I was originally supposed to have my first check ride (The FAA) today and the CAA tomorrow. However, because of “Sun’n’Fun” all the examiners were tied up with various safety events and all that, so they wouldn’t be available until later that week. So my exams were finally set up: I would do my CAA certification on Friday late afternoon (17:30) and my FAA Oral and skills test on Saturday morning at 08:00.  The only thing left to do before the tests was solo night flying for my night rating. We had agreed I would take Wednesday completely off as rest but the winds were quite heavy today (Tuesday) so we decided to change and take Tuesday off. My next flying would be tomorrow night. The whole family went to Universal Studios and had a fantastic time. I still looked up whenever I heard a light aircraft but no flying.

This would be the first day in nearly 3 weeks that I had not flown at all. The moment of truth was getting close. I was reading up on the Oral exam that comes with the FAA certification. (Note: Little did I realise the significance of that extra studying…)

Summary after 19 days:
Flown:  No
Total flying time: 50 hours and 9 minutes.
Solo: 10 hours 42 minutes.
Day 1 – Day 17 – Day 18 – Day 19 – Day 20 – Day 21 – Day 23

With the family secured in a villa relatively close by (40 minutes’ drive), I was now seeing them every day and I would come to the villa to sleep unless we were doing late night flying… which, as it happened, we would be!  Ah well.  Gerry had the marvellous idea that we should spend the daytime at the training grounds stalling. I had the session pushed to late afternoon so I could take Simon and Kristoffer to “Sun’n’Fun” the yearly air-show at Lakeland airport.  When you consider the discussions arising from the 2 accidents at Biggins Hill last year you get an insight into the difference in culture when you hear about “Sun’n’Fun”.  It goes on for a week every year and there is at least one fatality per year and often one per day.  They have ½ million people coming in, not all, but many by plane.  They normally run two runways but for that week, they do two things. They make one taxiway running parallel to one of the runways into another runway and call them 27L and 27R and (this is the insane part) they cut each into 2 so they request people to land long or to hold short.  I.e. I could be told to land on the first half of RW 27R and hold short because someone is also landing, but on the second half of the RW.  This is really so insane that the flight centre I train at forbid everyone, students, instructors or people hiring, to fly to Lakeland during this week.  On the first day, a Piper Warrior (Like the one I fly) and a home-build plane collided mid-air over the runway. The Piper pilot is still critically injured in hospital and the other pilot was declared dead on arrival.  They have had four other collisions either on the runway or so low that everyone walked away.  Well, Simon, Kristoffer and I drove to Lakeland and looked at all the aircrafts.  I saw my three “lottery” aircrafts: A Pilatus PC-12, A Piper Meridian and a TMP-700.  At the Piper stall, a sales-guy came up and talked to me.  I told him I would love a Meridian but it was a little outside my league. However, could he talk to me about the Arrow?  He asked me if I had a card (cheeky devil) and was suitably impressed with my “Executive Director of Morgan Stanley” card to haul off all sorts of goodies for the kids, give me a tour of the aircrafts and taking me through all the functions etc etc.  It is very nice and I think I will be looking for a 1/3 of an Arrow when I get back to the UK.  The boys enjoyed themselves and back at the airfield, I ordered delivery pizza that they could wait for and eat while Gerry took me to the training grounds for the first stalls of the day. Talking to some other student pilots it seems most have a strange relationship to stalls.  Granted, real stalls are not good but it is because you want to be able to handle these that you practice stalls so much. And the practice stalls?  It is not half as bad as a roller coaster in Disney World. So we did our clean stalls, our landing stalls, our turning stalls etc etc. Back to the airfield, pick up the kids (and eat the one slice of Pizza left over – my lunch!) drive them back to the Villa and then I drove back to the airfield for night flying.  That felt like stalls of a different nature.  Gerry warned me against vertigo at night because you lose sense of horizon, up and down with stars and street light. I had none of that. However, I did not like not being able to see to the end of the RW on take-off and I did not like pointing the nose of the aircraft at “nothing” or a black hole on final approach before landing. The whole night was touch and goes and even though my landings did improve slightly it was a very depressing feeling being stalled from being able to land reasonably well basically every time during the day and feeling very poor at it during the night. I found (OK, Gerry found) that my main problem was flaring (pulling up just before landing) too soon. It is partly because the impression of the RW changes in reduced light and partly a greater fear of crashing into the RW that causes a tendency to pull too early. I was not in a much better mood when I went to sleep. However, FAA requires a little night flying and I thought I might as well do enough to get the night rating on my CAA license too. So you could say, I asked for it.

Summary after 18 days:
Flown:  3 hours 6 minutes
Total flying time: 50 hours and 9 minutes.
Solo: 10 hours 42 minutes.
Day 1 – Day 16 – Day 17 – Day 18 – Day 19 – Day 20 – Day 23

So what was the biggest complaint of my instructors?  And what is the number one thing every flight instructor drills into the head of every one of their students?  LOOK OUT! This is VFR (Visual Flight Rules). Do not get stuck on your instruments. Look out, check for traffic etc. Look/glance at your airspeed when – and only when – you need to. Look at your Heading Indicator when you need to. And so it goes. Well, supposedly, I had now learned to fly visual and I needed to forget about this advice for a while; it was on to instrument flying. There was a couple of objectives behind our exercises: My training required for me to be able to do a controlled 180 turn, if I by accident I got myself into clouds or other “IMC” (Instrument Meteorological Conditions) such that I could get out the way I came in. However, I want to take a basic instrument rating as soon as I get home; I will find it impossible to fly in the UK without it. So Gerry had agreed to do more than required to start to get me acquainted. As soon as I had taken off, Gerry took control while I put on “the hood”.  It is a device, which obstructs the vision out through the windshield so you can only observe instruments. Gerry would (I hoped) look out for other traffic, while I followed instructions flying purely on the instruments. I enjoyed it. I started out attempting to do timed standard turns. If you do a standard rate turn, you will turn 3 degrees per second and thus a 180 in a minute and 360 in 2.  So the secret is simple: Keep the turn angle constant at standard rate. That can be really hard, particular in turbulence, but I managed in the end to consistently get within 10 degrees (3 seconds) on a 180. Then it was on to timed descents and timed climbed. Either by a constant descent/climb rate or constant speed. We then worked on combinations where while climbing I would do a timed turn… all only using instruments.  It was all going well and I could feel Gerry getting bored. I still had no idea where I was and he then requested that I descended from 3,000ft to 1,500 ft while turning onto (and maintaining) a heading of 020.  I did this. The instructions then started to come in fast. Descend to 1,000ft, turn 5 degrees to the left.  Keep 1,000 ft, turn 45 degrees to the right.  Keep 1,000 ft turn 90 degrees to the left. Ahem. This looked familiar. “Come on Gerry, you are not making me land this thing under the hood” I begged. “Fly it!” It came uncompromising from Gerry. Decrease power to 1,700, 25 degrees flaps. Turn 90 degrees to the left.  My altitude was going down 500 fpm and I was at 500. “Remove Hood”. I knew it. I was on final to 29. “You’re at decision altitude. Will you land?”  It was VMC and then some, so no problem. I landed. On the second session, I tried VOR triangulation to find my position. I knew how to do that having been prepared to do it if I got into trouble on my XC, so no problems.

Third session of the day was night flying. What a downer.  It was as if I was back before I knew how to land!  Landings were so hard. It did not help that there were 9 knots of cross wind but the perspective of the runway was completely changed at night.  On my fourth landing, I made the call on final: “Winter Haven Traffic, Warrior, 444HA on final for runway 04, Touch’n’Go, Winter Haven”. I landed and the lights at the end of the runway looked a bit different. Before it had clicked what was wrong…  “F****** Hell, Gerry said, took the controls and steered us straight into a taxiway calling: “Winter Haven Traffic, Warrior 444HA has left the active runway due to opposite traffic, Winter Haven”.  Some idiot was actually landing on 22, which is the same runway as 04 but opposite direction. He did a go-around and as we took off again we saw him turning around the airport and land on 04. Without making a single radio call. We heard him on the ground asking for fuel, so he had the frequency!  After our final landing when we parked, we saw him parked 50 yards away. You feel like leaving a note on his windscreen: “Nice flying, idiot”.  The problem is that what he did was not illegal because we are in uncontrolled airspace. It’s poor airmanship; but not illegal.

Summary after 17 days:
Flown:  3 hours 48 minutes
Total flying time: 47 hours and 3 minutes.
Solo: 10 hours 42 minutes.
Day 1 – Day 15 – Day 16 – Day 17 – Day 18 – Day 19 – Day 23

So after yesterday’s rather eventful cross-country today it would be on to the so-called Qualifying Cross Country flight.  I had to make a cross country of a certain length, visit at least one airport that I had never been at or even over and get signatures from airport managers along the way.  It was also the day that Jackie and the family departed the resort at St. Pete’s beach to move to the Villa we had booked much closer to the airport I was flying from.  I had rented a family van and agreed to drive out and pick them up. So I had moved the flight from a 12:00 start time to a 9:30 start time. The flight was to be Winter Haven to Seebring, from Seebring to Venice and from Venice back to Winter Haven.  The Seebring to Venice was similar to the Seebring to Arcadia leg I did yesterday which means a rather long (45 minutes) flight over country where there are almost no distinguishable features.  Venice is about 15 miles southwest of Arcadia but it has one thing going for it: It is on the beach. If everything fails, I can fly to the coast and fly along it to find the airfield.  I want to be on the way to pick the family up as soon as possible and I am all set to get this done ASAP.  Off to Seebring; it is a breeze. I go straight there, enter the pattern, land (Terrible landing) and taxi to somewhere NOT right in front of the FBO. I go to the airport director and get his stamp and signature certifying that 1) I had landed, 2) That my landing was OK (He did not see it but signed off none the less) and 3) That I had displayed good airmanship. Out to the plane and off again all within 12 minutes. Heading straight for Venice (At least as far as my calculations took me) after quite a while and about the time expected I could see the ocean. I started to look for the airfield and would you believe it: There it was, right in front of me.  Advised to use a runway where the base and final was over the ocean. That was really cool! One of my best landings, taxied to the FBO, got my signature and off again to Winter Haven. Venice is actually particularly cool.  If, on your approach, you call the Unicom and say something to the extent of: “Venice Unicom, Warrior 32990, 5 miles North of Venice, inbound for joining right downwind for runway 13, request taxi to Sharky” they will arrange an actual taxi to wait for you at the tie down apron. The taxi will take you to a well-known very good restaurant on the seaside. Excellent service and food, it is visited by people from all over Florida but is most conveniently reached by air. If early afternoon you can park your aircraft and leave the taxiway straight down to the beach for some drinks (Only the passengers off course) and some sun. Anyways, I was on my way back to Winter Haven, overflew Bartow at 3,000 feet to stay out of their controlled air space and landed without problems about 3 hours after take-off. I had my stamps and signatures and had now turned the last corner before my check-rides. All the final stuff had been booked: I am taking the written FAA exam on Thursday morning, the CAA/JAA check-ride on Friday and the FAA check-ride on Saturday morning.  I could, off course, convert my CAA license to an FAA license. So why do I take the two separately? Why do mountaineers climb a mountain? Well, actually, there are many reasons I do it: 1) it’s a challenge. It seems more fair game to take the two tests and get the two licenses separately rather than getting one “for free” from the other. 2) I want to ensure I am trained on both curriculums, which are slightly different. 3) The feedback you get form the examiner (whether you pass or fail) can be really good in pointing out different stuff from what your instructor points out. And then there is the mountain. It is there, it needs to be climbed. It is a challenge.

After 3 hours of flying, it was straight into the Tank (A Ford Expedition), 2 hours drive to Tampa to pick up the family and finally 2.5 hours back to the villa. The driving was harder work than the flying. That must be a good sign!

Summary after 16 days:
Flown:  2 hours 42 minutes
Total flying time: 43 hours and 15 minutes.
Solo: 10 hours 42 minutes.
Day 1 – Day 14 – Day 15 – Day 16 – Day 17 – Day 18 – Day 23

I was running on autopilot.  And do take that literally: I – myself – was running on autopilot; the plane does not have one. That has to be the only explanation that I found myself alone in an airplane 3,500ft (1km) above Florida, almost 200km from “home” and slightly lost.  Let us backtrack a bit though: This was my first solo cross-country. I had again sweated over the charts for a good solid hour and had laid a careful route from Winter Haven to Melbourne to Bartow and back to Winter Haven. When I arrived at 10:00 in the morning to start I was informed there was a “change of plans”.  This was no drill. Melbourne had surface winds at 15 knots gusting 22, which on almost any runway would be a bit challenging to a student pilot in a warrior. So my new route would be Winter Haven to Seebring, on to Arcadia, then to Bartow for three full stop and goes in controlled air space, and finally back to Winter Haven.  Another flight plan junked and with Gerry’s help I quickly put the plan together for the new route and I was off.  While you are flying, you do not think too much about it, but to some extent, it is like the bumblebee myth: It is said that the bumblebee from an aerodynamic point of view is unable to fly. (This is off course nonsense). However, the myth goes, the reason it still flies, is because it does not know.  I had been at the flying school for 2 weeks and was now in sole control of an aircraft flying to an airport I have never been at and expected to deal with controllers, vectors, landings, taxiing and take-offs. The only reason I can see I did it was because I was on autopilot. I knew I had learned a lot the past 2 weeks… but THAT much?!   I found Seebring easily.  The route there takes you past some very recognisable lakes and towns etc.  I joined the downwind leg, final approach and made a nice landing.  I took the first taxiway to the right towards a very impressive general aviation air terminal.  To the left of the main stairs were 20-30 piper warriors and Cessna Skyhawks.  To the right another 15-20.  In front of the building, however, there would be room for maybe 10 but there weren’t any taking up space. They probably left early so I took the opportunity and parked smack bang in front of the building.  When I pushed back the aircraft myself, I was pleased to see I was perfectly aligned with the centre T-mark for tie-down.  I went into the building and to the pilot’s café where I had a cold drink and a light lunch.  I then walked back to “my” Warrior, pre-flight checked it, sat in, completed the checks and was just about to start the engine when four “War-birds” (American WWII fighter planes) came around the corner.  They taxied down in front of me and in perfect synchronisation they turned straight towards me (Or rather, towards the 3-500 people gathered at the outside area in front of the building) 2 on my left side and 2 on my right.  They did their power checks (very noisy) and I assume the 20 odd people gathering to the right and left of my wings were those who didn’t want an old Warrior in the middle of a picture of WW-2 fighter planes.  Urgh. I now realised why there had been some orange cones where I parked and why no one else had. I tried to stare straight ahead on the war-birds and to ignore what must have been very angry looks from the on-lookers and photographers.  Finally, checks over, the war birds taxied to runway 36.  I breathed a sigh of relief and was just about to start and taxi after the birds when 18, yes, eighteen (!) More war birds turned around the corner. Nine on the left of me, nine on the right. They were maybe 25 meters away pointing straight towards me and the whole thing repeated itself. Finally, they scooted off to rw36 and I hastily started my engine and scooted on after them. They made their way to 36 and 2 and 2 they rolled down the runway and took off.  I was about to take off when I heard an incoming Skyhawk being advised on the radio he might want to wait landing until 22 War birds had done a fly-pass at 300 ft over the runway. He did not, as it happened, and landed and was on his final bit of landing run when I lined up on the runway and had the 22 war birds pass straight over me.  I counted very carefully and when I had seen 22, I rolled down the runway and was off towards Arcadia.  The leg Seebring-Arcadia is put into the trip for one reason: There are basically NOTHING between these two places except green forests land and green swampland. This was about finding, calculating and sticking to a course. I knew how to use the VORs and could have cheated but did not want to. I had decided they were for absolute emergencies only.  I tried to follow my planned heading and 5 minute before my planned time, the town Arcadia appeared in front of me.  One basic lesson in human psychology: You see what you want to see. I expected to see Arcadia… I saw a town…. It was Arcadia.  If this was Arcadia, then the airfield would be just SW of the town. I could not find it. I circled around in ever-increasing circles. I looked here, there and everywhere. No airfield.  I could slowly feel panic creep in. If I could not find it, I would have to return to Winter Haven having failed.  I found a large N/S running road. I followed it a little North. There was a racetrack! Great, only one racetrack on the map. I must have been north of my expected track and hit a small village, much smaller than Arcadia. I turned around, went South past my village and there, 10 miles further south was Arcadia and oh joy, a bit further south the airfield. I landed, having wasted 25 minutes in the air looking for the airfield. I had a 10-minute rest and was off to Bartow. Before Bartow, which was easy to find, I contacted the controller and requested permission to enter his airspace and to do three stops and goes. He cleared me to enter right base for 9R. I reported base and was cleared to stop and go.  Again, a right pattern and this time I was very high coming in. I landed long and rolled over half of the quite long runway.  Not having been to Bartow before I requested taxi back to the start of the RW. Another annoyed controller reminded me that I had requested stop and go. I confirmed this and explained that due to my long landing I wanted more runway for the take-off. I was given taxi back to 9L, took off on another right pattern and did 2 more uneventful landings and take-offs. It was then back to Winter Haven. It is almost impossible to describe the joy, when you are 3,000ft up and see your home airfield’s familiar runways appearing in front of you. “Winter Haven traffic, Warrior 32990 is 5 miles south of airfield, flying overhead to join 45 to downwind runway 11, Winter Haven”. I was home and another milestone passed. Tomorrow would be my QXC (Qualifying Cross Country), which is an official test of my navigational and airmanship skills, such as they might be.

Summary after 15 days:
Flown:  3 hours.
Total flying time: 42 hours and 33 minutes.
Solo: 8 hours.
Day 1 – Day 13 – Day 14 – Day 15 – Day 16 – Day 17 – Day 23

Based on my experiences yesterday, I did a very thorough job planning the next cross-country. We would fly out of Winter Haven to Melbourne (Florida, not Australia). From Melbourne we would fly to Bartow and from Bartow back to Winter Haven. I made sure that all my visual references points were to the side of the aircraft so I could check when we were abeam. I used the big interstates and only the biggest and most characteristically shaped lakes. After a chat with the weather briefer who today was much more forthcoming than yesterday, I put in the winds aloft, calculated flight time and headings and we were off.  I was nervous but quite happy with how the first leg progressed. The right stuff appeared about where and when they were supposed to and suddenly we were about 12 miles from Melbourne. I had looked up all the frequencies and had noticed something strange with Melbourne: It had two tower frequencies with no explanation why. Sometimes, with big international airports, there are frequencies for traffic inbound from the east and another for the west and/or north and south. In those cases, it normally says in the directory which is which, but there was no such annotations. Well, I listened to my chosen frequency and it was very busy. I waited until it sounded like there was a pause and “Melbourne Tower, Warrior 32990”. He came back immediately: “Aircraft calling: Don’t!”  Woops.  I waited a little while and he came back: “Aircraft calling, repeat”.  “Warrior 32990, 10 miles west of Melbourne, altitude 2,500ft inbound for touch and go”.  He came angrily back: “Warrior-990, turn immediate left onto 010. You are using the wrong freq, call tower on 124.05”. I coolly replied: “Heading 010, frequency change to 124.05, Warrior-990”. Did I hell. I completely panicked. All my practice and careful planning was out the window, my Danish accent is never worse than when I feel under severe stress and man, did I feel stressed. Gerry picked up the conversation and made the calls. However, I needed to get back “on the horse” and called the tower back on 124.05. IT WAS THE SAME F……. GUY! This time he cleared me to enter downwind right for runway 27R report crossing interstate. We were now back on my practiced track and I actually managed to say: “Cleared for right downwind, runway 27 right, wilco”. I made the call crossing the interstate and he requested I reported when midfield downwind. Before I reached midfield, I got: “Warrior-990, you are cleared to land runway 27R”. I did not pick up his mistake (aha!) and instead replied: “Cleared to land, 27 right, Warrior-990”. Besides being my first venture into controlled airspace, it was also my first venture into a right hand pattern. It was not as hard as I had feared and I found myself a little high but on track for 27R. I landed (It was hard not to, the runway is huge), raised flaps, set my carburettor heat to cool, turned power off and within 10 seconds, I was airborne again. That is when the “fun” started: “WARRIOR-990 STATE YOUR INTENTIONS!”. “Departing to the west, Warrior-990” Why was I in trouble?  “WARRIOR-990, IT MIGHT BE HELPFUL NEXT TIME YOU DO A TOUCH AND GO, YOU TELL ME IN ADVANCE!” Now, I knew I had originally told him, but you NEVER argue on air with a controller, so I meekly apologised. In retrospect I spotted where it went wrong. When he cleared me to “land”, I should have corrected him and reminded him that my request had been for a touch and go. Instead, I was so eager to do “the right thing” and correctly read back the clearance, as I am required, that I forgot to actually take the whole clearance on board.  Gerry didn’t catch it either, until we were told off”. Heh, I am going back to Melbourne tomorrow for my first solo cross-country. Out of Melbourne, it was onto Bartow where the controller is very friendly. And then it came from Gerry: “Bartow is closed, divert to Wauchula.” My simulated diversion. I guestimated a heading of 210 and noted the time. I then drew a line from my present position to Wauchula, read off the correct true heading, adjusted for magnetic variance (4°W) and wind. Correct heading was actually 230 and I changed my present heading to that. I then measured the distance, 43 miles and with a ground speed of 88 knots, we would reach destination 30 minutes after I started the diversion. I calculated the expected arrival time handed the figures off to Gerry and assumed that would be it. We would return to our original flight plan to Bartow. The one that I had spent hours sweating over the night before. I had flown for nearly 1½ hour and I was tired. He had to be joking that we were actually going to Wauchula… but he was not.  I read some of the visual references from the ground to the map and I was happy with the progress. 1 minute before I had estimated, we were overhead Wauchula airport. Another diversion, this time to Miami!  “Come on, you must be joking this time!”  He was. I did, however, have to do another diversion back to Bartow from Wauchula. I found Bartow, contacted the controller, did my touch and go and was off again.  This time I could take off on a planned heading back to Winter Haven. Was I happy when I saw Winter Haven airport appear? You bet! I joined downwind and landed. Completely exhausted. At night, we were going to do patterns night flying, but the landing light on 990 is really bad so after one circuit Gerry suggested we switched to 401. I suggested we called it a day. This is very hard work.

Summary after 14 days:
Flown: 2 hour and 30 minutes.
Total flying time: 39 hours and 33 minutes.
Solo: 5 hours.
Day 1 – Day 12 – Day 13 – Day 14 – Day 15 – Day 16 – Day 23

We had planned to push off on an early cross-country after yesterday’s late night solos. I had done the preliminary flight planning the evening before; all I needed was to call “my friend” at the weather briefing office to get the winds aloft so I could calculate our headings and flight times.  Before I did this, I did two very scientific meteorological investigations: First, I pulled back the curtains and looked outside.  Whoa, that did not look good. Fog. I then called the airfield’s automatic weather reporter. It’s an automatic weather station linked up to a speech computer.  Winds were 4 knots, sky overcast with cloud layer starting at 100ft!  I was not too concerned though, as that sort of weather typically clears up quickly when the sun gets to it.  It was then on to my weather-briefer for a personal forecast. They ask for your aircraft ID, your routing and your planned altitudes and off they go.  More bad news:  Thunderstorms forecast for whole area, heavy rain, visibility down to 2 miles etc. He ended on the dreaded phrase: VFR not recommended.  It is a bit of a “funny” thing this.  You think that air traffic controllers, tower personnel, Flight Center people, Clearance Delivery people and aviation weather forecasters could tell someone: “You can’t fly”.  However, none of them can.  An air traffic controller controls a piece of airspace and can tell you if s/he will let you fly in that particular space. There is in the end one, and only one person deciding on whether to take off or not: The pilot in command.  So when a weather briefer tells you “VFR not recommended” it is a euphemism for “You are a bloody maniac if you fly VFR (Visual Flight Rules as opposed to instruments) in this weather”. Before leaving for the school, back in England I read an interesting book going through about 40 case studies on light aircraft crashes most of them fatal. The books title was: “They called it Pilot Error” and it referred to the conclusion on the investigation.  Almost all accidents are in the end down to pilot error. Even when the aircraft mechanically fails, the pre-flight checks if performed properly would typically have identified the issue.  Another typical “pilot error” is flying when a weather briefer states “VFR not recommended”.   So I spent the morning and lunchtime studying for my written and oral FAA exam and in the afternoon, I went over to the school where we could follow the weather on the internet. There were radar images and forecasts etc.  We could see at that point that the squall line (line of thunderstorms) had moved (and was moving) away from us and our route and we set sail. It was again a very educating experience. I think it is a public secret that my navigational abilities at the best of times leave a bit to be desired. Well, it does not get any easier at 3,000ft where there are no town signs, no road signs etc. On a 1½ flight between four airports I managed to get us really lost only once. I also learned not to fly straight over my visual reference points (you cannot se them – it is not a glass bottom aircraft!). One issue is, I am really having problems visualising headings of ground objects such as roads or runways.  Conceptually I understand what needs to be done but I just do not seem to be able to do it in practice. I sure hope that will come.  I felt tired, but not too bad when we returned home early evening. Tomorrow will be the second dual cross-country, this one into controlled airspace and on Friday it will be my first solo cross-country, which will also be into controlled airspace. Saturday is set up for my qualifying cross-country where I have to fly at least 150 miles, visit 2 airports I have not been to before and get signatures from an official at each airport to document that I was there. All without crashing, annoying the FAA or worst (and most likely) of all: Getting lost!

Summary after 13 days:

Flown: 1 hour and 48 minutes.

Total flying time: 37 hours and 3 minutes.

Solo: 5 hours.

Day 1– Day 11 – Day 12 – Day 13 – Day 14 – Day 15 – Day 23

Today was the day I was going to crack through the 5 hours mandatory pattern/landings training so we could push on with the cross country/navigational training.  In the morning, we flew dual for ¾ of an hour in mist or near fog to go through some of the different approaches and landings and I then flew solo for a further ¾ of an hour. I was due a 2 hours break before completing my solo time with a 2-hour session. However, the engine on the aircraft we are mainly flying, 990, had twice conked out on us as we were braking hard on the runway. All though that is obviously not such a serious place for an engine to die it does make you a little uneasy flying it at 900ft above trees, roads and houses as you approach the runway. An instructor who took the plane for a spin while I had my break was not at all happy with the sound and it was turned over to our magician mechanic.  So I was out of an airplane and could instead use all afternoon planning and plotting tomorrow’s cross-country. As it happened, 990 was made ready just before sunset but 401 returned home at 17:30 and I quickly pre-checked it, had one ride with Gerry and off it was to the circuit. It was raining lightly but still with 10km visibility. Not a lot to report except for one interesting thing I took away: Checklists are good. I had never flown solo for more than one whole hour before and the evening session lasted 1:42. Towards the end, I obviously started to get tired and I lost concentration. The landings themselves did not suffer, they are pretty much there now, but the approach and the small things slipped. Once I found myself on base without flaps extended and ended up way too high and made my first decided go-around. I was actually straight over the middle line and the runway is very long so I would have made it somewhere long down half of the runway, but it would have been ugly and it gave me a chance to practice go-arounds. For the last 20 minutes, it was getting darker and the runway lights was turned on. I knew I had to do at least two more circuits to make the whole 5 hours in total. The penultimate pattern was OK, and it was off to the last. I tried to remember everything while keeping an eye out for another Warrior that was just one leg ahead of me in the pattern. I was downwind, having done my checks, extended 10° of flaps and the other warrior had called final so at my turning point I started my turn and called left base. Two things suddenly struck me: 1) I had no idea where the other Warrior was and 2) on the previous patterns they had a tendency to do very long downwinds and thus very long finals. In other words, they could at this very moment be zooming towards me from the right doing more than 100mph and I did not know.  Rule 1: Always have aircrafts before in the pattern in sight before making turns. I was feeling very uncomfortable for at least 10 seconds while trying not to panic. I gave full throttle to climb above final altitude so at the very least they would creep under me, when I finally saw them about 100ft and 20 seconds away from the runway. Panic over, I headed towards the last rays of the sun over runway 22 and enjoyed the pretty view of runway lights and approach path guide lights. I landed, taxied to the parking area and wrote down the numbers. I had, right on the exact minute, achieved my 5 hours solo flight.

Summary after 12 days:
Flown: 3 hours and 18 minutes.
Total flying time: 35 hours and 15 minutes.
Solo: 5 hours.
Day 1 – Day 10 – Day 11 – Day 12 – Day 13 – Day 14 – Day 23