04-11-2008
(Tuesday 0920) Haven't
written for a while due to different reasons. Mainly
because I've moved into the family row-houses and haven't got internet since.
It's really irritating not to have internet. Anyway, the prog
test in Meteorology went well last Friday. All six Danes got 100% correct
answers.
This week we mostly have Instrument Flight Procedures which is probably the
most difficult subject so far. It's going to be hard flying on the instruments
their way.
I'm getting used to people saluting me. I guess it's about time! It's funny when some elder person in uniform comes up to
you, salutes you, and calls you "sir" just because you're an officer,
but you get used to it eventually.
I'm considering of selling my Mustang. I just don't think it's worth it to have
a car like that just to drive it to work and back. It's
value is falling and it's just slowly getting worn down so I think I'm gonna put it for sale for an overprice. If it gets sold
it's great as I would make some money, if not I'll just enjoy it while it
lasts. Met briefing is up in a couple of minutes, so I better go.
/GEA
04-11-2008
(Tuesday 1655) Just
had a couple of lessons in Flight Safety. The first one was with one of
the German instructors. His background is jets, flying the T38, the F4 Phantom,
some F16 and now he's a Hawk instructor. The reason for having him brief us in Ejection and Forced
Landings is that he has actually ejected and survived. He ejected from a Hawk
about a year ago and told us about the whole chain of events. It was rather
exciting, especially to see the video from the control tower.
Now it's time to get home. I'm starving and I have a feeling that we'll be
flying next week...or maybe it's just wishful thinking. Only time will tell.
Anyway, the weather forecast is finally promising steady cold weather. Today
was a beautiful day with about 10-15 degrees but the rest of the week we'll
have below zero temperatures both day and night. Grrrrr
/GEA
06-11-2008
(Thursday 1325) Today I had my first
CPT, which is basically the first simulator ride, where you practise cockpit
procedures. My instructor for the ride was an ex F18 pilot who he had alot of words of wisdom for me. I learned alot and it was good fun to finally flip some switches and
feel the aicraft through the sim.
I even got to do a take off, a circuit and brought her back in for a landing.
Tomorrow I'm on for CPT2, which will be a bit more advanced, so I'll make sure
that I'm just as prepared and always a few steps ahead of the programme. I look
forward to it. Apart from that, we have a two hour cold weather briefing
tomorrow morning which I'm quite curious about. The weather has been below
freezing these last couple of days and the way it looks, it seems that it's
only going to get colder from now on. Unfortunately there's been no flying
these last couple of days due to icing conditions in the low cloud cover that
we have. Hopefully the skies will clear soon so that people can start getting
airborne once again. It looks like some of us at least, will be airborne next
week if all goes to plan. Let's wait and see.
/GEA
07-11-2008
(Friday 1310) Just
debriefed my CPT2. It went ok, yet I had the feeling that it went worse
than yesterday. Perhaps it's because I had greater expectations.
Anyway, I got a "snake" for yesterday's CPT, which is slang for
"Standard exceeded" which is the highest grade. Hopefully I'll carry
on this track but only time will tell. I suppose I'll get my grade for today's
CPT later on today.
What's left on the programme is a couple of lessons in
Meteorology and then at 1600 we have a Dodge ball tournament in the gym. It's a
chatrity event so all teams pay $10 per player and
the money go for charity. It's going to be good fun I think, yet our team isn't
taking it too seriously so we're probably not gonna
make it too far...
We had the cold weather briefing this morning and cold weather is much more
dangerous than you might imagine. Frost bites are very common when it's so cold
and if you're not careful you can lose limbs, and in worst case you can die of
hypothermia. I got my jackets and multiple layers of underwear ready!
Back to
school.
/GEA
07-11-2008
(Friday 2130) Finally I have internet
once again at home. It has been hell not having net at home.
I got my grade for CPT2 and it's another snake. I think that all Danes got a
snake in all three CPT's but I'm not sure. It's just
a WAG.
On Monday I'm on the programme for the last CPT and then it's on to Clearhood sims
and actual Clearhood flying. Clearhood
is basically visual flying where you use outside references like the horizon
etc to relate yourself to instead of looking down at the instruments. It's
contact flying and slowly evolves into aerobatics after having done slow
flying, stalls and spins and unusual attitudes. It's also learning the basics
like how to take off and land the aircraft.
During my CPT today I got an engine failure on one of my take offs. The Harvard
II is really good in this matter. I had just become airborne when the alarms
came on so I just lowered the nose and landed on what was left of the runway.
The runway was about 8500 feet long and after having taken off, aborted, landed
and stopped, I still had over 4000 feet of runway left ahead of me, so it's
nice to know that the aircraft accelerates fast but also decelerates fast. One
common error for new pilots is that they overspeed
the flaps or landing gear. They have to be retracted by 147kts and it really
doesn't take many seconds for the plane to reach that speed.
Oh yes, WAG means Wild Ass Guess by the way...
/GEA
09-11-2008
(Sunday 2050) We had the baptism of the
son of one of the Danish instructors today. The mass took part at the base
church and then we attended the party at the instructor's home. We had a good
time. So did we yesterday evening when COM and his
girlfriend had their House warming at their new home and all of our class was
invited and also the senior Danish students.
It seems that I'm the only Dane on tomorrow's sim
programme, where I'll be doing my CPT3. The sim ride
is at 0800, which means that briefing is at 0700. I hate waking up when it's
still pitch black outside but I better get used to it.
Being the only one on tomorrow's programme means that after my CPT3 I'll be on
the same level as the other Danes and not behind anymore. It feels good but at
the same it's a bit intimidating as I have a feeling that things are really
going to accelerate rapidly this week. Just bring it on!
I uploaded another video on my youtube channel by the
way. My channel is called F16GEA if you didn't know. The video is from last
week's water entry and dinghy drill. Hope you like it. The next video I upload
might be from an actual flight, but that might take a while. Two of our mates
from the Academy who are now in
/GEA
10-11-2008
(Monday 1115) I had my CPT3 this morning
and it went excellent. I felt ahead of the aircraft all the time which is the
way it should be. I practised all the checks, take off, climb, level off,
airspeed changes, turns, climbing turns, landing and all the radio calls. It
was good fun and I cannot wait to strap into the real thing and get airborne.
Next on my flying programme will be the first Clear Hood sim,
where I'll practise slow flight characteristics, stalls and recoveries among
other things. From now on I have to be prepared for a couple of flights ahead
at least.
Apparently the school had decided that our class was going to do the first
three flights in the sim instead of the real aircraft
due to the flying programme being so behind. However it's not going to be the
case for us Danes. I guess our government didn't pay $2 million per person so
that we could fly a sim. That's the good side of the
contract. Another good side is that we'll be the ones finishing the course at
around the date when we should.
I fell sorry for my Canadian class mates because of the situation but that's
life.
Now I'm off to lunch. Later on we have a couple of Meteorology classes and I
have the afternoon shift in Bandit flight with a few tasks to be done.
/GEA
11-11-2008
(Tuesday 1925) Today was a public
holiday here in
Tomorrow it's back to school and hopefull it won't be
long before my next sim ride and my first flight in
the aircraft.
/GEA
13-11-2008
(Thursday 1310) In one hour I have the
briefing for the first Clear Hood sim where I'll be
practising slow flight, stalls, descents etc. The sim
itself is in two hours.
Otherwise not much news from "the Jaw."
Tomorrow we have the first progress test in Instrument Flight Procedures and
it's not an easy one. IFP is a hard subject and there's alot
of stuff to remember. Among other things there are alot
of rules of thumb for how to calculate your ground speed, your turn radius and
so on and you have to be able to use them in the air.
The best part of the day these days is when I get home in the evening and open
the door and my little boy just runs to me and says "dada." Nothing
beats that. But man I can't wait to start flying!
Tomorrow we have the welcome party for the new guys who just started the
course. I think we're going to have alot of fun and
hopefully the new guys from 0809 will enjoy it even more.
/GEA
14-11-2008
(Friday 1215) We had the IFP test this
morning. I didn't do too well as I only got 92%. 92 might sound good but think
of it this way: If all pilots only know nine out of ten things that they should
know, and this would also apply to Air Traffic Controllers, aircraft mechanics
and other personnell in the flight business; then
there would be alot of holes in the system and the
errors caused by the human factor would be on the increase. Considering that
human errors are responsible for over 80% of aviation accidents and incidents,
I'm sure that this number could be reduced considerably if all pilots knew all
their shit.
Anyway, now it's time for the afternoon Met briefing. Have a good weekend! I
got another snake for yesterday's sim by the way.
/GEA
17-11-2008
(Monday 1310) We had the VFP AR exam
this morning, standing for Visual Flight Procedures Air Regulations. I got 100%
correct answers so there's not much to complain about there. After that we had
a couple of lessons in Flight Safety and afterwards I went and got my egress
trainer renewed as we have to get it done every 30 days and mine was about to
run out.
At lunchtime I went downtown to pick up my car as it was at an authorised Ford
mechanic. I had a small problem with the elctric
windows and while that had to be fixed I got an oil change and a service and
got the wheels rotated in order to wear them down evenly. They also did some
electronic upgrades for me, and hell; they even washed and vacuumed the car
inside out so it looks new once again! All that for just
$108. Unbelievable! Back home it would have costed
at least 15 times as much just for a normal family car - and then when they
hear Ford Mustang GT they would probably times the number with a new factor
just because it's a sports car.
It's also strange to think about that fact that I'm paying much less in
insurance for it than I paid back home for a family car. Oh well, you have to
enjoy such previlages while they last. Perhaps I
should wait with putting it for sale. I will hate myself the day it gets sold
no matter how much I get for it.
That's it for now. I strongly believe that we'll be flying by the end of the
week or the beginning of next week. Stay tuned.
/GEA
19-11-2008
(Wednesday 0955) COM was on the flying
programme yesterday but his flight got cancelled due to aircraft
unavailability. So we figured that he would be put on today's programme but
having been outdoors this morning, we doubt if anyone's going to fly at all
today. We had freezing rain again last night - not alot
of it but still. As you can imagine it's not exactly
ideal flying conditions. Freezing rain falls as supercooled
water drops, which means that their temeperature is
below freezing but they're still in liquid form. The problem is that they
freeze to ice and stick as soon as they hit something. Apart from that we have
heavy winds and very low, thick clouds so things look quite hopeless today.
All we can do is stand by and be prepared to be prepared.
/GEA
21-11-2008
(Friday 0945) Just
been to the morning briefing. Normally it would be TGIF today but
apparently that's a thing of the past. We're so much behind with the flying
programme that we have to come in for the early briefing at 0700 tomorrow
morning...and maybe Sunday too. And the chances of even getting in the air are
still very small but we have to be here anyway. Otherwise there's a bit of
slightly off-topic news.
/GEA
23-11-2008
(Sunday 1910) Yesterday we attended the
Bandit solo party for the senior students. It was held at the officer's mess
and it was nice to see how it's done.
Then in the evening, eight of us Danes met up at MAT's
place with our laptops and we played Battlefield 2 for a few hours. I had
forgotten how much fun it was to shoot your friends from a great distance with
a sniper rifle. Today was a rather relaxed day.
I'm actually on tomorrow's flying programme but I don't know how realistic it
is to get in the air as we have a ground school prog
test in Meteorology at around the same time that I should be in for my flight
briefing. Hopefully
the test goes well...
/GEA
24-11-2008
(Monday 2230) Guess whether I got to fly
today. At least the Meteorology prog test went well.
The class average for the test was 100% so the instructor had a hard time
working that out.
Tomorrow we're not available for the flying programme as all foreign nationals
are to attend a course in Winter Survival. It'll be all the Italians, a German
instructor, the Hungarians and us of course. The idea is to get theoretical
knowledge before noon and then it's on to trying some of the learnt skills
outside in the afternoon. Fortunately we're going to have 4 degrees and
sunshine which is awesome. I sure am happy that we didn't have to go through
the course in cold weather.
Then perhaps Wednesday I'll finally get my (long awaited) first flight in the
Harvard II.
Stay
tuned!
/GEA
25-11-2008
(Tuesday 2020) The winter survival
training was fun today, mostly because we had really beautiful weather. 5 degrees and bright sunshine and not a breeze of wind.
Tomorrow starts with a phsical training lesson at
0700 followed by three lessons of Meteorology. We're approaching the end of
that subject and we're gonna be really happy when
we're done with it as it fills quite a big portion of our schedule at the moment.
I'm on the flight programme schedule for tomorrow at 1300 and I have a feeling
that this time I'll actually get to fly. The weather forecast is promising and
the flight does not conflict with ground school schedule. The only thing is
that I'll be briefing in my lunch break but I can live with that.
I think that I'm prepared well for the flight but you can always practise the
red pages an extra time or two among other things - so I will before I head to
bed.
/GEA
26-11-2008
(Wednesday 1315) Just got back from my
flight...NOT! I was really close though. My instructor briefed me, we put our flight gear on and went down to duty ops. The
weather had been ok with a ceiling of 10,000 feet but as soon as we got to duty
ops it simply closed down. Base at 1600 feet and wet snow.
So we got cancelled. Grrr!
The weather tomorrow is forecasted really good but
let's see if there's something else in the way of the flight. All I can do is wait and when it happens it happens.
/GEA
28-11-2008
(Friday 1120) I didn't fly yesterday and
I'm not on the programme today either. Somebody up there must not like me.
Maybe I'll be on tomorrow's programme but to be honest I don't know whether I
would enjoy a day off more than a flight on a Saturday. You have to think that
when you fly you don't just fly. You have to attend the morning briefing at
0700 and then you're basically in the whole day.
Yesterday evening we had "Soup and movie" night at one of the Danish
instructors. It was a nice and quiet evening.
My little boy is getting acquainted to the day care at the base. Apparently
there are many French Canadians as yesterday after asking him something he
answered me: "Oui"
Have a nice weekend.
/GEA