I'd like to take this opportunity to invite those who are interested in following my blogging further to my personal blog located HERE.

A new blogger will soon be taking my place here at Aviation.ca, and will surely keep all of my former readers interested with another "From the ground up" story from the student pilots perspective.

I'd also like to say Merry Christmas to everyone out there, and all the best in the new year.

I will be travelling south for the next several weeks, but will keep in touch with everything back home here at Aviation.ca - Your Everyday Source For Canadian Aviation!

So, once again, a special thank you to all of those who have followed my blogging, commented, emailed, and supported me through this entire experience. It has, in every sense of the word, been an absolute blast!

Sincerely;

Mark Morissette
Courtice, Ontario, Canada.
Home Airport: CYOO

I actually suffered so many cancellations that I eventually lost my student pilot currency, and had to take a brief dual flight with my instructor in order to get current once again. Although I thought perhaps it would be a "Wasted" flight, as usual my instructor made it productive and entirely worthwhile by covering a multitude of inflight situations, some of which we had not practiced in some time.

After much drama leading up to the big day, and some questions on the morning of, the inevitable finally happened on the morning of December 6'th, 2005:

____________

No suspense from this blogger...I passed the flight test this morning!

It wasn't entirely without drama, however.

I got to the airport shortly after 7AM, as planned. The weather (At the time) was OK - not stellar, but OK. The ceiling was high enough that we would be able to get to my favoured north training area for everything, including the upper airwork.

I sat down and started the paperwork...everything went well up untill I got to my takeoff calculations. Curiously enough, whenever I have done these before the temperature has always been above zero - this morning, it was signifigantly below zero.

Now, the issue I had with this is that the Cessna 152 charts do not list figures for temperatures below 0 degrees. I was (Admittedly feeling stupid about it) stumped.

I spoke to the instructor on the desk, and he informed me that I was simply to use the "zero degree" portion of the chart. He also proceeded to check with a few others about the situation, and it was confirmed - I was told to use the 0 Degree portion of the chart, as there was no way to interpolate below such, as you would do when the temps are on the positive side. (The charts do go up to 40 Degrees celcius on the positive side).

Ok, that makes life really easy.

I setup stickies on the Journey Log to indicate all of the relevant maintenance and hour information.

My POH has been laden with stickies for quite a while now, so there was no need to bother with it.

I sat back, with about a half hour to spare, and did some last minute studying. I also spoke to the ramp guy who confirmed where my aircraft was, that it was fueled according to my requests, and that it was basically ready to go.

It was outside, though...no "cushy" warm-hangar preflight for me today! :-)

A quick look outside revealed that the clouds were rolling out, and there was beautifull blue sky over the airport - just what I wanted to see. Winds were coming up though, and that concerned me.

The examiner arrived at around 9AM, as scheduled, and we met in dispatch.

So, off for the ground brief...the main classroom was empty, so we used it instead of one of the small briefing rooms.

Not much to say about that - the preparation and studying paid off, as we flew through this and I found out after the fact that I scored perfectly on such.

The flight test examiner is, as I was told, a really nice guy. His calm down-to-earth attitude has without doubt helped many a freaked-out student pilot remain calm under pressure.

Me included.

Before long, it was time to head out to the plane. I had to run back to dispatch to get the plane signed out, and grab my headset. This gave me about 20 minutes to collect myself.

We met at the plane, and I started preflighting while the examiner looked on.

Problem 1 - the clounds have come in again, and it's not looking good. Ugh - the ATIS is calling 2300 broken. Not enough altitude for the airwork.

I hope for a break, and continue.

There is another student who is on the verge of his own checkride who is out preflighting his own plane for a solo. He takes a few seconds to come over and introduce himself to the DFTE, since he'll be booked with him as well in a short time.

The preflight went smooth, and after I was done he asked me a few questions, all of which I was expecting, and were easy to answer.

We climbed in to get out of the cold, and I did the passenger briefing. Done. Easy.

First quirk of the day is that the engine is cranky. I don't want to flood it, so I feed only two primes. It starts, and promptly stalls.

A third prime, and it still refuses to start after an extended crank.

A fourth prime, and it begrudgingly comes to life.

Whew...that would have been embarassing to not even be able to get the plane started right at the beginning of the flight test.

I get a taxi clearance to the north apron from the hangar, and then sit to allow the engine to warmup. I look around at the clouds (Now increasingly closing in), and pick the DFTE's brain on his opinion. As I suspected, he doesn't provide any guidance, but just listens to what I have to say.

I cautiously suggest that the current conditions "Aren't going to work" for much except circuits, dissapointed in such. I'm worried that we're about to come to a grinding halt.

He suggests we run the circuits anyways, and make a decision once we have a better view from circuit altitude. Good idea.

The takeoff and circuit goes well - as we are on downwind, we spot a little sliver of blue sky off to the east, and agree that we'll see if it works.

I turn base, and setup for the requested normal landing.

On short final I advise the tower of our plans to head east. I'm not happy about having to go this way versus my more familliar area to the north, but I much prefer it to the west. I shouldn't complain - if it wasn't for that sliver of blue sky to the east, I would have been toast.

I continue the aproach. The landing is awesome, probably one of the better "normal" landings I've ever done, even considering the now gusty variable winds, and the stress of the flight test.

We touch and go, climb out of the circuit and start heading east.

The hole is still there, and once we clear the bank above us, I climb into it.

I dislike doing this, since the hole is only about 3 or 4 miles in diameter. I've got the words "Minimums, minimums!" flashing through my head as we dodge around in the hole, staying away from the clouds surrounding us on all sides.

We get to 3500 feet, and I do the HASEL check and then setup for slow flight as requested.

That's a non event, I maintain my alititude and airspeed perfectly, and the instructor calls the return to cruise.

Another 180 and he requests my stalls. Again, a non event.

I catch a brief glance at the scoresheet and see I've scored perfectly on both.

The examiner takes the controls and induces the spiral dive. On request, I recover, but as I hoped I wouldn't do, I make the mistake of pulling out slightly before the wings are level.

A minor mistake, but it costs me a point.

As we recover our altitude, the examiner pulls the throttle. Forced approach.

It goes mostly OK, but I executed a 360 degree turn over my base keypoint in order to bleed altitude, and then still had to slip on my base to bleed more.

I easilly made my field and it would have been fine overall, but I found out after the fact that I lost signigant points for having made the 360 turn. Apparently, proceeding to the alternate base keypoint and then backtracking would have been the preferable option, but it never came to mind at the time...even though I have been trained to do exactly that.

Since missing the intended field on the forced approach is the most common reason for flight test failure, I had my heart set on making the field. I get concerned about proceeding to base keypoints on the other side of my chosen field, since I'm always worried I'll misjudge, and then not be able to make the backtrack.

Obviously, undershooting the field is an instant failure.

Anyhow, I passed the forced approach exercise, but got my lowest score on my flight exam on this exercise. This is very commonly the lowest scoring item on most peoples flight tests I understand, and I know why.

The precautionary landing exercise went mostly well. On my low pass, I accidentally used 30 degrees of flaps instead of 20, although my airspeed was correct. My mistake, although I have a theory (irrelevant) of why this may have happened. The rest was inconsequential.

We climb back to 2000ASL and the instructor asks for the diversion.

I plan well, remember to reset the HI (a nemesis before) and start out. Within a minute I realize that I mistook my initial city reference, since I'm verbally calling out landmarks, and when I pass over a major north/south highway that should have been long behind of us by now, I realize something isn't right.

The DFTE gently prods me to ensure I know what town I'm over. I catch my mistake, and further referencing us to several other landmarks in the area, I immediately pick out our current location..correctly, this time. He seems satisfied that I now know my exact location, but it costs me, mark wise. I'm not pleased with myself.

The headwind is unbelieveable as we trek back towards the airport. I get a straight in clearance for runway 30, as I suspected I would.

We kludge along at what I'm only guessing couldn't have been more then 50 knots of groundspeed. It seems to take forever. We make smalltalk, and once again the examiners easy-going positive and friendly attitude makes things more comfortable.

I call established 3 mile final, but the tower is busy (Some other plane is to the north of the airport, apparently lost, asking for DF steers) so I only get a quick response and a request to call a 1 mile final.

I get established well on the approach, contrary to some other flights where straight-ins have threw me off somewhat. As I'm about to call our 1 mile final the tower calls us in sight, and clears me to land. The DFTE asks for a soft field landing.

As I setup for the 54Kt soft field approach speed, I get amused at how slow we are indeed now flying - the winds have increased since we took off, and we're just creeping along. It reminds me of the days when I used to fly model aircraft, and with a strong enough wind I could fly some of my planes backwards across the field.

The landing goes about as good as could be expected - it's indeed nice and soft, with a nice nosewheel hold-off.

We taxi back and shut down. The DFTE mentions that it was a nice well flown flight, but doesn't say anything obvious like "You've passed" so I'm sort of in limbo.

I ask him to stay with the plane for a few minutes while I run to get the wheel chocks, since I've left them near the hangar.

That done, he heads inside and asks me to join him in a briefing room shortly thereafter.

I finish stowing the plane and check in with dispatch. The usual questions ensue - "How'd ya do?"... "Did you pass?".

I don't have a definitive answer for them yet, although I have no reason to beleive I've botched anything seriously enough to have failed. Besides, if that happens, the flight test examiner apparently informs you in midflight, and gives you the option to terminate the test.

I never heard anything of the like, so I've no reason to think there's a problem.

I head over to the classroom and get handshakes from the DFTE, and my instructor - that's a good thing, I guess?!

We sit down and go over things. Surprisingly (to myself at least), I'm told I've apparently done exceptionally well on the whole test, with the exception of a few lost points.

I surpassed tolerances (Altitude issue) on one item, as mentioned I scored rather low on my forced approach (thanks to my frowned-upon 360 turn), and I lost a few other points here and there.

Otherwise, there was a long string of perfects, which resulted in a very high overall score.

We discuss my forced approach in depth, and I'm informed of exactly why I scored so low - this cost me most of my lost points on my overall score. The DFTE says the important part was that I would have made the field and landed satisfactorilly, but he strongly disliked my 360 turn, and he was not shy to stress the fact to me.

He tells several stories of how he's failed people who did the exact same thing, and then proceeded to loose sight of their chosen field. If the student looses sight of their chosen field and then botches the approach as a result, it's an instant failure.

My mind flashes back to my instructor telling me never to put my back to the field, but I did it anyways. My own fault, nobody elses - I was trained *not* to do exactly what I did.

But, overall, I passed the exercise.

The only other comments were strongly positive, both for me, and for my instructor. The DFTE says that his impression on my training was that it was obviously excellent, and my instructor will receive Kudos for such on the report. :-)

And that's about it. We went back to dispatch to do some paperwork, and I grabbed lunch at the airport Canteen.
And so, as anticlimactic as it seemed, it was over.

Although my flight test took place several weeks ago, coming back to "Current Day", I have not actually flown since. Many familly commitments and other constraints have led me to be (Sadly) devoid of any flying since the big day came and went.

On another note, with this post my time here at Aiation.ca (As a featured writer) is drawing to a close. This portion of the site has been reserved for the "Student Pilot" experience, and as such, since I'm technically no longer a student, I will be passing the torch.

An new student pilot will soon be taking over my position here at Aviation.ca, and will provide yet another new and interesting view from the student pilot perspective.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has followed my blog here, and would also like to invite my readers to continue to follow my aviation experiences at my own personal blog. You can find it HERE.

I'll be making one further blog entry here after this one, with a final "Goodbye" for those who may have missed this post.

Once again, thanks to all of those who have followed my posts here, and who have chatted with me in the message forums, emailed me, and in some cases, chatted with me on the phone.

Although I initially thought that my blog would only serve as a personal reference, or a "Diary" or sort, it has turned into so much more. Many people have contacted me about my experiences over the last year and a half, asking questions, making comments, and I've been informed that my posts were inspiration for several of my readers to takeup training themselves, and follow their dreams.

I never anticipated that it would get as big as it did, and it's been an honour and a pleasure to share my experiences.

I was looking forward to this flight with cautious aprehension - I knew that I needed to perform to flight test standards in order to get the recommendation for the real flight test. Since it was booked for only a few days from this flight, it was important that I perform satisfactorilly in order to prove to my instructor, and myself, that I was ready.

November 20'th, 2005:
____________________

I didn't sleep well last night - my mind was going through todays mock flight test, and everything I needed to remember for such. I think it was nearly 2AM when I finally got to sleep, and my alarm went off at 7.

My reservation was for 9AM, and I was aiming to be at the airport (to get paperwork and such out of the way) by 8AM at the latest.

I got there shortly after 8, and my instructor was already there.

I said hi, grabbed the journey logbook for FOOU as well as a weather package, and went off to find a quiet spot out in the terminal building to complete everything. The Cafeteria/Canteen is closed on Sundays now, so the tables were all empty, and it's a quiet area to work.

I put stickies on all of the important pages that I would need to refer to for the verbal portion of the exam, and then did my takeoff calculations and a full longhand weight and balance.

Around 9'ish my instructor popped over just as I was about to go and get him. I was ready to go.

The verbal portion went fairly well, but there was a few surprises. One of them was that although I had remembered the required airspeeds, I had only remembered a single VA speed - not the three required, which vary according to gross weight. I know 104Kts is VA at maximum gross of 1670#. The other two speeds I had failed to memorize, not realising I needed to do so. I felt rather stupid afterwards not thinking I'd need to know these - of course I should.

A few more numbers to remember. No big deal - I can certainly accomplish this tiny thing before the flight test, so it's not going to cause any issue with such.

Otherwise, it was fairly smooth. I had trouble remembering a few of the "invalidating" situations for the COA, such as outstanding airworthyness directives, any situation where VNE was ever exceeded, etc etc, but I eventually came up with the necessary information. I will study these to ensure I'm more fluent for the real test.

I also needed a gentle prodding to remind me that I don't need to remember everything off by heart, and certain questions can be answered with reference to the POH. When my instructor quizzed me on the "Minimum engine oil capacity" I instinctively responded "5 Quarts"...because that's the lowest level that the flight school allows the engines to get to. I knew 6 quarts was full, but didn't know the lower allowable level (Which was actually 3.5 quarts) without reference to the POH.

Minor (correctable) issues aside, the rest went OK.

As we were signing out the aircraft I made some little remark about not having eaten much this morning and not sleeping terribly well.

My instructor jokingly suggests that's not very high on the list of "Things you want to hear your students say preflight".

I ask, jokingly, what he would least want to hear from a student preflight.

He suggests he really wouldn't want to ever hear "Ooooohhh man, that big giant bowl of Chili I ate last night for dinner was soooo good!!!".

We all get a good laugh over that one. The humour and laughs calm my nerves a little, as I'm still somewhat jittery about the whole experience.

The preflight was interesting - FOOU was covered in deicing fluid, so it was a rather sticky situation completing the task. When I operated the ailerons to do the visual inspection some pooled fluid spilled out onto my hands, my arm, my jacket, etc. I actually managed to get some on the ground as well, which considering the rest of it ended up on various extremeties, was amusing.

Preflight was otherwise fine. My instructor asks a few questions and I'm able to answer all of them with no concerns.

We piled in and got underway. As I was about to start the passenger brief, my instructor prompted me for it by asking "Is there anything you'd like to tell me about?".

The flight test standards do indicate that the instructor/examiner may request such, and I rather like that fact - it makes for one less thing that could accidentically be forgotten.

I run though the preflight briefing. I've remembered it all now as I should, and run it off quickly and effeciently.
The runup and other procedural parts of the flight test are so routine that they are non issues anymore, so they go quickly. If one can effectively follow a checklist, they can easilly ace this portion of a flight test

First order of the day is a soft field takeoff with one circuit, and then a departure to the north at 4000. I chat with ground and get the appropriate clearances.

The soft takeoff goes well, as well as the circuit and normal landing. Actually, I was a little low on my final for the first approach, but I fed power as required and made it good.

We touch and go, and head north.

As we climb out it becomes more evident that it's not great flying weather. Although sunny at the surface, it's very hazy at altitude, with perhaps 4 or 5 miles of visibility. There is no discerable horizon whatsoever, so this will add a bit of a challenge to some maneuvers.

Clear of the control zone we switch to the new frequency that covers the training area. It's humming with lots of other aircraft in the area, as an earlier PIREP had reported.

We start the exercises. Slow flight and all of the stalls goes very routinely, so I'm not going to bother writing much about them. I scored very high on both of these, with only slight errors on one of the stalls...which we both attributed to the fact that the lack of a horizon makes judging a post-stall aircraft attitude somewhat more of an issue.

Certainly no major problems though - these are easy.

On to the forced approach. My instructor reaches over and pulls the throttle.

I remember everything satisfactorilly, but botch my approach a little by once again crowding my circuit. As I turn final I'm clearly extremely high (thanks to my crowding) so I deploy all the flaps and enter a long forward slip.

My mind momentarilly flashes back to the "Common failures" section of a flight test book I purchased. One of the most common items listed as contributing towards "Instant Failure" was failure of the forced approach - more specifically, overshooting or undershooting the chosen field.

The altitude quickly comes off and I would have made the field, however. I was really worried I had just botched that exercise, but I didn't hear anything negative from my instructor, so we continued. Without the forward slip I would definately have overshot my selected field.

My instructor prompts the overshoot and we climb away. I'm not pleased with myself, but I probably passed the exercise.

We climb back to 3500 and my instructor nonchalantly suggests (simulated, of course) that the weather has closed in on all sides, and it's beginning to snow heavilly. What should we do?

Precautionary landing.

The first field I find I have to abandon since I notice there's a big cellular tower off to it's east - too close to the vicinity of my fly-over area.

The second field I chooes looks great from a distance, but the litle white dots that were all one one side of the field (seemingly out of the way) turns out to be cows. Cows tend to move, and can go from "out of the way" to "in the way", so I abandon that field as well.

It's frustrating, since the training area is nothing but farmers fields below, and despite that the first two fields I choose I must abandon.

I find another field and start setting up. Again, I crowd the circuit a little, and it causes me grief again. Regardless, the first pass goes OK and the field is satisfactory on the high pass.

I run the circuit and come in for the low and slow pass. Looks fine.

As I start to recover from the low and slow pass I spot another aircaft buzzing about at our 12 o'clock high. I point it out, as it's turning left, right, here, there, and everywhere.

As I'm climbing, all of a sudden he flops over onto his back and does a spin.

Ok, he's obviously doing aerobatics, but why on why must he be doing it here in the training area...while I'm doing my flight test prep, none the less...and without a radio call to let everyone else in the area know?

Grrrr.

At one point he looks like he's turning in our direction, and he clearly has no idea we are out here sharing the same general area. We momentarilly abandon our heading and turn east in order to maintain a safe seperation, but as quick as he turns towards us, he turns away.

A quick radio advisory radio call finally gets his attention, and he says he will head east and clear our area.

I'm frazzled now - just what I didn't need.

I turn west, hoping I can pick out my field again - thankfully I spot it, although I'm far to the east and considerably further downwind of where I should be now. I track west, turn downwind, and as I approach the field again I find I'm crowding my circuit again.

This is a theme. WHY am I doing this?

In all the festivities I forget to make my PAN PAN PAN calls and complete the passenger briefing, but I do get lined up with the field in the correct configuration in such a fashion that I would have made the landing satisfactory.

I'm rather dissapointed I forgot these, since I had the entire exercise lined up in my head and it was going rather well - Untill aerobatics guy decided to invade my little slice of airspace, and proceeded to cause the exercise to take second seat to safety.

Up up and away, we overshoot.

Back to a cruising altitude, my instructor asks for a diversion. I plan it, get all of my times, remember to reset the heading indicator (a previous nemesis) and do everything necessary, but navigation turns out to be really tough in the pea soup flying conditions.

I took wind direction and strength into consideration for my planned headings and applied reasonable course correction.

Theoretically once all of this is done, it's simply a matter of flying the heading, noting times, and watching landmarks to confirm the course is correct.

Since we are "diverting" back to the airport, some added workload comes in the form of getting the ATIS and contacting the tower before we enter the control zone.

Done.

As I fly my heading, the landmarks prove tough to pick out with such horrible visibility, and apparently the winds aloft were signifigantly different from the surface winds at takeoff, since we were drifting signifigantly west of my intended track. Unfortunately with the poor visibility I didn't have the required number of visible landmarks to notice this untill I saw the airport about 3 miles out, but it was to our immediate south instead of where I expected it to be, to our south west.

I look behind us and can barely see Port Perry. We're also near Raglan.

I confirm we are definately west of my intended track.

I adjust course accordingly, and having done so I effectively correct the error, and accomplish the exercise. Winds aloft had indeed changed signifigantly, as there was no other reason that I would have gotten blown so far west like this.

I feel a little better about this shortly after landing, as the tower was changing to runway 22 from 30, indicating the winds were indeed now swinging around.

Our approach was for right downwind with an obstacle clearance shoft field landings. It goes well.

We taxi back to the apron and shut down.

I briefly run through the flight in my head. As expected, I think I did well on everything except the forced and precautionary. Based on everything I've read, these are the two most common problem areas, so I'm obviously no exception to the rule.

My instructor chirps up and says that I can relax, as I got the recommendation for the flight test - I passed!

I stow the plane and head inside. We chat about the weak areas and how to improve, and I make note of study points for the next few days.
And the countdown continues - it is officially 5 days to the real thing. 5 days to the end of the road..so I had hoped.

Unfortunately, the weather would not go along with my plans, and the flight test would be pushed back for several more weeks.

My next post will chronicle the big day.

Why I had waited until what was nearly the end of my training to do this, I can not yet say. It was a mix of complacency, and non-urgency that led to my foolish decision to not accomplish this long ago.

Regardless, having now accomplished such, it was an interesting experience to share.

November 16'th, 2005:
____________________

I finally got into Toronto this morning for my written exam.

I dragged myself out of bed at 6AM, and an adventure began. I had actually woke up at 5AM, and despite my best effort, I slept poorly until 6 when my alarm went off. I had some issues getting to sleep last night as well, which didn't help the situation either.

I'm glad I got underway early, as the rotten weather meant that the highway en-route to Toronto was a complete disaster of traffic tie-ups and fender benders. It took me just over an hour and a half to go the 45 Kilometers into east Toronto (from the Oshawa area) to get to the Transport Canada office.

Once parked (An adventure in its own) I made my way inside to the 4th floor. The ladies at the desk were quite pleasant and started my paperwork. I was the first student of the day, it seems.

They sent me down a floor to pay for my test after providing me with the papers I needed to take to the cashiers office.

The "cashier" lady I had to see was the stereotypical government employee:

1/ Mildly grumpy.
2/ Apparently unable to speak beyond groans and the occasional 1 syllable word.
3/ Seemingly inconvenienced that I was there taking up her precious time.
4/ Physically unable to smile and be cheery.

That aside, I paid up, and it was back upstairs to the other much more pleasant ladies in the flight examiners office.

I first had to sign a 1 page document effectively stating that if I cheated at all, I was disqualified from rewriting for a period of one year. Ouch! No cheating here...

They went through all of my belongings, sorting out what I could and couldn't bring into the exam room. I had forgotten that my E6B manual was in the little vinyl holder with my E6B itself, and the manual was expectantly not allowed.

Other things that surprised me as not being allowed were my baseball cap (?) and my clipboard.

I asked why the clipboard was an issue and the lady told me a story about how they had once caught someone cheating in a curious fashion using a vinyl style clipboard, similar to the one I had brought. Apparently he/she had somehow managed to write answers onto the clipboard in such a fashion that it wasn't immediately evident anything was there.

However, when the student held the LCD screen of his/her calculator in such a fashion that it reflected the view of the clipboard, the words were readable.

I guess they saw the student "maneuvering" his calculator repeatedly over the clipboard, and thought something was up. He was apparently caught.

I had also brought along a ream of note paper, but they said that was disallowed as well since others had apparently "imprinted" answers into the blank pages.

Hmm...never thought of that, but makes sense.

So I set that aside as well. I jokingly asked if I should leave my chequebook behind as well, and the ladies jokingly offered that if I was so desperate to have scribbled cheat sheets onto blank cheques that I shouldn't be at their office to begin with.

Wow, government workers with a sense of humour! There's a first time for everything!

Anyhow, I ended up with "Version 1" of the exam, for whatever that's worth. My provided VNC was of my home area, which was rather nice since I'm obviously familiar with it.

I had 5 minutes to prep and get my equipment and charts together and sorted before the exam started. I was ready previous to the 5 minutes, so I clicked the button to start early.

The entire exam was done on a PC using an intuitive software package that I'm sure, in typical government fashion, cost about $9.8 Billion dollars to have custom written.
(Having experienced the inner workings of many government agencies, I've frequently seen massive amounts of waste and inefficiencies..so I am somewhat pessimistic, if only jokingly, about the government. Forgive me. :-)

The software gave you the option of changing your answer after the fact (Untill you end the exam), "bookmarking" questions you weren't sure on, and passing any you wanted to come back to later. Expectantly, it kept track of questions answered, questions left unanswered, and time elapsed/remaining.

Some reference material was on paper, such as the GFA's, simulated TAF's and METARS, sample W&B information, and a few other things. The computer referred to the related papers when necessary. All joking aside, it was a good exam system and was easy to understand and operate, even for perhaps the lesser computer literate people amongst us. If your reading this website, you would have no problem with the exam software.

The room was comfortable with a big desk at each workstation that was large enough to stretch almost the entire VNC out on. The room was obviously well supervised, with two out of the 4 sides being glassed in so that it was easy to monitor the students inside.

Unfortunately this worked two ways - I got to listen to a few office ladies having a long (and rather loud) conversation about their shopping experience the previous night through the one glass wall I was sitting up against. It was somewhat distracting at times.

6 or 7 other students dwindled in over the period of time I was there, so it got a little noisier in the exam room as everyone flipped their VNC's about and changed pages on their reference material.

One guy had an electronic E6B which made very annoying "BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP" noises with every keypress. It was somewhat distracting.

Overall, slight annoyances aside, it was very straight forward, and I was finished in about 2.5 of the 3 hours allotted.

I made a few foolish mistakes by falling for one or two of the "trick answers" (Beware, there are lots!), and I just completely "spaced" on a few things that I should have rightful known, but just couldn't think clearly enough to answer under pressure.

Overall I didn't quite "ace" the test, but I ended with a healthy pass well on the positive side of the requirements.

Although I expected to score lowest on Meteorology, surprisingly my lowest score was on Air Law and I did better on Met then I had expected. Hmm.

I will continue to study on my problem areas, since I'm sure the examiner will grill me on a few of these at flight test time.

Having now accomplished this milestone, I'm glad that's out of the way. It was a massive relief to finally walk out of there with my magic piece of paper.

Back to flying, I'm booked for my official "Mock Flight Test" within days.

----

It would turn out to be another enlightening experience, and prove to both me and my instructor that I was ready for the real thing.

As such, my flight test was rescheduled, and me and my instructor both crossed our fingers that the weather would play nice.

Still working towards the official (and last) "Mock Flight Test" we had one last preparatory flight to ensure that I was ready for such.

Despite further weather issues, we were able to accomplish this flight thanks to someone elses cancellation.

Saturday November 12'th, 2005:
___________________________

Upon arrival at this airport this morning the weather was obviously marginal VFR at best, and was effectively useless for training. The ATIS was calling 3 miles visibility, but the early morning fog was quickly getting worse.

The flight was scrubbed. To not make it a total loss, my instructor looked over my hand calculated takeoff numbers, as well as my weight and balance, just to see that I'm ready to do this in front of the examiner when the big day finally arrives.

All well there. The hand-calculated takeoff calculations are easy now - it took me only about 6 or 8 minutes last night to do them.

With little sense in waiting around, I head back home. Before going, my instructor gives me a heads up that there may be a cancellation at 1:30PM. His student at that time is flying his own plane, but it may not be back from another airport in time. Long story, he says.

I said "I'll take it!" if the time slot comes up.

Shortly after 1PM my instructor was on the phone - the flight was on. As expected, the other student won't have his plane back in time.

I rush lunch, which was on the BBQ when he called. I eat the rest of it in the car on the way to the airport, and manage not to wear half of it in the process.

We get underway quickly once I arrive. My instructor is waiting for his lunch to arrive so he too can wolf it down before flying (A theme, apparently), so I preflight and we are airborne shortly thereafter.

Surprisingly, he says we'll depart to the northwest today...rather unfamilliar territory for me, but an interesting change.

He asks me to navigate to a few towns using pilotage. No big deal there, easy stuff. Over our eventual destination, the expected happens - my instructor reaches over and chops the throttle.

OK, I failed the forced approach seriously last flight, but the "armchair flying" that I did at home (to remember procedure) really worked out well, and I perform the exercise almost perfectly this time.

My instructors only comment was that since we ended up cutting the engine (to simulate a failure) over a town, my resulting first choice of fields was a little too close to the built up area.

In a "Real" forced approach, this is a positive thing (Land close to civilization if possible) but for training we don't need to break the regulations by decending too low over a built up area.

Hint taken, I find another field sufficiently to the south. It works really well, so much so that I end up on a real long final on a nice stabilized glide path.

I remember every step of the procedure, and I'm quite pleased. A complete and total turnaround from the dismal failure of last flight. Armchair flying works!

We overshoot and climb back to 2500 feet.

Simulated diversion time. I orbit the town of Brougham, and plan on my charts. I have to unfold my VNC (VFR Navigatio Chart) to properly see the portion of the compass rose around the Simcoe VOR that I need to get my heading information.

We are diverting to Greenbank airport this time, which is where I did some soft field landings in a previous blog entry. It's a neat little turf airfield that I can NEVER seem to find - today will be no exception.

Otherwise, the diversion so far is easy stuff. My halfway checkpoint is rather ambigious due to a complete and total lack of anything on the ground worth referencing in the area. I explain to my instructor later that there were enough "neaby" references (A tower and the southern tip of Lake Scugog) that I could sufficiently triangulate my postion to confirm I was in the vicinity of my checkpoint.

I remembered everything except resetting the HI before hand. My instructor chimes in about this about half way through the diversion, and I have a brief "duh" moment. This has stung me before, I should know better. A minor error, but an error regardless.

We continue and we are effectively on track according to my ETA's. Things start to get interesting, here, however. My instructor says that we will use Greenbank airport (our diversion destination) as our precautionary landing location.

Now, this makes complete sense. If one was in the need of performing a precautionary landing for some reason, landing at an airport would be the ideal situation, right?

Why land in a farmers field when there's an airport within sight...right?

Sure, except the uncontrolled field procedures still frazzle me a little. Curiously, I find myself more comfortable flying at controlled airports then I do at uncontrolled airports, so I'm still somewhat uncomfortable with the procedures at Greenbank.

We enter the mid right downwind, and my issues with actually keeping the airport in sight makes my life difficult.

I don't know what my problem is with turf fields, but I continualy loose sight of the airport over and over again. They just don't stick out like a airport with asphalt runways.

I fly downwind, and loose the airport. I turn base, and loose sight of it again. Just about the only time I continually have the airport in sight is when we are on final, or overhead the field.

My altitudes are far too creative, another plane enters the circuit with us to further divide my attention, and the whole experience just doesn't go anything close to what I would have liked.

Precautionaries aren't anything I've had a problem with in the past, but the whole "Doing them at an airport" where many extra things come into play, versus a field of ones choosing, seems to have frazzled me.

If we had done the exercise using a field as our landing destination, I'm sure I would have done better....even though Greenbank "technically" makes more sense in our situation.

If there was one shining point, I nailed the soft field landing. One advantage of using Greenbank airport for the precautionary landing exercise was that we could actually land there, as opposed to "simulating" a landing.

As we climb out, my instructor surprisingly (to me) says that although rough, the entire exercise was probably passable.

If that was passable, I should have no problem on the flight test when we will be using a field for our precautionary landing destination, instead of a uncontrolled airfield.

On a side note, I will indeed need to recap my uncontrolled field procedures, although I've flown into Greenbank before with no issues, the added bit of stress of doing the precautionary exercise at the same time seemed to throw me for the bit of a loop that I experiened today.

But I guess the important part was that it all remained "technically" passable.

As we depart Greenbanks airspace I start with our clearance back to Oshawa.

On my first call, the Tower asks us to standby - it's crazy busy. Me and my instructor have a brief discussion about being technically cleared into Oshawa's Class D airspace once "Two way communication has been established" (Which we achieved) but we circle outside the zone regardless untill the tower gets back to us.

We get a clearance with an altitude restriction, and a reporting point.

As we fly abeam our reporting point the radio is still humming with the tower sequencing planes, and yet more calling in - I can't squeeze in. Eventually we do, but we're pretty much turning downwind by this point...and our altitude restriction wasn't cancelled yet, so I'm still 500' over circuit altitude.

The tower quickly gets back to us, sequences us #3, cancels our restriction, and asks us to keep up the speed. Ahh!

My short field landing isn't spectacular as I ended up with a bit of yaw and that throws the nosewheel into a bit of a shimmy on touchdown.

Flight accomplished, a debrief follows, with what I expected issue-wise. My instructor suggests another solo to practice the precautionaries, and I will try to fit this in, but a surprise phone call later in the evening informs me that my flight test has been rebooked for the 27'th of the month. A little quicker then I had hoped, but I suppose sooner is better then later.

The only "mandatory" flight before the flight test itself is one last dual with my instructor for a mock flight test.

I consider spending the week "Armchair Flying" the precautionary as well, since it worked so well for my problems with the forced landing.

If I'm confident that I'm prepared, he says we can skip the solo, and proceed right to the mock flight test.

Given the fact that time is going to be at a premium between now, and then, this may have to be the case.

So, the countdown is on again!

The light at the end of the tunnel was getting brighter, and all the time and money invested in this journey was finally leading up to the big payoff - the chance to prove myself in front of Transport Canada, and hopefully shortly thereafter, a licence.

First off, however...more "Prep" flights were scheduled to hone my skills before the real thing. Unfortunately, as quickly as the countdown towards my flight test started, the typical fall weather started impacting me in the form of cancelled flights, which put me somewhat behind.

October 30'th, 2005:
____________________

I flew a dual with my instructor Saturday for some flight test prep.

The first thing I realized I had done wrong was in the form of an incorrectly scheduled lesson time. I was somehow sure it was Friday night that the clocks changed, and that this would made it daylight at 7AM. By the time I realized my mistake, it was too late to change the booking (As my instructor had a pretty busy schedule all day Saturday, and was booked off Sunday) so I had to leave it as it was.

This caused us to be meeting at the airport at 7AM (as per my booking), but in the dark.

It (mostly) worked out after the fact, since we had to sit down and go through some paperwork anyways. We went over a bunch of flight-test related items such as confirming that the aircraft was indeed within servicable hour limitations, that all the required paperwork was present, that required work had been done or was within defered work time limitations, and that generally all the ducks were in a row.

I had spent the time the previous night to do the longhand takeoff roll and distance to clear a 50' obstacle calculations, as well as manual weight and balance calculation, as these are required flight test items. The weight and balance is easy and quick now as I've done it many times. The takeoff roll/clearance calculations requires some more thought as the 152 POH provides charts, but in such a fashion that a great deal of interpolation is required to actually get the real numbers. I did them based on Friday evenings ATIS numbers which I was able to grab with my handheld scanner from the back deck.

Altimeter was 30.34 and temperature was 3 degrees. The temperature ended up being fairly close the next morning, but the altimeter was 30.12.
For the "Real" flight test I must do these calculations based on the current altimeter and temperature readings, but for this first prep lesson last nights numbers were satisfactory, and proved to my instructor that I did indeed know how to do all of the required calculations.
I was glad I sat down and did the takeoff calculations in specific, as doing them got the process "fresh" in my head again - this was something that I had issues with in the past.

In order to prove that I had actually done them myself, I handed over the original paper complete with chicken scratch and my longhand calculations to prove that I hadn't just done the calcs on my Palm or a website somewhere, and then just copied them to a piece of paper.

We went through the rest of the requirements for the flight test, and it all seemed pretty straightforward.

By the time we finished everything it was brightening up outside, so we got underway. Although it was supposed to be a nice clear day, at 7:45 it was still overcast and we were concerned about being able to get enough altitude for the upper airwork.

It was also clear that by the time we got going that it was going to have to be a fairly short flight, as I had cut us short on the booking time - entirely my own fault.

Alas, it's too late to do anything about it now, as there is another reservation at 9AM for our aircraft, and we need to be back in time for the other pilot.

Our plane was outside all night so it was a little chilly preflighting.

I stupidly didn't clear the windscreen of the mist/condensation, so taxiing required both of our eyes peeking through small clear spots. The apron was pretty devoid of aircraft this morning anyways, so it was OK, but I must remember to add this to my preflight to ensure I'm not playing the same game on my flight test. I think that the examiner may have had issues with that.

I grab the ATIS as I wait for the engine to warmup. Winds are calm, and other then the ceiling issues it looks like great flying weather..

It seems to take forever for the engine to blip the temperature neeedle to an acceptable limit for the runup, further compounding our time constraint problems.

Eventually it moves, and I do the runup...all fine.

As I click my PTT (Push To Talk button) to call ground for our taxi clearnace, it just doesn't "Sound" right on the radio. There is usually a slightly "different" sound on the headsets when the PTT is depressed and you are actually transmitting.

Although I caught onto the fact that I don't think I actually transmitted anything (compounded by the lack of a response from ground) I don't initially clue into why this is the case.

My instructor (obviously having seen this before) suggests I check my PTT connection cable. Oops - I failed to actually plug it in.

Once it's plugged in, low and behold the radio actually *transmits* on the second try! Go figure!

"Taxi via Alpha Bravo, Cross 22, Hold short 30, contact tower 120.1 when ready" is our clearnance. Same old, same old.

My instructor requests a short field takeoff, and says he will be making notes of our actual distance travelled by watching runway lights. Since my takeoff calculations last night were done with similar numbers to this mornings, it should be somewhere in the same ballpark.

I lineup with as much runway as I can manage, drop 10 degrees of flaps, runup, release the brakes and we are underway.
As I climbout my instructor mentions that they have instituted a new frequency just for the training area, as 126.7 was getting so congested in the area that it was causing problems with some aircraft trying to call London FSS.

Makes sense, but it's another frequency to remember. I will update my custom flight sheets to include it on the printout, no biggie I guess.

Just as we clear the CZ my instructor requests to see my slow flight. I dutifully do a HASEL (Height, Area, Security, Engine, Lookout) check, and then get going. I pretty much ace this, and really rather enjoy it. We lag around the sky with 30 degrees of flaps crusing at 40 knots maintaining the altimeter at 4000ft...the skies had cleared somewhat to the north, so altitude wasn't an issue afterall.

My instructor requests a few turns while in slow flight, no problems, but an occasional bleet from the stall horn reminds me that we are indeed just barely hanging in the sky, and that my airspeed had crept a tiny bit below 40Kts a few times.

Satisfied, I recover to cruise. My instructor then requests some power off stalls.

Again, no big deal at all. The lack of much wind makes for a nice clean stall break with no discerable wing drop, and my recovery was good.

Shortly after my recovery to cruise, my instructor cuts the throttle for a simulated engine failure exercise, and things start going downhill.

I don't know why, but I abysmally failed on my forced approach today. I got the aircraft quickly trimmed for the best glide airspeed, and then almost immediately found a perfect field directly below me. Since I was still near 4000', I had alot of altitude to loose, so once I noted my base and final keypoints I started working on the altitude issue.

I tracked west and did about a 380 degree decending turn to burn altitude. However, knowing that I neeeded to be at 1000AGL over my base keypoint, I was aiming for what I thought needed to be 1800' over my base keypoint. Only one problem - elevation where we were was 1100', making my required altitude 2100 over my base keypoint.

My instructor catches this and reminds me that I really need to know my elevations for the areas where we could be for the flight test. I still have no idea where I got 800' in my head for the elevation - I think that this is probably the Bowmanville area to the east. We are over Blackstock, which is above the ridges, which brings the elevation up signifigantly.

So, thinking I was very high I had been bleeding altitude, and ended up low over my base keypoint. I realized this and turned direct for the field, abandoning my final keypoint.

I also forget to warm the engine every 500', which is another major issue. My instructor has to prompt me many times.

In the end I would have made my field and landed safely, but I then realise as we overshoot that I messed up even more seriously - I had completely forgotten my cause check / restart procedure, mayday calls, passenger briefing, and finally, shutdown.

WHY (!!) did I fail this exercise so miserably? That would have been an instant fail on my flight test.

I'm obviously not up to the proper level of proficiency on this exercise.

More solo practice is definately required. I need to make some sort of checklist to stick to my kneeboard for this. I don't know if I will be allowed to carry said checklist on my flight test (probably not) but at least I can study it intently between now and then and hopefully burn all this into my mind.

I'm not very happy with myself.

Continuing, we climb back up to 2500' and head back - time is running out, unfortunately.

I get a strange response on my first call to the tower - I usually call in over or just to the south of Port Perry, which although technically outside of the zone by a few miles, is a common reporting point. Tower acknowledges my call, but asks me to report again when entering the zone. Hmm, first time that's happened.

I dutifully call again as I enter the CZ and get a clearance for right downwind for 30.

My instructor asks for a soft field landing, and it goes pretty well - and is actually soft. Whew, I can still do these. :)

Once we are down and the aircraft has been stowed, the debreif is as I expected it would be - some deservedly negative comments on my whole forced approach. On the positive side my instructor says that there is obviously no need for me further recap stalls or slow flight, as they are both non issues for me.

We agreed that I need to do another solo practice of forced approaches. Indeed, a definate requirement.

I expressed my concern about the lack of weekends remaining between now and my flight test, and the possibility that some of those may suffer weather cancellations.

If absolutely need be, my instructor says we can delay my flight test as required, but I hope to be able to avoid this.

So, I've got my fingers crossed that mother nature plays nice for the next while. And the countdown continues...

October 10'th, 2005:
____________________

I was up flying yesterday. It was a mixed bag that I was happy with at times, and dissapointed with at others..

I had reserved GZSU as I had not flown it for quite some time. Again, I'm trying to avoid flying the same plane all the time, so it was for the variety I booked ZSU instead of my usual favourite, FOOU.

Another pilot is preflighting FOOU as I head out. It will always hold a special place in my heard since I solo'd in it.

Looking around, quite a few people are on the apron with me shortly after 8AM preflighting as well. The weather was surprisingly nice, although winds are from the north so the dreaded runway 04 is the active. It's a rotten runway for flying circuits due to a lack of convenient taxiways, but since that's not my plan today it's really no big deal I guess.

When I reach ZSU, I find someone has gotten a little overzealous with the tiedowns, and there are three or four knots in each rope. I undo them all with fingers that are getting increasingly cold, and then push the plane onto the apron from the grass.

I nitpick myself on my preflight today, making sure everything is perfectly "by the book" as I don't want to get complacent this close to flight-test time. My fingers are even colder by the time I'm done, so I pile in.

Continuing the preflight checklist, I mentally note to fully run the trim wheel from end to end - I had spoke to my instructor about this on my last flight so see what's "Technically" required for this, as the checklist simply says "Trim - Run".

Apparently a full test from one stop to the other is the accepted flight-test standard. I often just "confirm" that it's actually activating the trim by raising the elevator and looking over my shoulder while I run the wheel a few turns in each direction to confirm the trim tab is actually working, and then reset it for takeoff.

Preflight goes fine. On startup the engine stalls on me after about 15 seconds, even after two primes. Yep, Winter is coming, and it's cold, so I should start getting used to starting cranky engines again.

Another prime and it starts again, and continues running.

I taxi away from my parking spot and find an open spot on the increasingly busy apron to do my runups.

After having gotten stung on the Hobbs meter in the past rolling over .1 within a minute or so of startup, I keep a close eye on it as I'm waiting for the engine to warmup. Sure enough, it rolls over within the first 2 minutes. I will mention this later when it comes time to pay, as I'm tired of paying for 6 minutes of idling for what sometimes amounts to a minute or less.

Warmup seems to take forever. I'm the first person in the plane today, so I'm rather obligated to do a proper warmup before the runup, but I must admit that it is frustrating paying ~$2.00 a minute for the privledge. After the first few minutes I lean the engine a little and bring the RPM up slightly to try to speed up the process just a little. I know this is acceptable, since we had done it before when I was dual in the past last winter.

Mental note - make reservations from here on out after the first flight of the day so that the engine is already warm. Bonus plan is that the cabin heat will be effective much quicker as well.

The temperature needle finally awakens, and I do the runup.

My taxi clearance takes me as expected Alpha-Bravo, hold short of 04. This actually puts me north of the intersection about halfway down the runway. One must then wait there for the tower to clear the backtrack. This is why I kind of dislike 04, as if the circuit is busy, one can get stuck waiting for the backtrack for some time. For students flying circuits, it's even more frustrating as each landing compounds the delays - I experienced this myself some time back.

I call ready for departure. The tower checks with (thankfully) the only other plane in the circuit, and he's just turning base. Tower clears me for the backtrack and immediate departure. I expedite, turn around, and depart right away.

In the cool dry air the 152 is climbing like a rocketship again today, and I'm pegged at 1000FPM on my climbout. It's a little bumpy down low, but it smoothes out quickly with altitude.

Before long I'm at 3000 and clear of the zone. It's smooth as glass, and beautifull flying weather.

I head towards Blackstock to start the first order of the day - my recap diversion.

My advisory radio call reveals nobody in the training area at all except for another plane crossing to my north, but obvioulsy far below me. Strangely, he doesn't answer the advisory call (perhaps he's on the tower frequency getting reach to approach Oshawa), but he's soon long gone.

Over Blackstock I start my orbit, and plan to divert to Newcastle. My VNC is getting a little beat up and I have a little bit of a challenge making out the heading marks on the nearby compass rose. Mental note #2 - Must buy new VNC.

The diversion ends up being 15 miles almost exactly. That makes the calculations simple - a good and a bad thing, I suppose, but it's not like they are difficult regardless.

The winds were light at takeoff and from a reciprocal heading to which I'm flying for the diversion, so I don't adjust anything on my calculations to take either into consideration, as it seems unnecessary.

I remember to reset the HI and mark the time, two things I had issues with previously. A final turn directly over Blackstock, and I set my heading.

The air is glassy up at 3000 feet, and that makes for almost hands-off flying. I'm trimmed perfectly, and the tip of one finger is all that's needed to maintain my heading.

Sure enough, my halfway landmark arrives as planned and pretty much on time.

The rest of the diversion is routine and I arrive at my destination pretty much as planned, albeit a half mile or so west, but certainly within tolerances that I could have found my destination if the diversion was real.

Just then I realize I forgot to make my simulated diversion call to London FSS. Oops. Must remember radio calls for all exercises requiring them. Ugh.

Anyhow, I'm otherwise pleased with the outcome of that exercise, so I begin a decent to do a precautionary landing.

As I decend through 2500 the chop starts again, and gets considerably worse as I decend lower.

I make an advisory radio call just for good measure, since I'm working along the Lake Ontario shorline now and alot of planes track along such. No answer...good.

On my 1000 AGL field inspection pass I'm getting tossed about quite heavilly. I run the circuit and come back around for my 500AGL field inspection.

As I get setup for the low and slow second pass I get whacked violently with a blast of turbulence from the east which throws me into a hefty left bank. I correct quickly and add power since I'm not exactly at a suitable speed or configuration to deal with that. I make the pass and accomplish the inspection regardless, but after getting a little frazzled I decide to call the lesson off and put a little additional space between me and the ground. It's just too turbulent out here at the lower altitudes to justify continuing that with the amount of safety I'd like to have while solo.

Wanting to keep todays flight around 1.0 hours, I decide to head back. Once I climb clear of the turbulence I relax my deathgrip on the yoke, and relize that my fingers are physically sore from grasping it so tightly in the excitement of the tossing and turning. This is quite a change from the earlier "one finger" control.

I circle outside the control zone while I get the ATIS. 04 is still the active, and I suspect that will put my clearance for right base.

Sure enough, I'm right. "Cleared right base for 04, report established".

As I decend to circuit altitude the turbulence picks up again, but not half as bad as it was earlier when I was away from the built up city area. I'm thankfull this is the case.

I'm perhaps a little late setting up for my base, which I find myself frequently doing on base pattern entries, where there is no downwind.

As a result I'm a little high on final, so I slip to bleed the altitude. I'm back on the glidepath again before long. There is no PAPI or VASIS on 04, so it's good practice to visualize the glidepath in my head.

I'm not overly pleased with the last portion of my final (The winds and bumps were causing havok with my airspeeds), and my landing is acceptable but not perfect by any means.

Sure enough, there is a lineup of planes on Bravo waiting for their backtracks as I taxi past them towards the end of 04 for taxiway Alpha.

Everybody hates 04.

Back in dispatch I bring up my issue with the hobbs and get an agreement to subtract the .1 from my time. That brings me to 1.0 even for the flight, and keeps the bill a little more affordable.

So, as I understand, it's officially onto "flight test prep" now.

I chatted briefly with my wife about this today, and suggested that it's probably prudent for me to try to keep the prep flights close together leading up to the actual flight test. Spacing them apart will likely lead to more flights required due to possible regression.


So, I enter the final stretch.

This was a neat experience for me to realize that my invested time in blogging my experiences was actually bringing people into the wonderfull world of General Aviation!

I also suffered another few weather cancellations that caused my 15 day student currency to expire. Most students have "Currency" limitiatios applied to them - Currency is pilot-speak for the amount of time that can pass without actually flying before a dual "checkout" is needed before one can resume solo.

At my school, this currency is 15 days. After I'm licenced, it will increase to 30 days.

And that aside, I almost got laid off from work due to an impending GM strike that never happened after the fact.

Finally, however, things returned to normal and it was time for another dual flight with my instructor once again - Instrument Flight!

Sunday October 2'nd, 2005:
__________________________

Todays instrument flight went off with little fanfare, and I found it to be an enlightening experience.

I had been reading my textbooks trying to remember scanning techniques, and I managed to get most of them down pretty well.

In typical "me" fashion however, during the ground brief I still managed to draw blanks on a few things. After I got my brain out of neutral and back into gear, it all came together relatively well though. It all seemed straightforward, so I went into the actual flight fairly confident.

There was some joking around when it came to our plane reservation. I was reserved for GYYG, but would have preferred FOOU. The other instructor who had FOOU reserved for a few familiarization flights didn't want to give it up, as he had been flying it all day and had all his gear in it.

With some carefull W&B calculations (And half tanks) we made it work out, and we were legal, but basically at maximum gross. I leave the wheel chocks and extras behind.

I preflight as my instructor meanders around the plane. He jokes that I need to take "large" fuel samples in order to get the weight down. GYYG is one of the heaviest 152's in th fleet, which is causing our weight issues. :-)

I finish up the preflight, and my instructor has to run back inside for something. I proceed to make my first (Major) messup of the flight, which I was not yet aware of - and it could have been a big one.

I climb in and start running through checklists. As my instructor arrives back, he asks me if I'm ready. I say yes, but he alludes to the fact that I've forgotten something - I immediately realise I've left the fuel can (that we use to dump the fuel samples into) at the front of the plane.

MAJOR mistake. My instructor (rightfully so) asks me if I know how much a new prop costs. And the engine teardown.

Oh geez.. Bad student. Bad, bad student. Lesson learned. I honestly hope I never make this mistake ever again.

The problems just continue from there. As I call ground to get our taxi clearance, they report that our radio is readability 1 and full of static. Basically almost useless.

We check out headset connections, but no improvement.

Curiously, the tower asks us to move away from the fuel truck behind us and try again. We do so, wondering what that will accomplish, but amazingly it solves the problem.
My instructor asks the controller what made him suggest moving as a potentional solution - he reports that they've been having alot of radio problems from aircraft on that portion of the apron recently, and just moving a little seems to solve it.

Hmm, strange! Regardless, the controller seems to be quite personable this evening so my instructor jokingly suggests that perhaps we have a "North Apron Triangle" now. The controller jokes back at us, and asks if we want to buy a car.

Long story on the car thing, but apparently GM has an over abundance of one model and has stored several hundred of them on the airport grounds at the end of runway 30. This is totally bizzare, but GM gets their way in this city quite often..

So, it's been a strange start to the flight.

We takeoff and head north. We are only a few miles from the airport when my instructor pulls out the foggles - time to get started!
For those who don't know what "Foggles" are, they are a special pair of glasses that have the upper portion and sides "Fogged" out. The point behind this is to limit a students view of the world strictly to the instrument panel in front of him, and blocking the reference of the outside world.

There is an alternate "view limiting device" solution that is commonly referred to as a "Hood". It's less comfortable for the most part, is bulkier, and can be less effective versus foggles.

Not sure why one would do this? Flying by instruments alone is an experience that every prospective pilot should experience. Without reference to the outside world (Horizon and ground) it's easy to get disoriented, which can (and frequently does) lead to crashes.

For those interested, more detail on "Instrument Flying" and why students train for such can be found with a quick Google search.

Continuing... As we depart, I trim for our climb, and put the foggles on. So far so good, maintaining our heading in a trimmed climb is easy.

It gets progressively more advanced from there. Right off the top my instructor starts out with some unusual attitudes to show me what the mind can do to ones sense of attitude. He settles out the maneuvers after about 30 seconds of turns and climbs/decents, and asks me what I feel like the plane is doing now that he has stabilized us. I feel like we are banking left, but we are actually straight and level.

Lesson 1 accomplished - I learn that the mind can play tricks on me when I can not reference the outside world. This is common, and one of the main reasons that instrument training is so beneficial.

We recover and track further north, and I fly.

Quickly I discover I have issues with my scan, fixating on one instrument for too long, as my instructor mentions often happens initially. I quickly learn the result - I'm 30 degrees off my target heading within seconds, and banking further into it.

That lesson learned, I pickup the pace on my instrument scan, and it starts to become more routine.

We start with climbs and decents, and then work on turning climbs and decents. We simulate flying into IMC by accident after flying straight and level for 2 minutes, and then using a rate 1 turn to do a 180 and then fly straight and level for another two minutes.

That's easy enough. No problem at all based on what I experienced. Honestly, I find the entire instrument experience a great deal easier then I had anticipated.

Yes, I noticed my senses playing tricks on me, as I had hoped I would.

However, I had no problem overriding what my mind was telling me versus what the instruments were telling me. Even if I felt like I was banking when the instruments told me I was straight and level, I didn't let my senses lead me into a turn to correct a situation that didn't exist.

I noticed the sensory issues the most on decents - with the AI showing a gentle nose-down attitude, my mind was telling me that we were in a steep nose down attitude. But the ASI, AI and tachometer didn't agree with my mind, so I resisted the temptation to bring up the nose.

Overall, I have no major issues. Fly by what the instuments are telling you, not by ones sensory perceptions...and scan those instruments!

We do some more climbs, decents, and climbing/decending turns in both directions. I find it all pretty easy, with the expected minor errors. Climbs go fine, and I hit my target altitudes with little fanfare. Decents, not so much. Some practice improves them - I just needed to be a little more agressive with my decent recovery to avoid undershooting.

I've been under the foggles for about 45 minutes now, and the sun is playing havok with them everytime we head west. Since they are "real" foggles (instead of a hood) I find that the frosted portion of the glasses focus the sun in my eyes everytime we head west.

I hold my hand up in midair to block the sun when we are on westerly headings. As I turn and the sun is no longer an issue, I find that I've been concentrating on my scan so intently to have forgotten to lower my hand on several occasions. I feel kind of silly when I finally clue in that my hand is now hovering in midair for no reason.

Now, unusual attitudes again, but my turn to recover from them. My instructor tells me to close my eyes and put my head down. He pitches, banks, and yaws the plane all over the place, trying to play havok with my sensory perception of what the aircraft is actually doing. I keep track of what I'm feeling the aircraft doing, and with few exceptions it's indeed what I expect when I open my eyes and restart my scan.

My unusual attitude recoveries are OK, but some technical issues on the first few. When recovering from a spiral dive, after chopping the throttle, I tended to level the wings while pulling out at the same time. Wrong - level wings first, then pull out.

I do this automatically when VFR, but the added workload of flying instruments causes me to mess this up for some reason.

I'm probably just being tough on myself, as a few more of them and I'm doing it as I should be.

Recoveries from unusual nose up attitudes is fine, no big issues there.

Overall, I'm pretty comfortable with the whole instrument flight situation. Not overly confident, but comfortable.

To my chagrin, I haven't the foggiest (no pun intended) where we are a good portion of the time. If it weren't for the frequent position reports from other planes in the area (And my instructors responses indicating our position) I would have been seriously turned around for a few seconds if I had taken the foggles off.

At this point, my instructor seems satisfied with what we have done so far, so he grabs the ATIS and gets our clearance back into the zone while I continue to concentrate on the instruments. He feeds me changing headings and target altitudes, and it's obvious we are heading home now.

I kind of wondered why he did the radio calls for me, but it becomes clear a few minutes later when he informs me it's time to do my downwind checks. The break in my concentration (and inattentiveness to the instruments) for the few seconds it takes is enough to throw me into a slight bank, and towards 10 degrees off my heading. Interesting!

He continues to feed me headings and instructions. He tells me to setup for my usual base approach configuration, but I still haven't a clue where we are. Are we actually on base, or is this another exercise?

Trimmed for 70 knots now, and decending, he gives me another target heading.

I turn to it, and he then says to take the foggles off - low and behold, the first thing outside the airplane that I see in an hour is runway 12 ahead of me.

It feels kind of strange to have all of the usual visual cues outside the cockpit available once again.

I perform a mediocre short field landing, and once again experience GYYG's notorious nosewheel shimmy as I apply the brakes.

The rest is all formality from there as we taxi back and shutdown.

Overall, I'm glad I did at least this one instrument lesson. Although it far from makes me a pro, we agreed that it would probably be enough for me to at least successfully exit IMC (Instrument Meteorological Conditions) if I ever got into it by accident - and that was my goal.

It was all very intriguing though, and I'm glad I did it even though it's not mandatory for the recreational class licence that I am aiming for.

All in all, today added 1.3 hobbs, and 1.0 simulated instrument time to my logbook.

Next flight will be a solo again - I've decided I want to do at least one more solo recap of diversiona and precautionary landings before heading into the flight test prep.

After my next solo, it's officially time for flight test prep. There's a light at the end of the tunnel!

September 10'th, 2005:
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Well, as was expected, the costs of flying have increased thanks to the cost of fuel.

The 152 fleet is now renting for $110/Hr Hobbs time.

100LL AvGas is $1.50-something per litre at CYOO.

On a bright note, the cost of Mogas crashed back down to something remotely resembling reasonable levels this past week. I guess $1.06/L is the "New" reasonable. It seems like only a few weeks ago I was paying 0.89, and lots of people were complaining about that at the time.

Anyways, enough griping! This mornings solo went well. I awoke to a beautifull bright sunrise this morning at 6:15AM. The winds were at about 5Kts from the east, and there was hardly a cloud in the sky except for some high cirrus.

Great weather for bright sunshine. Sunglasses will definately be required today.

I ensure the sunglasses are in my flightbag before departing. :-)

While guzzling a large cup of coffee, I head out to the airport. It's obvious it's going to be a great morning for flying, so I'm hyped.

I checkout GRPQ, the 152 I rarely fly since it's laden with extra avionics and isn't much use for dual (without skinny students and instructors) as it's easilly put overgross.

The preflight goes well and produces no issues.

I will be departing towards the east today. Tower gives me a left-turn-out clearance when I had hoped for a straight out departure for simplicity's sake. I make a soft field takeoff. The right turn out clearnace works out good in the end, as the sun is blinding me pretty badly as I climb away from runway 12. I turn north and stabilize my climb, with the sun now out of my eyes.

As I roll back east again I get blinded, but I'm trimmed for the climb now so it's not as bad. The visors just aren't cutting it today as the sun is still low on the horizon and my climb attitude makes them pretty much useless.

I climb up to 3500 and continue to head east. I fly east and pass over my house at the edge of the CZ.

I decide to head out to the Orono area again, where I was last week. It seems to take alot longer to get to highway 35/115 then it did last week. I keep referencing my VNC keeping tabs on where I am. I get there eventually, and spot Orono.

I decide to do a precautionary landing first, which makes my decision to climb to 3500 seem pretty foolish now now.

To make a long story short, it goes well, all in all. I probably wouldn't have actually landed in the field I choose, as upon the 500AGL pass it looked less then ideal after the fact, but for simulation purposes it worked - I didn't have time to abort and start all over again at another field simply because my "simulated" field wasn't perfect. In a real situation, I would have climbed out and found a better option.

I make a long spiraling climb back up to 2500' to start the diversion. I take a second to checkout the scenery as I'm climbing and realize that the Orono country fair is on this weekend - there's lots of activity at the fairgrounds.

I snap a quick picture of a friends house on the eastern edge of Bowmanville as well.

At altitude, I start planning the diversion. I didn't want to pick Blackstock again as my diversion destination, since that would kind of defeat the purpose of doing something new, versus last week. I decide to head to Jannetville instead - northeast of Blackstock.

I start orbiting Orono, and plan. I find it a little bit of a challenge doing three things at once - actually flying, watching intently for traffic, and planning the diversion. This is the first time I've multitasked so many things at once while solo, but I accomplish it safely.

That done, I remember to reset the HI before continuing. I make one more quick orbit of Orono before setting my heading, almost straight north.

A few minutes into the diversion I look ahead for my halfway checkpoint, to see if I'll be there on my ETA.

Oh yeah, an ETA. Sheesh, I forgot to note the time when I actually started the diversion. Oops.

I estimate I've been flying the diversion for 2 minutes now, and make my ETA's with that understanding. That should put me over my first halfway checkpoint (A set of powerlines) at about 6 minutes.

I initially think I've reached my halfway checkpoint about 1.5 minutes early untill I realize that I've referenced the wrong set of powerlines - there are two sets, a few miles apart. Sure enough, pretty close to my ETA, I cross the correct set of powerlines.

I look at lake Scugug ahead and visualize where Janetville is based on sight, and my VNC. It's clear I didn't add in enough of a heading adjustment to take the wind into consideration, as I'm somewhat west of where I should really be.

Looking down at my watch I realize I'll be in the general vicinity pretty close to my ETA regadless, and not terribly far off heading wise - I would have found my diversion destination in the end. I also realize that it's now 8:35, and my reservation ends at 9AM, with another pilot awaiting the plane.

I chock the diversion up as "Mostly Successfull", although I clearly need a little bit more practice (and perhaps some armchair flying) to get really proficient. I turn west towards Port Perry.

I seem to be crawling along again, so I take the opportunity to have a few minutes of downtime and sightsee a little, while still keeping an eye out for traffic. I'm heading into the training area over the lake, so I quit sightseeing and watch for traffic more intently now. Nobody is on the Unicom except one other plane doing IFR holds near the Simcoe VOR....a long way from myself. A second plane calls in from the Uxbridge area, and it's clearly a student on the radio.

I chuckle to myself when he announces himself at 35,000 Feet. He keys up and says a few words each time, and then lets go of the mic before finishing his announcement. This happens about 5 times.

I kind of feel bad for chucking after the fact, since I know how hard it is for some students to get comfortable on the radio, and this studet is definately having problems.

The pilot flying the IRF holds around the Simcoe VOR calls up the plane in question and advises that they will be at the same general altitude, but they are quite aways from each other so there should be no conflict. The other plane responds, but it's the accompanying instructor speaking now and not the student.

That brief few minutes of interest burns off the otherwise seemingly slow crawl to the Port Perry area. I turn south now and start my track back towards the airport. The ATIS has changed to bravo, so I update accordingly.

Tower clears me left base for 12, report abeam the university.

Unlike the rest of the flight where it was perfectly smooth with nary a bump of turbulence, after decending into the pattern things start getting rough. I'm getting tossed around fairly heavilly on final, and it causes me some grief with my airspeeds.

I do a soft field landing for good measure, since I havn't done one of those in a while either. I touch the mains with a small bleat from the stall warning and keep the nosewheel in the air, as I should be.

The tower chirps up on the radio as I'm touching the mains, and begins to instruct me to take taxiway Charlie if possible. As I blow past it, still rolling out, in mid sentence he directs me to exit left at the intersection instead. Soft field landings aren't particularly short, indeed!

I taxi back to the apron and shutdown, fairly pleased with the flight overall!

It was all very routine except the cost. 1.3 on the Hobbs meter today cost me just over $160.00, after my headset rental, insurance, and taxes. This constitutes a noticable increase indeed.
My next flight was somewhat up in the air. A cross country had been discussed, but wouldn't happen after the fact. More details in my next journal entry... :-)

However, there was now an increasing number of new lessons on my plate that I found myself less then confident about, and a touch of self-doubt had crept in. I didn't like it, but it seems that alot of students experience this at some point or another. Thankfully, my experiences tended to prove to me that it was unfounded, but it caused me great concern untill this point.

September 4'th, 2005:
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I think I've discovered a new theme about my flight training, at least now that the basics are out of the way and we are working on more advanced and procedural lessons.

I'm finding that I'm now getting paranoid about new lessons for some reason. Perhaps it's because I'm not feeling as confident anymore about what I'm learning, versus my earlier experiences. Early on, I went into a lesson with an already good understanding of what we were doing, and very little aprehension about any of it.

Now, I tend to find myself concerned about what is to come. I doubt myself.

And time after time, after the lesson in question has came and went, I find that my worry was generally unfounded.

Let's take yesterdays lesson for example - Diversions.

I went into this lesson with a lacklustre feeling about what was to come. The theory sounded easy (incredibly) enough, but there are so many variables that it's definately something that makes your mind work while you are doing it. At the same time, one still needs to fly the plane.

So, we started out with about a 40 minute ground brief. We did it all in theory first on the whiteboard in the classroom, discussed the exact procedures, and then discussed our flight to come.

We also briefed precautionary landings as well, even though we were not sure if we would have the time to actually accomplish two lessons in one flight today.

That accomplished, off we went. Preflight was fine, although once again we were right at maximum gross. I left the wheel-chocks behind. Yep, that close. :-)

My instructor suggests we head east today, instead of towards the normal north training area. I'm rather enthused about this option, as it's territory I've only ever flown over a few times previous, which will be a refreshing change.

On the flipside, that also means that I'm not going to be overly familliar with the area, which will make navigation and the diversion planning more difficult. I think that's exactly what my instructor had in mind, however!

My instructor requests a short field takeoff. That's easy...done.

As we climb out and start our turn towards the east, we fly through some rain which briefly splatters on the windscreen, making nice pinging noises. Before long we are out of it. A little chop ensues, but nothing major.

My first concern as we level off at 2500 is to figure out exactly where we are. Now travelling east instead of North, I no longer have my well-known northerly landmarks to indicate the edge of the control zone, and since we are not climbing above the CZ (@ 3000') I actually have to figure out where we are. That's no big deal, I use some quickly spotted landmarks along the lake shore, compare them to my VNC, and figure we are on the eastern tip of the CZ, about to clear it by the time I pinpoint us. I suggest to my instructor that we appear to be clear of the CZ, and get a reassuring "Yep". I call us clear to the tower, and we are cleared enroute.

So far so good.

The ceiling is fairly low, but strangely my instructor asks for a climb to 3000. I cautiously suggest that's going to put us fairly close to the ceiling, but begin climbing regardless, watching intently above. As I do so, he reaches over and pulls the throttle - Simulated engine failure.

I blissfully fail to pull on the carb heat immediately, as my instructor will soon nail me on when I proceed through my restart/cause checks.

I find a suitable field, and all of my keypoints just fine, and begin my approach.

I make my simulated mayday calls and then proceed through the cause checks, at which point I put my hand on the carb heat, and realise that it's off. My instructor is quick to remind me that I forgot that, aware of the fact long before I was. Ugh.

I didn't take the wind into consideration quite enough, and find that I need to abandon my final keypoint and head straight for my chosen field, as the wind was pushing hard.

We would have made it though, so we overshoot and climb back up. Exercise complete, but more practice definately needed.

So, diversion time. We head east again, climb back to 2500, and my instructor suddenly starts the exercise with an announcement - simulated of course. "Uh oh, ceiling is dropping, we can't make our destiation... Oh my, what can we do?"

Out comes my VNC, and I start orbiting our current area. I immediately recognize a restaurant below that my parents used to drag me to every weekend as a kid - it has a giant red roof - easy to see from the sky. The highway landmarks are also easy picking from here.

That helps, since I immediately know precisely where I am. I pinpoint our current position on the VNC.

The most straightforward place to divert would realistically be Peterborough, but we are simulating having come from there, and the weather has closed in behind us so a reverse track is not an option. I suggest Oshawa?

"Sorry, clouds closed in that way too - looks like it's clear to the north, though..." is the suggestion.

"How about Blackstock airport?" my instructor jokingly suggests?

Ok, there is no airport in Blackstock, but I get the hint.

So, I start the diversion flight plan. I surprise myself and remember everything I need to do, except resetting the HI against the magnetic compass. This will come back to bite me soon.

I get the heading and distance, our ETA, mark a landmark at the halfway point, and also calculate an ETA to it. I figure a 10 degree west wind correction heading, and about an extra 1 minute for the headwind.

I start the diversion, and mark the time.

As we transit to the northwest, we pass near Mosport International Raceway to the east. There is a big event there this weekend, and some helicopters are buzzing around the area. The tower did advise us of these earlier, but when we actually saw then up we made an advisory radio call anyways just in case. No answer.

My instructor is watching the racing action, as I concentrate on the diversion.

It seems like I'm heading more west then I should be, which when I mention the fact, my instructor nonchalantly suggests I check the magnetic compass against the HI - Oh! Sure enough, it's off by about 15 degrees. I briefly have a "Huh?" moment, then realize my mistake - I forgot to reset the HI before I started the diversion.

I reset it, and correct my heading. Lesson learned, but a bad mistake..

Perfectly on my ETA, I pass over my halfway landmark - a triple set of powerlines. I further reference a train track shortly afterwards - still on course.

And right on our ETA, I'm right overtop of Blackstock. Cool!

My instructor says the diversion is complete. I did it - why was I so worried about this exercise to begin with again? It turned out to be nothing at all...

That done, we find that we are ahead of schedule. Lets go for the precautionary landing.

Easy stuff, certainly a routine exercise. My only goof was being slightly close on my downwind on my first pass. I corrected for the second 500 AGL slow and low field inspection.

Another circuit, I'm satisfied that the field is satisfactory, so I setup for a soft field landing. No problem, exercise done, I was established on a nice final and had made all of my radio calls and such...we overshoot and climb out.

We are both happy with the progress today, and we are surprisingly still ahead of schedule. We have accomplished some navigation, a simulated engine failure, a diversion, and a precautionary landing exercise, all within an hour. Wow - a very productive flight!

Now over Blackstock, my instructor asks me to navigate to another small town to the south. I reference my VNC, and head south. The main road out of Blackstock leads directly towards said town, but it's hard to find as it's not only a very small hamlet, but it's also surrounded by trees.

I suggest I'm going to fly "IFR" (I Follow Roads) to the town. Har Har, more lame student pilot humour. :-)

I find the town, and my instructor is satisfied. Lets head home.

Tower clears us back into the Oshawa CZ. The approach is routine, right base for three zero. As I'm about to setup base, the tower asks us to proceed straight to the threshhold, as there is other traffic coming in from the southwest.

I comply, and adjust my approach. My instructor asks for a short field landing with an obstacle.

As I'm setting up, what appears to be a coyote runs across the end of three zero, and I point it out. My instructor calls up the tower to let them know, even though it's now clear of the runway. The excitement causes me to forget that we are simulating an obstacle, so I kind of end up a little low.

I realize my goof and assure my instructor that if there was a "real" obstacle I wouldn't have forgotten to clear it. :-)

The landing is fine, but I clear the active fast so as not to impede the traffic behind and cause someone an unnecessary overshoot.

The end result? 1.2 dual in the logbook, and a TON of productive learning. Wow! I couldn't be more pleased.

More importantly, I have finallly realized that perhaps I need to stop getting all paranoid about new lessons, and just go with the flow. Everytime I seem to get all worked up, it's generally all about nothing after the fact.

We debreif, and make plans for our next flight.

In the meantime, my instructor clears me for solo flights to the east, as well as my formerly cleared north. This is great, since it allows me some fresh territory to work with, rather then the overly familliar (and often very busy) training area to the north of Oshawa airport. I'll probably head out there for my next solo, as I can see the advantage of flying somewhere new for a change, versus north where I am clearly overly comfortable with now.

I'll concentrate on a diversion or two, and a precautionary landing exercise again.

And I'm looking forward to it! :-)