Ty Ewup

Thank you all for coming, there will be refreshments at the end. I believe they have coffee and doughnuts, and something called "tea".

It WAS a busy week. I got 7 flights in 5 days of flying, plus ground school. What does this mean? I was busier, as the colloquilism goes, than a one legged man in an ass kicking contest. They were all Instrument flights, consisting of basically the same routine. Climb, arc, track,intercept, twizzle, point to point, hold, approach, Missed Approach, Vectored Departure, another approach, land.

I will try to explain each in turn.

1. When Climbing on Instruments(IFR) you must look at your dial and hold approx 10 degrees nose up. This changes from day to day, but you are always expected to fix it, and climb at the proper speed, 180kts. While doing this, you are correcting for wind, talking to Air Traffic Control and calculating for your arc.

2. Arcing is staying a specific number of miles away from a Navagational Aid (NAVAID). The Navaid talks to your plane and tells you how far you are away. You are allowed plus or minus .5 of a mile. Which seems like a big distance, but remember, Im going 220 knots, and doing my level off checks, and calculating for intercept. Also remember, as you arc around a circle, the winds also change, this makes arcing particularily fun when the winds are strong.

3. Intercepting, going off the arc to maintain a track (direction over the ground, being corrected for wind). This is the easiest of all the manouevers, unless its windy, then you have to guess on how much bank you use to get the radial (Navaid telling you what you are tracking). If its windy, the wind can hurtle you towards the radial, or keep you from it. How do I know the wind? I get winds on the ground, via Weather man (Met Guy), he means well, but is often wrong.

4. Twizzles, once I've established the radial, I get a twizzle. A twizzle is doing two (or more) things at once. You can climb/descend, change speed,turn, either two or all three. Each requires a seperate calculation, and each requires crosscheck to "fine tune". You see, the calculations they give you only work for a normal day. Not when its fracking cold out (point of interest, the colder it gets, the better my engine works). To add to this, I have limits to work within, working between two heading, when going left 30 degrees bank and going right 20 (say north and south), work between two speeds (say 180 and 200) and two alititudes (say 7500 ft and 8500ft), when going up 500 ft per minutes and going down 250 ft per minutes. So things are happening, and they happening fast. Sometimes if my instructor feels Im not being challenged enough, he'll change one of the variables half way through.

Point to point. I can't really explain this without a diagram. You use a Radial and a Distance to get to another radial and a distance. You calculate how far you will go, how long it will take you to get there, all without using a calculator or GPS. Plus wind, you also must slow down below 175 knots, but not before 10 miles to your point.

A hold, imagine a race track, you fly one. Its not really that hard, finding wind correction is easy. There is some talk with ATC, but nothing major.

the Approach. You fly from altitude (say 13,000) to the minimum safety height (say 2000, depending on type of approach, there are many types). You must descend, following ATC headings, read back clearances (its like asking permission to go home, and you have to read back exactly what he says to you), you must also "brief the approach", the acronym for this is "WARAMORTS", each letter has atleast two things you must say/figure out/obtain to complete. You must also reduce your speed from 220 to below 147, but not before turning base. Eventually you get to the point where you decide to land or not. If you can't land you do a missed approach.

Missed approach is simple, full power, nose up, landing gear up, fly a heading, climb to an altitude, reduce your speed to 180 at 5000 ft, talk to ATC, and turn where they tell you.

So theres IF in a nutshell. I hope this helped. I did a flight today, we planned for an alternate for Calgary...the weather was quite shitty. Thankfully we didnt have to fly to brandon (the other alternate) or Calgary for that matter!

Did anyone but Cobra fly? No. Why, you might ask, Cobra always flies, always. Im 5 1/3 flights ahead, basically I could not fly for 2 weeks, and still be ahead of the game.