I was back up at the school for PPL lesson 30: Navigation today.
First of all the weather was amazing! Few clouds at 2300ft but apart from that clear blue skies.
The winds were 010/10 and visibility was over 10km.
Neither of my instructors were available today so I had a new instructor called Gino who is also a first officer at Ryanair, that makes two.
I must admit Gino was great, easy to talk to, really easy to get on with and most importantly a great instructor.
I had been told last Friday that the route would be Cranfield – > Conington – > Sywell – > Cranfield.
When I got to the school it was empty as the instructors were out checking the plane. I just got cracking on with my planning which was pretty much done I just needed to I adjust for wind etc.
We then sat down and had a chat before heading to the plane and taking off.
It was an amazing day for flying, in fact it was the best that I have had so far by a long way.
We set of towards Conington and my instructor taught me not to look at the map all the time. He said to trust your planning and look out for your waypoints. My waypoint this leg was Grafham Water which is a huge reservoir.
About 10 nm from Conington I did my first frequency change which goes like.
G-BOYB, freq call, Conington, 127.85.
The reply is – G-BOYB freq call approve, goodbye.
Next I contacted Conington and when they replied and asked me to pass my message I gave.
G-BOYB type 152, 2 Pob, 10 miles SW at 2000ft, will be transiting your overhead and departing to the west. QNH 1015
They then replied report overhead QNH 1002.
To which I replied report overhead, QNH 1002.
I was surprised how well I did with the calls and we actually hit Conington and every other way point exactly on time. I won’t go into much more details as it is pretty much the same as the first leg I did.
On the way back I did my first diversion which is another high workload time in the cockpit You need to plan you diversion, work out your ETA all while still flying the plane.
My instructor offered to do some aerobatics to which I declined, straight and level flight for me at the moment 🙂
After this we came back to Cranfield where I was asked to join left Base and land on runway 21.
All in all it was a great day of flying and I really enjoyed flying with this new instructor. I have a few things to read about and brush up on tonight before I am back up at the school tomorrow.
In total we flew for 1.5 hours.
