in a car. On Wednesday, I taxied (drove) the plane the whole time on the ground and controlled the airplane almost half the time in the air, the main exercise being to fly straight. On Thursday the instructor even let me start and control for most of the time, which of course I was very happy about. I did exercises on turning correctly.

In conclusion, I have had a very fun week and learnt so much. Not only was I given much of the responsibility to fly the airplane in just a few days, but also I've practised a lot trying to learn all normal procedures – i.e. check that the aircraft isn't damaged, starting the engine, taxiing, verifying that the rudders, engine and electronics work as they should etc. I've also learnt a lot about how to talk to the tower on the radio (there are lots of technical terms and phraseology that are very important that we know). You can imagine the importance of talking unequivocally (entydigt) when asking for take-off clearance or similar.

Since each flight lesson is about one hour, and with briefing, debrief etc. in total two hours, we have a lot of free time during flight weeks (especially when the lessons are cancelled...). However during this first week we have learnt so much new I've just studied procedures all days. Today, on Saturday, however I've not studied at all – four of us went to Eslöv (a larger town nearby) to see a flight show, which was really fun to see, and we also took a walk in Söderåsen's national park located really close to Ljungbyhed – and the nature there was really fantastic! Skåne is a mostly very flat region, but in the national park there are small mountains with really steep hills and fantastic views from above.

Next week we only have theory lessons until Thurday when our summer holiday finally starts! I will take the train to Berlin on Thursday evening, and then travel by train in Germany, Switzerland, France and Netherlands before returning to Sweden and then stay two weeks in Dalarna before school starts again (the summer holiday is only three weeks). Directly after the summer break we have three consecutive flight weeks so I will certainly not be unhappy about returning to school!

Photos:

Flight show in Eslöv. The pilot in the video is apparently the only Swedish Aerobatics ”athlete” who competes internationally, and as you see he's really skilled.

A lot of visitors came by private airplanes. In just a year, I will be able to rent an airplane and do the same!

 

 

Söderåsen's national park.