learningtofly.nicrodgers.comLearning To Fly (UK - EASA PPL) -

Learning To Fly (UK – EASA PPL) Menu About me Search for: Passing a PPL Skills Test October 3, 2014 test nicrodgers In the days that passed following my initial failure (or partial pass!) I kept beating myself up over making such a stupid mistake as messing up the overhead join. It took about 5 days before I finally calmed down and put it behind me. It had already happened, nothing I could do could change it. The only positive really was that I am pretty unlikely to ever make the same mistake again! I had re-booked the final part of my test twice, each time was cancelled either due to weather, or aircraft availability. Six days had passed before I was actually able to re-take my test, and as I only had to take off, fly out of the ATZ and return again, I was feeling pretty relaxed on the drive to the airfield. My test was booked for 1pm, but I arrived around midday so that I could check the aircraft, fuel if necessary and generally relax a bit before starting. As it happened, the aircraft had already been flown a couple of times and had a decent amount of fuel in it, so I didn’t need to do anything but wait. Soon enough, the examiner arrived and we had a quick brief. No need to recover everything that was said before, today would simply be about doing a successful departure, rejoin and landing. Although he did say that he’d like me to do a couple of circuits too. Not a problem, I thought. The wind was favoring runway 27, the best choice of runway at Gloucester as it’s the longest and has the familiar GCHQ as a visual landmark directly to the East of the threshhold. This time, he watched me as I checked the oil and fuel, then asked me a couple of questions about the different parts of the plane. What’s this bit called”, and what does this do”. That sort of thing. Soon enough we were in the cockpit and I was obtaining the ATIS. After a short taxi, and even shorter hold, we were cleared for take off. After a slight turn to the right for noise abatement, I turned to the north and flew towards Tewksbury. Overhead Tewksbury, I called Approach and asked to re-join. Make a standard overhead join for runway 27, right hand” they said. So that’s what I did, not making any mistakes this time, executing a nice descending turn to cross the 09 numbers at 1,000ft. Whilst descending I asked Tower for approval to do circuits, which were approved, so when calling downind it was for downwind, touch and go”. This was to be a flapless circuit, which went well, followed by a performance landing. Everything went well, I had nearly done it. After slowing down, the examiner took control and asked Tower if we could do an aborted takeoff. They approved, so then he asked me to proceed as if I was taking off, but then abort on his command. Now, this isn’t something I’ve ever done before so I was feeling a bit apprehensive, but thought it through and figured I’d need to throttle back and brake hard. On his command, that’s what I did, and he was happy. He took control, then said congratulation, you’ve passed”. Hoorah! Back in the briefing room, we spent the next hour or so filling out various forms and paperwork. By the end of it, I had an envelope full of documents ready to send to the CAA to apply for my licence. I was very excited! It takes around 2 weeks for the CAA to process your application. During which time, you can fly solo with an instructor’s approval, but you can’t take any passengers. As soon as the licence arrives, I’ll be able to take passengers. Luckily I’m away next week with business, so the wait wont be quite so agonising. With any luck, I’ll do a solo flight before the licence comes through, and then go on my first flight as a licenced PPL with my wife. I’ll spend the next few days thinking about where we might go.. Oh, and celebrating. Lots of celebrating to be done! I did it! View all 16 comments Failing a PPL Skills Test October 3, 2014 test nicrodgers After my last lesson, my instructor said I was ready to take the final skills test. I booked my test, and eagerly awaited the big day. T For those of you who don’t know, a PPL skills test flight normally lasts between 2 and 2.5 hours, and consists of: 1. Navigation – before the flight, you’re given three waypoints and are asked to plan and fly the route. This is about testing your ability to safely plan and fly an appropriate route, using dead reckoning. Navigation aids are not allowed. 2. Diversions – you can expect never to reach the second planned waypoint, because on that second leg at some point the examiner will ask you to divert elsewhere. Here they’re looking for your ability to plan and execute a safe diversion – considering airspace, danger zones, restricted areas, etc along the way, as well as being able to estimate the correct heading and time required to get there. Oh, and your ability to draw the diversion line on the map – not easy trying to do that whilst flying a plane! Once you’ve reached the diversion destination, the examiner will take over responsibility for navigation and radio and ask you to perform a series of exercises…. 3. General handling – you’ll be asked to demonstrate a bunch of general handling manoueveures, including: 3 x stalls (in clean configuration, in base leg configuration, whilst turning in approach configuration, and with drag flap); steep turns; spiral dive recovery 4. Emergency procedures – you’ll be asked to demonstrate a forced landing (your examiner will – at some random point – will cut the engine and you have to go through the motions of having a genuine engine failure); an engine failure after take-off (usually directly after the PFL) 5. IMC flight – the screens will go up (or the foggles go on) and you pretend you’ve inadvertantly entered IMC. Demonstrate what you’d do if it happened for real – eg consider OAT, MSA, rate 1 turn, potentially ask for radar service, etc. 6. Position fixing – after the IMC stuff, you’ll be asked to use any radio navigation equipment of your choice to identify your location on the map. Eg – VOR+DME, VOR+VOR, ADF+DME etc. 7. Radio homing – you’ll then be asked to home back to the airfield, negotiating your rejoin with the ATSU. 8. Circuits – normal, flapless, glide approach, performance landing, bad weather So in the run-up to the day of the test, I had plenty to be revising! The night before the test, I had a chat with the examiner, and he gave me a route to plan for the navigation part of the test. The test was booked for first thing in the morning, so this meant I could do most of the planning the night before, only needing to do the final bits of the PLOG in the morning when the weather forecast was available. The route would be: Gloucester - Clevedon Pier (VRP) - Abergavenny - Gloucester. You’re expected to use a direct route, and aren’t allowed to plan a route that would enable you to navigate by feature crawling” – eg following a motorway or railway line. Drawing a straight line between Gloucester and Clevedon couldn’t give an easier journey, as you basically hug the shoreline all the way down. As it’s a pier, (and the first pier on the route) you would basically just keep going until you see the pier. The direct route – notice how it goes straight through the bird sanctuary Alas, life is not that easy, because the direct route happens to cut directly through a bird sanctuary. Legally speaking, pilots don’t have to avoid these areas, but common decency and good airmanship would suggest you give them a wide birth, so I planned to divert around it. Routing around the bird sanctuary I chose to divert to the west of the bird sanctuary. Partly because there is less in the way of restricted airspace and airfields, and partly because I was more familiar with that side of the estuary as I’d already done a lot of flying in the area whilst doing my navigation lessons. So, fly from Gloucester SSW to Cinderford, then fly direct to Clevedon. The first two thirds of the leg to Cinderford basically tracks above a railway line too, which...