Blue Side Up

I think it is finally starting to hit me that I’m training for a commercial pilot licence. To think that I’ve been dreaming of being paid to fly and now it’s all starting to seem within reach. Last weekend marked a winter miracle here. Both Saturday and Sunday were beautiful and sunny with few clouds in the sky. The wind was a bit gusty but you couldn’t ask for a more perfect winter weekend to fly. This gave me the perfect opportunity to get some dual instruction time in on the first day and practice solo the next.

My last handful of flight have been solo cross countries or solo airwork sessions. It was nice to have 200 lbs of knowledgeable instructor sitting to my right as I went through the manoeuvres that I would eventually have to demonstrate to an examiner. Steep turns, slow flight, stalls, and a spiral dive recovery to finish it all off. I’ve mentioned before that the CPL steep turn exercise is different than the PPL exercise. For the CPL, we do a turn through 180º at 45º of bank and then flip the wings back the other way to turn another 180º back to the heading we started on. It’s a little more complicated and involves more manipulation of the controls that the standard 360º steep turn.

Another new experience was a regular turn with 30º of bank in slow flight. For my PPL flight test, I only had to demonstrate a rate one turn in slow flight. This is a standard turn that will bring the aircraft through 360º in 2 minutes every time. It’s a fairly shallow bank angle and doesn’t require much thinking to get right. That said, when you’re hanging in the sky at 40 kts and have to execute a turn with 30º of bank, it’s a little tougher. The first time I tried, the nose dropped a good bit and the airspeed picked up 10 kts at least. Second time the nose still dropped but I tried my best to hold it up there while not stalling. Third time was the charm and wow does that airplane turn when you do it properly. I would estimate it can get through 360º in around 10 seconds. That said, a higher bank angle at a lower airspeed and nose high attitude is a lovely equation with the word “spin” on the other end of the equals sign. It’s a rapid turn and requires quick reflexes to keep the airspeed and altitude pegged while still operating safely. Something I’ll be practicing lots in the future.

As for the ground portion of the CPL, Transport Canada requires me to have 80 hours of classroom instruction and a letter of recommendation to write the written exam. Since my flight school isn’t currently offering CPL ground school, I’m doing mine online with pilottraining.ca. They’re run by Harv’s Air out in Steinbach, Manitoba. I plan to write up a thorough review of their CPL product when I’ve delved a little deeper into everything it has to offer. So far though, I’m impressed with the amount of content. They’ve got slides, videos, audio, and quizzes for each chapter along with a bunch of other useful stuff. I will say though that the content delivery method is a little rudimentary – they’re using .swf files to deliver powerpoint slides. I would much prefer to view a PDF file. I managed to deduce that the first video was made in 2003 so it may be a bit dated, but as long as the rules haven’t changed, it still works just fine.

Below is a video I took of the airwork practice I mentioned above. I used some stick-tack to fixate my iPhone on the right wing. You’ll notice there’s lots of vibration but until I can get a proper mount, I’m afraid that’s as good as it’s going to get. About the only interesting thing to watch is the aileron and the right flap that you’ll see comes down during the second stall and during slow flight. The high pitch whine that you hear is the stall warning horn. And yes, it’s still that loud and annoying with a headset on.