Friday, January 09, 2009

I had a freaky nightmare in the wee hours of the morning. Though I cannot remember most of it, the parts that scared me were quite vivid. It has been a long time since I last had a nightmare and I hope after the one I just had, I won't experience another anytime soon. The nightmares that I had as a child were quite horrific and I can still recall them til this day. No more I hope, else I will be afraid to go to sleep at night.

Moving on, I had a small victory today! I cleared my navigation solo check on my first attempt. To me, this is a milestone that marks this journey so far. I felt I had a lot to prove and I managed to rise to the occasion.

I had done a lot of preparation beforehand and though it does help a lot, there is always something new that I am not prepared for. The check instructor put a fair amount of pressure on me for the entire sortie and it was quite mentally exhausting to say the least. However, I realize I can handle that kind of pressure, in fact, it made me perform better than I ever did before this. It is just not comfortable heh. Altitude and heading was maintained to standard and I was on more or less on track and on time for the entire navigation exercise. The checks and the navigation technique were generally satisfactory but he wanted me to fine tune it and navigate in even greater detail. That was the tough bit as I was not that disciplined before. It was tough planning ahead and trying to get positive fixes and deciding what to prioritize first. The cycle of activity never stops and there is plenty of mental calculation to be done.

I was totally not prepared for the IFR traffic over at Cunderdin and I did not know what all the calls meant. This is the first time I am experiencing so much traffic in a CTAF aerodrome and I had to learn on the spot. I began to have a mental picture of all that is going on and how it will affect me. I joined for circuits, did 2 touch and gos, departed and carried on from there.

It was not a perfect sortie and there were many things to pick on but I managed to correct my mistakes and keep improving throughout the route. I learnt a lot from this check and I will continue to refine my techniques to be better.

Poot Poot and I had a lovely time celebrating my small success but now, all I want to do is knock myself out and sleep. Thank you God for everything.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Seriously i want ask, what you mean by mental calculations? sorry i sound stupid,but just curious though.Are there so much figures to think of when in air??

Vanessa said...

Most definitely, especially for navigation. What I have planned on ground will most always turn out differently due to changing conditions. So if I want to reach my waypoint, I would need to make corrections to get back on track based on distance travelled, distance to go and how many miles off track, calculate a correction angle and fly a new heading. All these have to be done mentally. Also, have to calculated how much fuel has been burnt based on fuel consumption per hour and do conversions. Also, ground is not always flat, there's different elevation, so have to think about the height you want to fly at based on that. Then, need to calculate the point of descent based on descent rate per minute and how many miles per minute. After awhile, it becomes easy, but yep, it's the quickest and fastest way to do it all in the head.

Anonymous said...

Oh wow, so there's so much to do! Not to forget the comms with controls as well right?Respect! Multitasking.