Sunday 10 February 2013

First (of what I suspect will be many) weather delay


Well I headed up to the airport for my second proper flying lesson today, but the weather was decidedly against us. That put a stop to any chance of actually flying today, what with the combination of rain, mist, cloud and wind today. Not exactly unexpected this time of year and I suspect this will hardly be an isolated problem, especially this time of year. So two hours of ground school stuff it was to be, and at least according to the instructor, doing that now was actually a pretty good idea as it allowed us to plough through quite a lot of material and hopefully prepare well for when we do manage to get in the air.

Mostly straight forward stuff, understanding the various bits of the airplane better, going through all of the paperwork that is associated with flying, and gaining an understanding on how to read a weather report (something that I suspect will come up quite a bit if today is anything to go by!):



We also went through on the ground what we were going to do for the next few weeks and did the various briefings that were going to be needed. More on that when I get back in the air and actually get to do them.

Also over the past week I have at least started on the big pile of reading I’ve got to do. Basically in order to get your PPL you need to pass 7 written exams, namely:

  1. Air Law
  2. Aircraft General and Principles of Flight
  3. Flight Performance
  4. Human Factors
  5. Meteorology 
  6. Navigation
  7. Radio Telephony

As I was advised to, I’ve been concentrating on Air Law to begin with, as that’s the one you need to get out of the way ASAP. All the others you can pretty much take whenever you like (although they must all be complete before you can get your licence), but until you pass Air Law they don’t allow you to fly an aircraft solo, so you need to get it done in order to progress. So I’ve been spending an hour or so each day learning about the rules of the air, different types of airspace and the difference between Flight Level and Altitude. Most of it seems fairly logical (which is probably a good thing!), although I have definitely wandered into a whole new level of the use of acronyms!

So that’s it for this week. Got two sessions booked in for next weekend, hopefully the weather will improve!

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