Enkele dagen geleden was het zover.. mijn eerste solovlucht! Dit betekent dat je helemaal alleen, op je eentje in het vliegtuig zit. Hoewel ik al wat solo-ervaring had met zweefvliegtuigen, gaf ook deze eerste solo op 'powered aircraft' weer een mooie 'kick' als ik het zo mag noemen. De eerste solovlucht bestaat uit 3 take-offs en 3 full stop landings, met taxibacks daartussen in.

Na mijn tweede solocheck geslaagd te hebben, mocht ik 30 minuten later mezelf nog eens bewijzen voor mijn eigen instructeur. één traffic pattern gevolgd door een full stop landing en voordat ik het wist zat ik helemaal alleen in de Diamond 4129T. De vlucht zelf verliep zonder problemen. Misschien af en toe eens iets harder landen als we zouden willen, maar men kan niet meteen een vlinder zijn!

Na de vlucht overleefd te hebben, stond er nog een briefing op het programma. Deze zou gaan over "crosscountry" oftewel navigeren. Op deze manier krijg je je dag wel gevuld:

03:00 Opstaan, ontbijten, douchen
04:00 Het busje pakken naar de school
04:05 Vlucht voorbereiden: het weer checken, de status van het vliegtuig, .. en kennismaken met de instructeur van dienst
05:45 Opstijgen met de instructeur die mijn check gaat afnemen
06:15 Landen
06:20 Kijken hoe anderen hun eerste solo doen en ondertussen een nieuwe "mass&balance-sheet" invullen
07:00 Opstijgen met mijn eigen instructeur
07:15 Landen
07:30 Opstijgen, helemaal alleen
08:00 Landen
09:00 Het busje naar huis nemen, eventjes middageten, 15 minuutjes slapen
11:00 Het busje naar de school nemen en de briefing volgen
11:05 Waarnemen dat je briefing 30 minuten vertraagd is
11:30 Beginnen aan de briefing
14:30 Einde van de briefing, naar huis gaan

Uiteraard heb ik hier ook wel het slechtste voorbeeld genomen.

Het voordeel van zo vroeg te moeten opstaan is wel dat de lucht zooo zacht is! Geen turbulentie te bespotten, nergens! We noemen dit ook wel simulatorweer. Persoonlijk sta ik liever om 3u snachts op om dan te vliegen bij 30° als dat ik zou moeten opstaan om 9u en te vliegen bij 40++°. Vanaf 43°c of hoger mogen we trouwens niet meer opstijgen.

Ondertussen gaat het leven hier in Arizona zijn gewone gangetje. Voor morgen sta ik 2x gepland, dat betekent 3u vollebak touch&go's doen op ons lokale luchthaventje. Overmorgen ga ik dan waarschijnlijk mijn eerste navigatievlucht mogen doen, samen met mijn instructeur. Die vlucht in ondertussen al mooi uitgeplot op mijn kaartje, en de VFR-navigation log is al zover als mogelijk ingevuld!

Hieronder kan je enkele foto's en een videootje terug vinden van mijn eerste solovlucht. Enkele vluchten later heb ik ook de mogelijkheid gehad om wat landings te kunnen filmen, dit is het tweede fimlpje.

Hi,

Just 1 mission left before the solocheckride! Looking forward to that.

As for today, I've tried my best to make a small demomovie with Microsoft Flight Simulator 9. It is recorded at EBZW, the airfield where I used to glide before I started my flight training at SFA. I'll try to describe a part of the things that should be done in a traffic pattern according to the POH (Pilot Operating Handbook) of the DA20, and my personal experience.

1. Climb-out. At KFFZ, we have noise abatement procedures. Up to 300ft AGL (above ground level) we have to climb at Vx (speed for best angle of climb). The fieldelevation is 300ft more or less, so we'll have to fly at Vx up to an altitude of 600ft. As for Vx I have used 65kts in this demo. When passing through 600ft AMSL (above mean sea level (=altitude)) we can accelerate to Vy (speed for best rate of climb). Vy is 75 kts in the Da20. The next step is to turn at 500ft AGL (800ft AMSL) onto the crosswind leg. A climbing turn is 15° of bank maximum. Before turning we call out 'L / R free'. Finally, we level off at 1000ft AGL (1300ft AMSL). The speed in the traffic pattern is 80 kts, so we wait with pulling back the throttle until we have almost reached 80 kts. During the climb on the crosswind leg, we do the "after take-off flow" ("fuel pump on, landing light on, flaps up in a pattern").

2. Downwind. When entering downwind, we do the descent/approach flow (in a pattern it is only "DG set, engine instruments checked, warning lights push to test"). We maintain 80 kts. The next step is when we are abeam our touchdown zone. We check the speed, put flaps on 10° and maintain 75 kts.

3. At 45°, we can do a level turn onto baseleg, and start to descent when we roll out. The speed on baseleg is 70kts. We do the landing flow ("mixture full rich, flaps as required").

4. On final, we put the flaps in landing position (20° on the movie) and reduce the speed to 60kts. We try to maintain a 3° glide slope, keep the aimingpoint fixed on the windscreen and make sure that we stay on the centerline or a bit upwind. a 3° glideslope at 60 kts should give us a descentrate of 300fpm.

5. Landing. Overhead the threshold, we idle, give opposite rudder and put the stick into the wind. we wait until we are low enough and start to flare to try to put the aircraft on the ground as smooth as possible. After ALL wheels have touched down, we pull the stick back and start to brake.

You might notice that I have made some mistakes as well. For example my descentrate is way too high on final, which means that I had a glideslope of more or less 5° instead of 3° (no PAPI's). My speed was a bit high when I was turning onto baseleg. The last mistake I had noticed is that I've slightly overshot the centerline when turning onto final.

If you see some more mistakes, please let me know!! Feedback is always welcome. :-)



You might want to download the movie from rapidshare. It is (only) 55mb. The quality will be waaay better.

http://rapidshare.com/files/258172954/FS_pattern_EBZW.wmv.html

See you next time!

Hi,

And for the 3rd time in 3 weeks, we are having a long weekend! Up to now we have done 7 flights. The 10th flight will be our first check, the solocheck! This means that we are doing a lot of patterns in our flights for the moment. 12 landings in one flight is not an exception nowadays.

For the moment we have a lot of spare time and we do a lot of non-flying related things. We have been in the waterpark wet&wild last saturday for example.

See you next time!

Hello,

Yes, 2 weeks have passed here in Arizona! As said before, our 1st week was completely filled with VFR-briefings. In Belgium we have had some simulatorsessions (and briefings) already so those briefings were a good revision for all of us. In that same week, we had a long weekend (3days off) so we had a lot of time to study all of our flows, V-speeds, patterns, ...

Finally the time had come to do our first flight, in the second week. It was 2:30am when my wake-up call woke me up. After a little shower, I could start to do the flightpreparation on my laptop. Around 5:30 we were airborne! In the first flight we did some normal turns, straight&level flight, ..

Up to now, I have done 4 flights. On the 3rd flight I was suffering a lot from motionsickness, and the sick bag got used for the 1st time! :-) I think it might be because of the 'unusual attitudes' exercise. I had to close my eyes while the instructor brought the aircraft into an unusual attitude. Upon opening my eyes, I had to regain control of the aircraft. The 4th flight then was the flight I enjoyed the most up to now. I had a lot of sleep the night before and felt really good. For the first time I had the feeling that I had control of the aircraft, instead of the aircraft having control of me. Afterwards my instructor was a bit surprised when he figured out that I didn't have any real flightexperience before (except 6hrs of gliding), so I was a bit proud about that! He let me land as from the second mission, which is something I like a lot. He gives great explanations when he does a demo and is always very friendly. In short, I am happy to have an instructor like this!

For the moment we have a long weekend again (3days) so we can relax a bit at the pool, watch some fireworks at Tempe, and all these things. I took the time to read a great part of the VFR-manual as well, looked up some more tips on the internet, and tomorrow I'll revise my flows again, because 3 days off is a lot in the first weeks of flying. In fact I'd prefer to have only one day off for the moment!

In the mean time we have spent some time in an aviation museum as well.