As of the 17th of January 2009, I’m a qualified pilot, having finished my Private Pilots License for single piston engined aircraft!
I’ve yet to receive my actual license, however all that remains is to send my certificates/medical off to the CAA with over £150 (!!) before they send one to me!
The last part of my training was the skills test, which I completed on the 17th. Initially I was slightly surprised it went ahead, given that the forecast was dire the evening before, however I was up at the flying school for 08:30 and things looked a lot better! The flight commenced at 09:45, with the first leg being a general navigation exercise. After 30 minutes of flying towards the Scottish border, I headed for my next waypoint and was given an engine failure about 5 minutes into that leg! After making a good approach into a conveniently placed airfield which we’d just flown over, I was immediately diverted to Brunton Aerodrome, out on the East coast. The diversion went fairly well, although I was blown off track by the 30kt wind from the West, meaning I needed to use navigation aids to fix my position (also part of the test!)
Once i’d reached Brunton, my examiner gave me hazed goggles, meaning I could not see outside the cockpit, and I was asked to assume i’d just flown into cloud. The procedure then was to make a 180 degree turn, without losing any height, to move out of the imaginary cloud! After a small section on instrument navigation, we moved onto the general handling section of the test. In this section, I was asked to stall the aircraft several times, in different situations (i.e on final approach setup, or during a turn onto final approach with two stages of flap), and subsequently recover. Absolutely no problems with these! My tight turns were a little scrappy (Over 45 degrees of bank), however didn’t cause much of a problem in the end.
After this section we headed back to Newcastle, and after a small hiccup in communications with Newcastle Radar (I’d called them, was distracted with something the examiner had pointed out, and subsequently forgotten i’d called!) we headed in for circuits. The first was a little bumpy, but the others seemed ok, given the gusty conditions.
All in all, I was happy with the test, although I know I could have improved in some places. My examiner was obviously also happy, and suggested certain things to brush up on, which I happily took on board!
I’ve uploaded a photo of my test certificate, and a picture of my planned route on my map in the photo album!
Hopefully i’ll have lots more photos and videos to upload coming weeks and months, since i’ll be able to take passengers flying for the first time! - Keep an eye out for those!