Saturday 7th of February 2010
Basair Australia Schofields Flying Club Bankstown Airport Sydney YSBK
I'M A FLIGHT INSTRUCTOR!!!
A series of incidents with my friend who had bought a Helicopter TIF for someone else lead
to me accepting the voucher for a 1/2 hour helicopter flight lesson! Most people take this
lesson to check out if they would like to become pilots, and they are able to sit at the controls
and experiment with them (TIF = Trial Instructional Flight). It's something midway between a
joyflight and a flying lesson.
Once I had earned my flight instructor rating I started emailing my curriculum vitae with cover
letter to all flying schools in Australia that were listed on the internet.
Back in Sydney, the first thing I did was meet up with my mate Toby to go see our favorite CFI at Schofields and then drive to YSSY to watch the airliners taking off!!!
Once more, I was thinking of something exciting to do and I decided that I had to go surfing in Sydney. After two years living in a city with such a surf tradition... I had to! I went to Manly, my favorite beach in Sydney and I rented a surfboard, for only $20 for 3 hours. I also bought a new rash shirt with the birthday money from my grandparents. I've had the old one since I was like 12!
After 3 months of attending Schofields Flying Club full time, I was more than ready
to book the Instructor Rating flight test. Once the time was approaching, the problem
was that at the neighbor school both candidates failed the test, and my mate who attempted
the test first, just the day before me, also failed. Normally you can choose to make the
flight test with an Authorized Testing Officer that can be booked, or directly with a CASA
inspector. We all got CASA inspectors doing our tests, and they are much more picky and generally
harder to please. So one CASA guy flew up from Adelaide to Sydney just to do our two tests.
I'm a really optimistic person and I think one just has to imagine himself succeeding and
with the licence in hand, but it was really hard for me to be optimistic under the circumstances!
The 21st of January came and I was ready for action at 8am. I sat down with Frank, my testing officer,
to revise the paperwork, go over the hours in my logbook and sign the documents. He went
through my folder where I keep all the theory briefs and boardplans, making sure that I had
prepared all the briefs, and asked me random aerodynamic questions out of it.
Then he told me the long brief I would have to present to him was a 45 minute theory lesson
about STEEP TURNS, and the short brief was a 15 minute theory lesson about PRECAUTIONARY SEARCH
AND LANDING.
The theory lessons flowed normally without any major interruptions at all, I played instructor
and he played student, and when he was happy we prepared for the flying lesson. During the
preflight inspection he made some questions about the airframe and the engine, and I answered
them correctly. While I was in class, my mates (team work) had cleaned the airplane, filled
it with full tanks Avgas, and checked the oil. During the flight he basically wanted to see
my flying skills with zero tolerance. A nice precautionary search and landing in the training
area with patter (instructor-student roleplay), some steep turns, a practiced forced landing,
and a few circuits with landings in different configurations. It was like a GFPT flight test
all over again but with ZERO margin for error. And I didn't give him any reasons at all to doubt
on a clear PASS!!! He was very happy, and only had one single objection on the whole flight: My
steep turns were very accurate (zero height gain or loss) but they were somewhat unbalanced.
x
During the debrief, I had to tell him what I thought of his flying while he was acting as the
student. I was very happy to see the sticker in my Logbook that says "G3 Instructor Rating (Aeroplane).
Everyone at school was very fascinated about my pass, very pleased and proud of me. The director
shook my hand so hard for like half a minute that he shook my whole body.
Nobody had passed an Instructor Rating flight test with a CASA officer in months, so that was
quite an acchievement that I made there and everybody knows it! But after that, my mate Toby passed
the next day on the second attempt, and my mate Jason passed a week later, on the first attempt.
We're all so happy, the 3 of us we really made a good team! In other words, WE ROCK!
I FLEW A HELICOPTER!!!
It was the 31st of January at 2pm. They showed me a 30 minute video in a class room and I received
a 15 minute pre-flight lesson. I flew with Alex, a young fligh instructor who has both aeroplane
and helicopter licenses. He took off at Bankstown from "Choppers North", on climb to 1000ft,
and handed over the controls to me once established in cruise. I experimented with the controls,
trying to maintain cruise speed and height, increasing power and speed without gaining height, etc.
It was an amazing experience, my very first flight in a helicopter and I'm the one on the controls.
Just one more dream come true!
Controling the helicopter in the air was quite easy, once I got the hang of it, but what I found
extremely difficult was maintaining the helicopter still while hovering 2 metres over the ground,
which is what he made me try out after we landed. I was all over the shop!
What I'm really happy of is that the 0.6h in the R22 helicopter counts towards my total flying experience
and I wrote the entry in my logbook =) And as usual, everything well documented: Check out the video!
TRIP TO MELBOURNE!
When I wrote and sent out CV's with my commercial pilot license and 200 hours flying experience last year,
I didn't even get an answer most of the time, or very brief answers telling me that I couldn't
possibly get a job with so little experience. This time though, as a flight instructor, I have
noticed that most of the CFI's I have emailed have answered thanking me for my interest
in the company and giving me kind advice, or telling me to keep them updated about my progress
for further employment opportunities in a few months.
Since I figured that visiting a flying school in person would be the best way of convincing them
to hire me, I could have made a trip to Darwin, to Adelaide, or who knows where. But I figured
that the best chances of visiting most airports per dollar spent in traveling would be in Melbourne.
They have no less than 10 airports in Melbourne! Two of them (Avalon and Tullamarine) are for airlines
only so there are more than 8 airports (depends on where you draw the line on the city perimeter you can
say they have more or less airports). I quickly organized a flight SYD-AVV for a Wednesday and return on
Sunday, to allow for a bit of touristy stuff on Saturday.
I flew Jetstar JQ603 from Sydney to Avalon (Airbus A320), it was a really nice flight, I had 3 seats for myself,
the landscape and fluffy clouds were beautiful, and the landing was one of the smoothest I have ever seen
from an airliner.
In Melbourne I rented a red Suzuki Swift at Europcar with a GPS. Even though I had to pay a hefty surplus
charge because I'm only 22, this is the only way to effectively get to different airports, since they are
pretty far apart.
I picked up my friend Grant, one of the hosts from the
Plane Crazy Down Under podcast, at his home in East Bentleigh, and we drove
to the airports at Essendon, Tyabb and Tooraddin. I met some of the CFI's, the ones that were available,
and handed them my CV. We also got the chance of visiting the control tower in Essendon and get a wonderful
panoramic view of the airport and even the city skyline.
(Don't forget to pass over the photos with your mouse pointer to read the lecture)
At Essendon we also saw a few impressive jets, like the Gulfstream 600 and the
triple-engine Dassault Falcon 7X!
At Tooradin we visited a school that only teaches to fly in RAA aircraft (Recreational
Aviation Australia). I don't know much about RAA apart from that the airplanes are slightly
lighter then the normal GA basic trainers, but I was very impressed when I got the chance
to sit in a Jabiru plane. The jabiru is a light RAA trainer that is fully designed and
manufactured in Australia, it's size is just like a Cessna 152 but it's built of lighter
materials and they are simply much more modern. The controls are special, slightly different
than a normal GA, with a double joystick-like control in the middle. The one I saw had
a fully integrated glass panel with GPS.
At Grant's home I had a very good time, it was reeeeeeeeeally reeeally reeally nice of
him to let me stay at his place with his family for a couple of days. In the evening, I helped his
wife cook dinner and we ate while watching the movie AIRPLANE! (in Australia, "FLYING HIGH!").
That was lots of fun, he couldn't believe (me neither!) that I had never seen that movie,
because so many av-geek quotes have derived from that movie! Here goes a list from the most
impacting quotes from the movie, and even a video:
I HOPE THE CREW DON'T EAT THE FISH!
WE HAVE TO BRING HER TO A HOSPITAL IMMEDIATELY
A HOSPITAL? BUT WHAT IS IT?
IT'S A BIG BUILDING WITH DOCTORS, BUT THAT'S NOT IMPORTANT RIGHT NOW
JIMMY, HAVE YOU EVER BEEN IN A TURKISH PRISON?
THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE, THEY'RE FLYING ON INSTRUMENTS!
Y O U T U B E V I D E O
In Melbourne, from Friday to Sunday, I stayed at Hotel Discovery, a Backpacker's Hostel.
I gave the rental car back (I INSIST, AGAINST MY WILL) on Friday evening.
I enjoyed a day of being touristy on Saturday, walking around the Melbourne CBD, had sushi for lunch,
and then looked for someone to go out with at the Backpacker's. I found a russian guy who
also wanted to go out, first we visited the Eureka tower and went up to the 87th floor
to enjoy the view. We even had a Malibu cocktail for only $10 (quite cheap considering the location).
We had dinner on the street at the Chinese New Year food market.
Then we went clubbing at the Fusion Nightclub, at the Crown Hotel casino complex. It was good,
we stayed there until about 4am and then went home to sleep.
The flight back to Sydney was not as smooth as the flight down to Melbourne. The flight
was full, there were kids on board (no need to elaborate there), we had a public announcement marriage proposal at FL370 (I have it on video, check it out), and the pilot had to request an ambulance for after landing because a kid was sick.
Don't forget to check out the videos of the takeoffs and landings in Sydney Kingsford Smith and Melbourne Avalon: Click now!
www.youtube.com/davidoptimal
Oh, and if you were wondering what that bathroom mirror photo stuff is, check out all about the new LAVIATORS trend!
Tuesday 16th of February 2010
PLANE SPOTTING AT KINGSFORD SMITH!!!
We saw not less than the whole list of B737-700 B737-800 B747-300 B747-400
B767-2/300 B777-300 A320 A330 SAAB340 and a few parked A340-600 and A380-800.
The photos are clickable:
Tuesday 23rd of February 2010
SURFING IN MANLY, SYDNEY
