Hi all, in the well-established tradition of reporting one's milestones on the way to a license I would like to give a short account on my first cross-country solo, which I flew today.
As a reminder: I am currently undergoing training for what is called in Germany a sports pilots license (SPL) for aerodynamically controlled microlights. I had started this training pretty exactly a year ago and my practical exam is coming near (last week of April). What has taken me so long? Lack of time! (Martin has been nagging me the past months to finally get done with it! ;-) Yesterday and today we had great weather here in Germany. In South Germany and at my homebase EDNY (Friedrichshafen) there was not a single cloud to be seen and visibility must have been well above 50km. Today a few clouds came up and currently a cold front is going through from the west (as I'm looking out my window I see pretty dark clouds and I'm happy that I'm not still up there ;-) As I'm nearing finalisation of my training I will have to do precision landing training myself, so first my instructor went to a nearby airport with less traffic and cheaper landing fees (EDTM - Mengen), to show me the procedure. From there we went directly back to EDNY to drop my instructor off, I had a short drink (non-alcoholic of course!) and then went off by myself. I already did not feel that nervous on my first solo traffic circuits (when you have flown that much in a simulator like FlightGear it's hard to convince your subconciousness of the difference, even though it's obvious to the other parts of your mind) but today I seemed to be totally calm. I returned to EDTM and did a few circuits (aside from the three previous and not so good precision landings I hadn't had landing training for some weeks). I didn't do precision landing training because the circuit was a bit too full. After 7 landings I was pleased by how the landings went. After I had paid the landing fees I thought that just returning to EDNY would be a bit dull. I remembered my instructor (who had replaced "Good bye" with a cheering "Now finally piss off!" ;-) saying that I should also take this as a bit of "feel-good-flying" and not just training technicalities. So I decided to do a trip along the northern shore of Lake of Constance from west to east, overhead my hometown. I had flown this trip in FlightGear with our old custom scenery many times so I now finally wanted to see how it looks like in reality without having my instructor babbling all the time and telling me that the sphere of the turn coordinator had wandered about 2mm left of center ;-) (Interestingly, whenever I looked on the turn coordinator when flying alone, the sphere was exactly centered. And you can bet that I instinctively looked often ;-) Still sitting on ground in the plane I improvised some orientation landmarks, such as a railway starting south of EDTM and leading me towards the right direction for part of my route. While you can see the lake already from EDTM when going to about 4000ft MSL (about 2000ft GND), I just wanted to praktice IFR (I Follow Railroads) a bit. (Yes, I know, my instructor told me not to practice too much, but that's me flying, not him, isn't it? ;-) The railroad was shown as ending in a town called Pfullendorf, from where I could go straight south to get where I wanted at the lake shore. So figured that I would be in Pfullendorf when I would find the railroad to end. I took off from EDTM, flying straight south to pick up the railroad and then following it to the west. After some time I reached what looked like a town which could have been Pfullendorf, but I could see the railroad seemingly extending westward after that town, so that couldn't be Pfullendorf. So I continued westwards. At some point I had a quick check of my instruments and looked out again. I was unable to locate the railroad again. I looked backwards towards the town's station. There were the tracks! Following on to my position I suddenly realised that what I had followed after the town was the embankment of railroad tracks that had been. No tracks, just a trail of what had once been a railroad line in the scenery. I fell for the "neglegience" of the German Railway Company that had not flatted down the embankment after removing the tracks! ;-) So I returned and tried to locate the small grass strip - again, for training - of that town. I finally found it. It had hidden just below me. :-) Going south it was easy to identify where I was. You might want to know that the Lake of Constance is the source of drinking water for a big part of Southwestern Germany (the state is called "Baden-Wuerttemberg") up to Stuttgart. So there is a well-visibile pumping and storing station for the water from the lake at the northwest-most end of the lake. Up to now flying alone was nothing of great importance. It was just a natural thing to do. No nervousness or any other big important feelings of that kind. Just the pleasure of normalcy! I followed the northern shore of the Lake and short before my hometown I had to contact the Tower of my Homebase (before reaching compulsory reporting point Whiskey, for those who like to know the details ;-) and inform them that I would cross their control zone (reaching up to 3500ft MSL) in 4500ft MSL and that I would then come in for landing via an inbound route starting on the east side of the CTR (inbound route Sierra). The controller was OK with that and just gave me the QNH. Again, the trip up to now somehow didn't feel like something big. It was very pleasurable, but in comparison to the training before - and even more so in comparison to what I had felt on my first solo traffic circuits - it was nothing special. The trip - starting at EDNY, my homebase - had up til then lasted for about 1 1/2h or so. However, hearing the voice of that controller - who is also a fellow member of the aerial sports club I'm in and also was my instructor for both the German and English radio certificate, and therefore a good bit more than only some anonymous controller - evoked some kind of heavy homecoming feeling in my breast. Something like coming home after weeks of absence from your home. No tears, mind you, but it somehow felt as if the enormousness of what I had just (for the past 1 1/2h) done began sinking in. I crossed the control zone and started descent to the approach altitude. Even before I could report reaching the otherwise compulsory reporting point the controller cleared me to the traffic circuit for RWY 24. For a microlight, EDNY can be considered a big airport. It's clearly not comparable with KSFO, KJFK, EDDF or the sorts thereof. It's just that we have regular commercial airliner traffic (Dash-8, A320, B737, Embraer Jumbolino and the likes), where a slow microlight (Vne=180km/h) might slow down all the rest. The best we normally can do is going directly and at utmost speed (Vne, in presence of turbulence however 150km/h) towards the runway, a steep turn to the right or left (depending on the landing direction) and then a long flare, just timed so that we can vacate the runway after just a bit of braking action and nearly directly after touchdown. We're typically "gone" in a matter of "seconds". But today I somehow felt unable to do such a "stunt", so I instinctively followed the "normal" pattern routine. I think I might have somehow gotten confused, because at some point I turned into base, pretty near to the threshold. The premises of the club are located near the east end of the runway with their "own" taxiway (TWY C) towards the club's apron, so essentially a longer base and thereby a shorter landing would have been more appropriate. So I touched down after the first quarter of the RWY and had to taxi almost to the runway midpoint to vacate. Ah well, nobody's perfect ;-) It was a great trip and definitely something I will remember. Emotionally it was not as intense as the very first circuit solo, but nevertheless a great experience. I'm very much looking forward to finally having my license in hands and flying alone on a regular basis :-) BTW: We also had an experimental flight with the microlight, an Comco Ikarus C42B, to determine part of the polar and compare it with what DATCOM produced. Let's put it this way: It seems as if the data from DATCOM are unusable (polar, stability derivatives, everything). I'm not sure what's the reason, but that's what I found out. I hope you enjoyed my not-so-short story. I wish you all Happy Easter Holidays, wherever you celebrate it. To all others: A nice weekend! :-) Cheers, Ralf ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys-and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
