The Start of The Aviation Dream: April 2015

Sorry for not posting in a while, there hasn't been much to really write that would be of any interest to you guys reading it and the fact I didn't have much spare time.

So what has happened you ask....well another 4 subjects completed which leaves 6 to go. The subjects that I had in this module were Radio Navigation, Flight Planning, Instruments and Flight Performance.

I'll give you a brief description of what each subject entailed.

Radio Nav(RNAV) - This was an interesting subject which was taught by one of the best ground instructors. It was about the different navigation aids which are used in aviation for both small planes and large planes. These aids included the radar systems, GPS, transponders, and different approach aids to name a few. We basically had to learn how these systems operate and the frequency bands in which they operate along with the range of each system. I thoroughly enjoyed this subject because it was taught in a way that made it interesting and understandable.
Flight Planning - This subject was also taught by the same instructor. We had a Jeppesen manual which contains a load of different type of charts for both visual flying and instrument flying. The picture of the Jep is attached below. This subject I found the easiest of the 4 because as soon as you learn the basics of identifying different items on the charts and reading off graphs you can pretty much do the whole subject. It is a very time consuming because you have to find so many locations on giant charts and you are limited to a small computer booth for the exam so you cant open the whole chart.
Instruments - Wow, was this a boring subject or what! As the subject title suggests, we learnt about the instruments. These instruments included basic attitude indicators, directional indicators rate turn indicators which all use gyroscopes for operation. These are used in conditions where you cannot see where you are flying and you have to rely on these instruments to tell you what the plane is doing when you make a movement. We also then went onto advanced instruments where we learnt about traffic collision avoidance systems(TCAS), weather radar systems and ground proximity warning systems. While these are relevant to what we will be using next year in the simulators, we felt it was a bit early to be learning about them in so much depth.
Performance - For this subject we had a pretty poor instructor who just killed us all with powerpoints. I now fully understand why people say the term "dead by powerpoint". I felt like this subject I was just learning by myself at home as I felt the lessons where completely useless. Nice person but just cannot teach. Anyway, about the subject.....we had to learn about the take off and landing performance of a single engine plane, multi engine plane and a small jet. We learnt about the different factors which are used to tell you what length runway you need in certain conditions for both take off and landing. We had a book full of graphs which when you have a take off mass and some other location parameters like wind or temperature, you can then work out how long the runway needs to be to accommodate failures.

Hopefully I still have your attention...so that was the basics of what I learnt in the last 2 months. I'm pleased to say that I passed all of the subjects despite having a brutal instruments exam because of all the new questions the CAA are using. I had an overall avg of 92% in mod 2 which I am over the moon with.

I can now understand why everyone says the next 6 months will be the hardest of your life. They weren't wrong! Not so much with the technical content but the shear volume of information you have to learn! A lot of the information I have learnt will never even be used again in real operation.

We started the first of the last 6 subjects today after having all of 18 hours off after our last mod 2 exam. We are applying for our NZ visas this week....it's getting very real very fast now! Oh and CTC decided to bring our fly out date forward by a week too so we will be there before I know it!

That's all for now, next update will probably be just before I go to NZ.