Not Long Left Of Ground School...

It’s been a while since my last update and as you’ve probably guessed, quite a lot has happened.

Firstly, CP107 have almost finished groundschool! With only eight more days of teaching before we enter the exam period again, the end of groundschool is well and truly in sight! Module 2 seems to have gone a lot faster than the first, it doesn’t seem like 5 minutes since we were sat in that exam hall wondering whether to pick A, B, C or D! Since we only sat 6 exams in module 1 it means we have 8 this time round, which are Performance, Mass and Balance, Air Law, General Navigation, Radio Navigation, Flight Planning, Human Performance and Limitations and finally Operational Procedures. The work has been quite different in comparison with many of the subjects requiring you to actually perform calculations to work certain things out rather than just wordy type questions, however I have found it more interesting.

GNav

I also helped out at the last CTC careers event. It was a very busy day but highly enjoyable, I also managed to get into the 737-800 simulator to help out with the running of it throughout the day which was an added bonus!

We recently applied for our New Zealand student visa which definitely means it getting close. In fact, it’s just dawned on me that it’s now next month that we are due to go! I can’t wait to get out there to fly, but for now I am just focusing on passing all of the exams!

A few of us had a trip to Cardiff last week to visit the General Electric engine maintenance facility nearby. It was very interesting to get an insight into the maintenance side of things and the work the engineers do with the engines if airlines report that they have been having problems with them. Throughout the day we saw the engineers working on engines off A320’s, A380’s and 777’s. A wide variety of airlines get their engines maintained by GE Wales including British Airways, easyJet, Korean Air, Singapore Airlines and Emirates. We also managed to see the engine casing off a GE90, which is the largest engine in production. It is hard to imagine that one of those hangs off each wing of a 777 producing 115,000lbs of thrust each; they are easily over 20ft in diameter!

GE90 making the fuel truck look small!

As part of our Radio Navigation course, we got time in the simulator again, we were split into groups and I had my turn today. It was an excellent session where we were putting into practice the navigation aids that we have been learning about in class such as VOR’s, NDB’s and ILS. We took off from Belfast in the Boeing 737-300 and then tuned in the Belfast VOR to look at the instrument readings, this could tell us how far away we were from it and what course we had to turn to intercept it. We made an ILS approach and let the plane perform an autoland while we watched the instruments, then we had a turn landing it ourselves which was great fun!

On another note, just been looking at cars in New Zealand, and found this bad lad. http://turners.co.nz/Cars/Search/Toyota/Starlet/1151714/

Exam Results!

We got our module one exam results last week and I'm pleased to say that I passed all of them with an average score of 93.5%. I woke up on the morning of the results day quite nervous and they kept us waiting until midday before the emails slowly started coming through, it turned out to be worth the wait though! Still on a high from our scores, we all decided on the next logical step - CP trip to the pub. Well that was the days work out the window and we had a good afternoon in the sun enjoying a few well deserved pints.

Enjoying the weather at the pub 

That means I can focus all my attention on the module 2 subjects, of which we have 8 to sit in just 10 weeks time, then it's hopefully onto New Zealand and all of the flying which is what we're really here for! So far module 2 hasn't been too bad, all of the subjects are more practical and involve things we'll probably use throughout our career. There are a lot of calculation questions, I find it a bit more interesting than just learning facts although there are a lot of formulas to memorise. For General Navigation, or GNav, we got a copy of a Jeppesen airway manual, its quite interesting to look through all of the charts contained in the manual and we will be looking at them in more detail next week. Another piece of kit used in GNav is the CRP5 flight computer, or whizz wheel as its known. It looks a bit intimidating at first but once you get the hang of how to use it, it doesn't seem so difficult.. I just need to have a bit more practice with it!

Load and Trim sheet used to work out the mass and balance of the aircraft.

Whizz wheel

Jeppesen 

We started Air Law today which is basically just learning facts off question bank from what I've heard. Exciting stuff.  After Air Law, there's only 4 subjects left for us to complete the 14 ATPL exams! Still can't quite believe how fast it's all gone so far!

Exams Over For Now and Starting Module 2

Hello again!

Well after exam week finishing last week, we headed out on Thursday night. It was a really good night and we all enjoyed a much needed drink, exam week seemed to last forever! It was very tiring sitting the exams, coming back home and then getting into the mind-set to prepare for the next one. The best way to prepare in my opinion was just to do practice exams over and over again. I ended up doing over 13,000 questions by the end of the week! Hopefully they have all gone okay, we will find out the results in just under two weeks time.

I also headed up home last weekend, it was really good seeing all my family and friends as it was the first time I've visited since being down here in Southampton. Just one problem.. It went over way too fast!!

With the intense nature of this course, we were straight back into module 2 on Monday morning, starting off with Performance, which is basically an extension of Principles of Flight. It adds onto the knowledge we can (hopefully) still remember, with some graphs thrown in to work out certain things such as landing distances, climb rates and headwinds/tailwinds.

Performance planning

We also have a four day weekend coming up.. result! We’re finishing off performance next Monday before moving onto Mass and Balance which is a short two day course and finally onto GNav by the end of next week. 

My next post will probably be when I find out my exam results, which may or may not be worth reading depending on the outcome! Bye for now…