PPL Lesson 4 (pt2), Ex 7, 8, 9

Carrying on from the last lesson the weather had now turned to drizzle and broken clouds with the odd bit of sunshine thrown in. This time it was turning in a climb and descent and an introduction to stalling.

So I start to climb past 2000ft and half way through Matt throws in a request to change heading by 40 degrees whilst maintaining the climb. That didn't go too bad but having to remember all the checks as well as what I was learning in the lesson was a but daunting.

Whilst we were up there Matt ran me through slow flight by flying on the drag curve and handed over to let me fly it with the stall warning constantly on. It's amazing how much control you loose on the wings at that speed.

Still, as the lesson went on it became easier and easier, this really was like learning to drive the car and I felt really confident by the time I got to the end of the lesson, so much that I orbited for a while to let an airbus through then called for landing clearance, flaps down, set the RPM, checks done and lined up to land. Final stage of flaps in, power off and flare..... touchdown, awesome. We taxi'd down to our spot behind an airbus which was kinda strange as you feel so small !


Lesson Over and back for a de-brief before planning the next lesson on Thursday which is slow flight and stalling. Fingers crossed for some good weather.

PPL Lesson 4 (pt1), Ex 7, 8, 9

EGCN 290850Z 23010KT CAVOK 09/07 Q1007

Wasn't sure what to expect from today, two lessons back to bank and the comms to do too. Needless to say I learnt my lesson from last time and I read and re-read the PPL book through until Exercise 11 so this time I wasn't going to miss a thing.

As you can see from the METAR it was CAVOK this morning (Ceiling And Visibility OK) which looked pretty great until half way to the airport and an unassuming black veil seemed to be moving down from the North which during the day turned from complete blue sky to broken clouds and rain showers for the rest of the day.

On with the briefing, first was a re-cap on my knowledge of previous which was to be expected really seems as I couldn't remember my name before! So a Rolf Harris-esque session on the whiteboard started and I mapped out an ascent, descent including where and what checks to do, FREDA and finally the rates and speeds expected. Apart from the speeds being a bit out I was surprised to see that I got them right, well... not so much surprised as thankful for all the reading I had done. Onto Matt's brief for this mornings session which was turns and turns climbing and descending, which seemed pretty straight forward (I remember that false sense of security before).

Paperwork done, checks complete and before I know it we are talking to tower, getting taxi clearance and sat waiting for the runway to clear so we can take off.... with a tail wind and slight cross wind. Now after a fair few hours this weekend listening to tower and traffic, the radio seemed pretty easy. That was until it was my turn and what seemed easy to understand was absolutely confusing, how come it seemed so easy to listen to and understand when someone else was doing it was beyond me. Straight onto the runway and off to a quick start due to an airbus about to land at any moment.

The lesson entailed lots of different turns to get used to having to use the rudder to stay in balance and also a recap on the last lesson which is where we ended up above the clouds in the lovely sunshine which was pretty awesome. We went up, down, left, right etc and I started to get the hang of it all including remembering rudder in the roll out AND everything from last lesson. However the comms were another thing altogether, flying the aircraft was becoming quite simple but combining it with listening to radar and tower etc completely threw me. I guess when the flying becomes second nature the comms will fall into place.

Before I knew it the lesson was over and we popped back out of the clouds over Haxey (above) and tracked back to the airport only to be told to orbit as we turned onto base. What happened next was a bit of a blur, I was trimmed in with flaps to start the landing and after a brief notice from tower that an airbus was on final Matt radio'd in to say that he could get us down before the jet and tower gave us the OK. At that point what was a relaxed descent turned into something from Alton towers, descending towards the runway at a fair old rate of knots and what seemed a god awful angle we touched down and quickly exit the runway.

Lesson over! Back inside for a quick pit stop and back out again.

I'd like to add at this point that when you have an instructor as awesome as Matt it makes flying a lot easier. It's not something I had thought about until today but I think Matt's attitude, the confidence he gives you as a trainee and also the way he handles the plane makes you feel much more at ease and makes lessons far easier than I had imagined.

PPL Lesson 3, Ex 7 and 8

METAR EGCN 251020Z 02008KT 9999 FEW012 SCT031 BKN036 11/09 Q1021

After numerous calls to check the weather suitability and constant monitoring of the TAF we finally got the break needed to get up there again. We had a warm front move really slowly up the UK at around 15knots which brought cloud base down to 200ft and the rest of it was pure fog and mist, which is great if you have autoland equipment but not so good if you need to actually see more than a few feet infront of you.

Matt gave the initial briefing, covering some of the theory behind what was to happen today, I figured that I was doing quite well as I could reel off what Vx and Vy was and when they are best used etc but thought it was a little strange considering the amount of reading that I had done when I didn't know that Power Attitude Trim is reversed on the exit to a climb. I soon remembered thinking to myself when looking at all the pictures of climbing and descending in the study book "PAT going up, yup understand that, aha all the other pictures look the same so I guess I don't need to read them" How wrong can I be! So during the practical it was highlighted by complete confusion at times over what I should be doing.

Sorted all the paperwork out, less tippex needed this time which has earned me the nickname of tippex, although I guess it is better than my nickname from my biking days which was killswitch (the switch that kills the engine) Onto all the checks, yup everything looks fine apart from the rear strobe was out. Checked the engine and fuel and started her up only to find that pulling the throttle back to idle stalled the engine..... didn't expect that. Must check that again on the power checks! That was it, I was off, this time doing everything except the comms which I was told to research before monday as that was mine to do too. 

Takeoff went well, held the center line and off we went, rotated at 65 and climbed nicely towards 1000ft only to realise that I had drifted half a mile off course already because I hadn't put any rudder in after rotation.... damn. Then into the cloud at 1500ft and a disorientating nav up to 5,000 ft.... nope, still cloud... this didn't look good, but then at 5,500ft I kicked myself as we popped out of the clouds which were at this point like really flat cotton wool and for the first time in weeks there was nothing but blue sky and beautiful sunshine. At this point I was figuring that it was pretty awesome up there, sunglasses on, thinking how dark and dingy it was back down there until we started the lesson. 

"Lets ascend to 6,500ft" said Matt "Pick a visual reference point outside the window and begin the procedure" ........ urm, it's flat cloud as far as the eye can see, and the only thing in the distance is a tiny bit of dark cloud, which at a guess would be moving. Anyhow, that was the least of my worries. We began, LOOKOUT, Power, Attitude, Trim.... nicely on the way up on a Vy climb, dipped the nose at 500ft, quick check for traffic and back into the climb. Then exiting the climb the whole Attitude, Power Trim (reversed) completely threw me and for the rest of the lesson threw me so much that I ended up forgetting direction and ended up off course a few times, I lie, it was the majority of the time. Managed to nail the last couple though and we entered a cruise descent back down towards VRP Haxey and join the downwind leg.

Time for landing, just over Bawtry it was power back time, flaps down two stages and we were all lined up, this time it seemed less daunting, I managed to hold the centerline with some fine adjustments and apart from being a bit ground-shy it all went well once I had put some belief into matt that holding the a tonne of metal at 80mph at some concrete more nose down than I thought was fine. I touched down! admittedly with a little bounce but still awesome and loved every minute of it.

Next is two hours on Monday to recap and run through slow flight, stalls etc and Comms, I've got some reading ahead!

Multiple Monitor Heaven

I thought maybe now would be a good time to explain the setup I have in the office which I am greeted to every morning and attempt to explain it in laymens terms to a degree. For years I had found the benefit of using a multiple monitor setup by plugging in a second screen to the laptop etc and it went from there. The system is now two computers allowing me to move the mouse and keyboard across all 6 screens seamlessly, and here's why and how....

Using multiple monitors on a single computer allows you to drag windows from one monitor to another and reduce the amount of swapping between applications. Take for instance the last customer who took this up, on their accounts system they continuously swap between a spreadsheet and their accounts software, sometimes copying and pasting data. The monitor set-up allows them to view both at the same time and drag and drop easily.  So the more applications used, the more you switch between apps and the less productive time. Then comes entry to the world of window managers and real operating systems and software input switchers.

So my pain points.... I use lots of apps at the same time, database, Vim, Skype, Email, IRC, browsers, terminals etc. I also hate having to reboot (which isn't that often) and wait around for the restart.

The resolution: To cure these issues the screens work across two computers, the left two run off a standard every day HP desktop running Ubuntu 12.04 and AwesomeWM with Synergy client to take the mouse and keyboard input, the right 4 monitors are attached to a bespoke system, couple of 560Ti's, 8 core CPU, 16Gig ram and SSD drive so it's a little nippy. The operating system is the same, Ubuntu 12.04, AwesomeWM and Synergy Server.

update: Fri June 5th - have been using #! for a six months now and found it very stable and the IRC channel is really helpful.

After switching to Linux operating systems I can say without a shadow of a doubt I would never go back to windows, there are way too many bugs, crashes, hangs, excessive slowness. Although the path to Linux and finally the distro's I use on a daily basis, Ubuntu, Arch, Backtrack was not as easy as I imagined, but nontheless still worth it.

AwesomeWM is as the name states, pretty awesome and is the tiling window manager of choice for me. The majority of window operations are completed by using simple keyboard commands and on startup all the applications I use are opened and displayed in their own positions on the screens allocated to them. There are many more benefits of AwesomeWM and far too many to start listing on here.

Synergy shares the mouse and keyboard between the two computers, so with a few simple settings when the mouse is moved to the left edge of the middle screens the mouse and keyboard runs seamlessly on the far left screens, and vice versa when it reaches the right side of the left screens. Or you can also change screens with the keyboard and keep your hands where they are.

3 Day water fast - Day 3

Well, its the last day and I cannot remember much about the day. I started off walking Frank at 7am this morning for an hour and did some work until 12pm, at which point the phone and emails went mental. The next thing I know is it's half past five and the food delivery is due any-time now. I guess that will be the hardest thing of the day, putting it all away.

As I have said in the last post, the more you fast, the easier it gets. The third day of my first fast was horrid from memory and so many times through the day I thought to myself "it's OK if I have a quick snack, I'll be eating tomorrow anyhow" but somehow managed to muster up the willpower to make it through.

I was asked today about the detox, whether I felt any benefit. As I mentioned in the page on fasting, there are so many sites on the internet full of information. You will find people doing 1 to 40 day water fasts, brown rice fasts, fruit fasts, dry fasts etc and many claims to helping with weight loss, curing illness etc. My personal take on the benefits are as follows:

Weight loss:
Fasting is a bit extreme to do for weight loss in my opinion, taking this week for example over the three days so far I have lost 10lbs. Great if you want to loose it but a bit harsh in my eyes.
There are many that say loosing weight this way means you will only put it back on, what they forget to say is "if you carry on eating trash when you finish your fast". For each water fast I tend to loose 3lb per day and then put up to 3lbs back on when breaking the fast, however I don't carry on putting on weight after this, even for long periods of time.

Energy:
some people have differing ways they are affected by the lack of food and therefore energy, personally I find myself more focused and clear on what I do. Although I get cold pretty quickly and do get a little light headed sometimes.

Detox:
Fantastic benefit of which I was a huge sceptic when reading about healing powers of fasts. Don't get me wrong, the detox effects can be a little painful, my legs ached the first time and I do ache all over a little each time since. The toxins come out in many ways sometimes making your sweat smell more than normal, breath starts to smell. Most of all though I personally buy into the fact that your body goes into a repair cycle, the reason being is that I suffered from Urticaria (Hives) for many years which I controlled using piriton. I started with one a day and ended up taking three once-a-day tablets each day. Each trip to the doctors would be the same story about cutting food out from my diet and no other help, but even Frank would break me out into hives. However, after a couple of fasts over a 4 month period (4 day water followed by 10 day water) I stopped taking tablets altogether.

I still eat the same food, red meat, chicken, dairy, curries, pizzas, Chinese and Guinness. Although not in the same day! So the theory of it being food cut out of my diet is hogwash.

Having said all that, these are my experiences and they may not be the same for all.

Looking forward to tomorrow's breakfast, which will be some fruit and yoghurt (usually muesli) and finally tasting something other than water and lemon.

Hope this sheds some light on the topic for you all, have an awesome time ;o)

3 Day water fast - Day 2

Well I guess I underestimated the amount of work and ended up working while 11pm with a 7am start again. On the up side it's now 10am and I have forgot all about food until a client mentioned they are going to lunch just before I get there.

Felt a little bit light headed this morning when I got up but feel great now, had a couple of cups of green tea and just about done a litre of water so far. Cooking Franks breakfast was a small struggle as I love beef mince and that looked tasty!

Concentration and energy I don't feel a lack of, I walk and train Frank an hour in a morning and an hour in the evening and working as a developer with my head in code all day isn't a problem. Only noticeable thing is the cold,  usually I would be in shorts and t-shirt down to about 14 degrees C but today its the same and I have two fleeces on and still a touch cold. Just checked the local METAR which says its 10 Degrees outside but its still hot in the office, not that Frank notices as he is currently running around in the rain chasing his own shadow.

Starting to ponder over what to eat when I come off the fast, not that it is long enough to warrant being uber careful in regards to food types. The first fast I did ended up with a macdonalds breakfast which defeated the whole object. If it is a fast over a week I generally start off with fruit and some cooked veg on day one after, then veg and maybe some tuna the day after and then day three or four introduce some chicken. Basically progressing from easy to digest foods through to raw meats ( I love steak tartare ). I would like to state at this point that I am not a health food person, nuts and berries are great for the animals, I prefer red meats preferably raw or as near as you can get, love fish and chicken. Having said that I'm not a massive lover of sweet things since I turned 30 and my body decided that it wants to convert every spoonful of sugar and fat into body lard! Not overweight and neither do I want to be.

Dinner no doubt will fly by as I have a few online meetings and then off to see a client so ill be back this evening for a quick update on this post.

My god I'm feeling hungry, having to do the food shopping on-line earlier didn't help and there seems to be lots of cooking and baking programs on TV. Still no-where near as bad as the first fast, all I remember from that was how hungry you feel all the time and the constant wonder if you have the willpower to get through each day. Needless to say if you dig deep then everyone has the ability.

3 Day water fast - Day 1

Day 1 - Monday
I cannot say that there was much in the way of preparation for this fast and in all honesty had a heavy night of drinking on Saturday which I have to state is not the norm, so I am looking forward to a quick detox. The reason for choosing today to start with was simply my diary, I have a pretty relaxed start to the week and the back end of the week will be spent in a business exhibition and also a flying lesson, which I will not be the most calm of days looking at the weather forecast!

I started the day with a cup of green tea which is pretty much the norm these days, after the first fast earlier this year I switched from normal Yorkshire tea with milk (apparently I make it strong) and switched to green tea which I find easier to drink now. Then set off to work with 1.5l of mineral water.

Strangely this morning feeding Frank (Springer Spaniel) some chicken didn't bother me in the slightest, I am usually having some breakfast at that point but was already in the mindset.

Started work at 7:30am this morning, I figure I would get some small jobs out of the way early doors and get the office nice and warm because I do get quite cold when I am fasting. It's about 9am now, feel fine, no real appetite as such, I guess I will update this after lunch and tea.

Lunchtime came and went and feeling a bit peckish now, been through that whole "just a bit of something will be fine" feeling and fancied a curry for a while for some strange reason. Other that that, things are pretty much fine. Although I am bored already with plain water, I get bored with tasteless water very quickly and after drinking a litre this morning I really crave a taste. To get around this I usually have a squirt of jif lemon, or as I found more recently jif lime just to make it taste a little better.

Night time now, just got back in from walking the dog and probably the hardest point of the day as I had to cook off some chicken and make bacon sandwiches, bacon has never smelt so good! Still, that's 24 hours gone by and still feeling great, just a touch hungry. It's at this point I realise the quirks of when I fast, craving strange things, walking to the fridge, opening it and then remembering to walk away again. Few more hours of steady work while watching the TV and finish off the third litre of water and the day is done. Happy days! :o)

PPL Lesson 2: Exercise 6

EGCN 121350Z 24017G28KT 9999 SCT037 SCT045 13/06 Q1004

Today's exercise was number 6, Straight and level flight which wasn't quite as straight forward as you might think! One thing to point out is lessons 1 to 5 was all taken care of in the first few hours last week which involved airmanship, effects of controls, taxiing etc. The difference this time is there was a PPL Course book available to go by and everything dropped into place. I also picked up the PPL Air Law book due to wanting to step up the amount of lessons, at the moment I am doing a one hour lesson each week, sometimes two hours but in November will be doubling up to two or three hours each week. With this in mind, solo flying will come around sooner and to fly solo you need to have passed the Air Law exam, and to pass the Air Law exam...... There's a lot of reading!

So lets start with the weather, at the top is the METAR readout from midday ( I couldn't get the historical data for the time I flew which was 16:30 Zulu )

METerological

Aerodrome

Report

It's a whole subject on its own but above shows that there was a 17knot crosswind gusting to 28knots with greater than 10km visibility and some scattered clouds plus a few things more which I'll leave for now.

This time it was time for me to do all the checks on the aircraft which involved climbing in and out a few times and an arm full of aviation fuel. Tip: don't push really hard on the fuel drains! Fortunately all nuts and bolts were secure and everything within range and working fine, time to get wired in and start up, this time managing to start the engine the second time around rather than not at all last week. We made our way out to the runway, held short while a Cessna 172 took off in front of us and when cleared made our way onto the runway. At this point with a crosswind I assumed that I wouldn't be taking off, I'm finding out that assuming never goes the right way, it was time for my first crosswind takeoff. Ailerons fully to the right, power to full, bit of right rudder to compensate for the prop wash and then flatten out the ailerons as airspeed increases and rotate at 65. Surprisingly it really was that simple and once we had got to a thousand foot it was very clear and calm.

Matt took over for a short while to catch up with the Cessna (photo above) and when in formation we broke off and  started the straight and level lesson heading towards VRP Haxey, Gainsborough and then onto Gamston (EGNE) .

Straight and level.... wow that was a strange one, there is so many variables to take into account, Power Attitude and Trim we flew with the pane out of trim at different power settings right from 75knots up to 130knots and different inputs, such as flying slow, and then applying one stage of flaps so that the nose came down and we can see where we are going. What was surprising was the ability to travel in the same direction at the Attitude and angle that Matt had us, which was near enough nose high going sideways through the air, although we still tracked straight and level. That must of looked pretty strange from outside.

By this time the sun was setting and we went for a quick stop off at Gamston, which was pretty cool as that shows as another flight in my log book. A short stop and we were taking off and tracking back past Gainsborough with a little bit of turbulence over the power station. On the way back we practised some descending ready for the next lesson. By this time we were nearly at official night time and calling for clearance to land we were number 3 with an A350 on a final and the Cessna we passed earlier just turning onto base while we were coming downwind. You soon see how disorientating night flying can be as we turned onto final and Matt settled the aircraft onto the runway explaining how hard it is to judge touchdown in the dark.

Fantasic flight, loved every minute of it and cant wait for next week. Two hours booked next time to run through Excercise 7 and 8.

PPL Lesson 1

So after an hour in the air with H, Steve and Matt we had taxied back and parked up for a quick swap. Well, I say quick, there was lots of moaning and groaning coming from me trying to get out. Sat now in the pilot seat (left) I figured this was going to be dead easy seeing what Steve had done, I chose the flight out past Haxey VRP and a suggestion of a fly over the Humber bridge sounded awesome.... at least at the moment it did.

Matt handed me the checklists and asked if it was definitely something I was going to learn. "Oh Yes, no doubt" I replied, "Ok in which case you can do all the checks before we set off first and taxi out". Awesome I thought to myself and started running through checks, nearly missing a few on the way in excitement and soon Matt had started the aircraft. I have to admit at this point that I couldn't start the engine for love nor money and Matt helped out. So taxiing out to the runway we had our first hiccup, we had instructions to taxi out, only to be faced with a citation jet coming into where we were about to leave and where we were going was another aircraft. The power checks were then done in the tightest of spaces and god only knows how Matt got the plane to turn in that tight circle! Anyhow, we are now sat ready with clearance to take off, at this point I was cool steering it and was quite relaxed until I heard "Well, you need to learn everything so you take off and climb to 2000ft." What happened next was a bit of a blur, power on to full, compensate for the P-effect with rudder and pull back at 65 knotts and climb to 2000ft. Or that's at least what should happen. What really happened was power on, massive pull to the left, I don't press hard enough and all of a sudden we are heading off at an angle down the runway, 65knotts, pull up, turbulence.... wings wobbly and my arse going ten to the dozen. Wanting to in-still confidence I attempted to remain silent!

Then we climbed and hit cloud, and more cloud, and more..... In fact after calling for clearance up to 5000ft to get above the clouds and a good five minutes Matt took the decision to turn around, hand over and let me do some IFR, about the only thing FSX was good for! That was the steadiest I flew all the time and in zero visibility. Thank god I don't get to do that in a normal lesson. We soon popped out of the clouds and went through inputs and effects. Stalling with Flaps, putting the aircraft into a spiral descent using input and recovering and then finally trimming. Which after heading nose down to mother earth was a pleasant activity! Although Steve loved the whole spinning thing.... (adrenaline junkie)

After an hour of roaming around trying to get bearings and trimming the aircraft we three kinda figured Matt would be landing it..... how wrong. I was instructed to get into pattern, turn final, apply flaps, turn base (arse going ten to the dozen by this point) and "just aim to be central to the runway and touch down there" says and points Matt. Easier said than done when I have a vice like grip and the slightest breeze seemed like a tornado, still with a couple of adjustments from Matt we were over the runway, power off, flare..... touchdown.

Not the smoothest but HOW AWESOME! I took off, flew and landed all in one lesson. I'm hooked.

Booked in a couple of weeks, although offers of taking H and Steve up as passengers were quickly declined ( I don't blame them haha).

Trial flying session....

Not sure what to expect today when we all got there, my partner Steve (business partner, not the windy walks type) and myself decided; (actually I rail-roaded Steve) to take flying lessons, something I have wanted to do since a child. So we booked in a couple of back to back flights in a Piper PA28 and Invited Steve's daughter Helena to come along.

I have to admit that I have taken controls of gliders in the past a long time ago and other than flying radio control planes and messing about on FSX I have no real flying experience. Bearing this in mind we went to Doncaster Sheffield Flying School at Robin Hood Airport  and after half an hours briefing and some waiting around for the aircraft we went airside to the aircraft. Not as large as I expected for some reason! In fact sat inside the back of the aircraft it seemed much smaller than my defender, which thinking about it is probably true.

The first flight was with our instructor (Matt) talking through the ATC calls, some of the basic checks and taxiing out to the runway. Fortunately a 14kt wind head on was all we had at that moment and some cloud cover. Steve chose to fly out from EGCN towards VRP Warmsworth and on to Leeds airspace to fly over H's work. Matt took off, talked for a bit, although I do admit by this time I could attribute the flight to something like being on a roller coaster, small aircraft don't half get thrown around in turbulant air and I was shaking a bit. Actually that's a lie, I was shaking a lot, or at least I was when Matt said Steve Could take control.  The control freak in me was having kittens by this point and it seemed to get a lot bumpier, although I am sure it wasn't really as Steve did a great job.

We circled around Leeds over Helena's work where there was lots of guessing where it was, finally found it and headed back to EGCN where Matt took over and set us down smoothly.

Great first flight which left me a little unsure, maybe when you are in control of the aircraft it is a little different...... How right could I be, time for my turn.

Welcome

Hello World!
or
<?php echo "Hello World!" ?> in my world.

It's been something I have been meaning to do for a while, starting a blog that is. I already do one for my dog (sad isn't it how Frank has one but not me!) Mind you Franks life was more exciting than mine for a while so no point documenting the endless meanderings of a mere mortal.

I digress.... the main reason was a friend asking about my experiences of fasting and I offered to write them up so others can see, which made me think about other things I do. Such as learning to fly, I have seen a few blogs but not that many so I figure its as good a place as any to write down what happens on the way to getting your PPL here in the UK.

So who am I for a start? Chris Harrison, company director a few times over, with my skills firmly in software development (LAMP stack to be precise) Actually I may well stick up some things about the tech and code I use.