Week 5: The Earth's Orbit, Charts and The Cockpit Environment

Finishing off HPL and GNav has been the main focus of this week's lessons, as it's now less than 7 days until our first set of mock exams!

We've covered quite a few different areas of GNav this week, starting with the solar system, and how the Earth's orbit of the sun influences the seasons and the amount of daylight and night-time that  different areas of the world receive. The main reason for this is the 23.5° axial tilt of the Earth,  meaning that as the earth orbits the sun throughout the year, the area of the earth that the sun is directly overhead changes by up to 23.5° north or south of the equator (at the tropics). Converting between time zones is also something we've learnt, allowing us to accurately determine for example, the local time in a westerly location compared to an easterly location depending on their distance from Greenwich (GMT). 

This probably explains it better than I have!

The most interesting topic by far this week has been an introduction to radio plotting on charts, which is important for plotting an accurate, real-time position of the aircraft in relation to navigation aids such as VORs and DMEs. As you can probably guess, it's a hands-on topic, which took a little while to understand but became a lot easier after a bit of practice. We've only briefly covered charts, but will come back to them in Flight Planning in much more detail later on in ground school. All that's left now of GNav is a bit on fuel calculations which we'll do on Monday.

Later on in the week we got to the end of the HPL syllabus (phew!), with the majority of information being in relation to the cockpit environment. A lot of emphasis in the aviation world is put on having a "synergistic cockpit"; one with effective leadership, teamwork and cooperation of the flight crew. This allows a positive, professional and most importantly SAFE cockpit atmosphere to be maintained. It makes sense being taught about it now, as it's going to be repeated to us again and again during our future careers!

Finally, I capped off the working week with a trip to Bournemouth Airshow on Friday night with a few of my course mates. I've been to a lot of airshows before, but never in the evening, which makes it even more impressive to watch when there's neon lights and fireworks involved!

Week 4: Continuing with GNav and HPL

Well this week we have continued to plough through more of General Navigation and Human Performance + Limitations, as we reach the halfway point of module 1! CP136 arrived for their meet and greet on Thursday and start ground school tomorrow, meaning we are no longer the babies of CTC!

We've done a further 3 days of General Navigation this week, focusing mainly on various types of charts such as the Mercator, Lambert's conformal and the dreaded POLAR STEREOGRAPHIC charts. These are all types of charts used on a day to day basis in aviation, and as such, we are required to understand not only their properties, but also calculate things such as the distance and direction between points on the graphs (very simplified explanation..) and calculate the changes in scale across the chart, building on the basics of convergency and departure that we learnt last week. I've personally found this rather difficult as I'm not a natural mathematician and some of the questions require a decent amount of maths to come to the answer. However, General Navigation is a very hands-on topic, so I'm hoping that practice and perfecting the technique is the key to success!

This more or less sums up Polar Stereographic Charts for me!

To finish off the week on Friday we had another day of HPL, which is in essence, "100 ways to lose your class 1 medical"! The causes of diabetes, hypoxia, stress, errors, the effects of alcohol on the body, the properties of the eye, nervous system, vestibular system and cardiovascular system are all things we have been learning about this week (to name a few!..). I'll be honest, these aren't the most interesting topics to learn about, but our instructor seems to have a story for almost every single one so that has definitely made it more enjoyable!

We have just over a week of lessons left from tomorrow onwards, and then following this is a couple of weeks of revision, so the first exams are getting closer by the day!

Week 3: Introduction to GNav and HPL

Week 3 has now come to a close, and it still feels like we only been here a week!

As I mentioned briefly in my last post, this week has seen us make a start on our second mammoth-sized subject of module 1; General Navigation. We've had 3 days of GNav ground school so far this week covering numerous topic areas, most of which involving our other new friend; the CRP-5! This clever piece of kit allows me to do a multitude of things, such as calculate wind speed and direction, and convert between different units of measurement and speed. Following this was an introduction to latitude and longitude, and how we can find the distance between locations on the earth using a number of different formulae; (Convergency= Change in Longitude (Degrees) x sine mean latitude) being my favourite..

The magic calculator, A.K.A Pooleys CRP-5 Flight Computer

On Thursday morning we made a start on our 4th and final topic of Module 1; Human Performance and Limitations. Although there have been vast safety improvements in commercial aviation over the years, pilot error is still to blame for over 70% of accidents, so learning our physical and mental limitations is key to understanding how accidents involving human factors can be avoided in the future. On Friday afternoon, we were fortunate enough to be given a presentation on spatial disorientation by Dr Rollin Stott. A rather fun way of showing spatial disorientation in action was getting us to wear a pair of glasses that reverse your horizontal vision, making it seem like you've had a few too many pints down the pub!

It's crazy to think that we've been here nearly a month already, as we will soon no longer be the babies of CTC! CP136 have their APD next week, so if I'm around I'll try and say hi when they arrive on Friday. Although the workload is still very high, relieving stress is key to staying on track throughout the 6 months I'm here, so I did manage to have a rare night out on Saturday and subsequent BBQ with some of the guys at our house on Sunday evening as well, before it all starts again on Monday morning.

Week 2: Principles of Flight

As another long week comes to an end, so too does Principles of Flight, meaning us cadets can breath a momentary sigh of relief!

Having started our second topic last Friday, this week has been solely focused on continuing to squeeze as much information into our heads about Principles of Flight as possible. Starting off the week by learning about drag and its effects on aircraft, stalling (something we want to avoid..), all the way through to learning about flight controls and how they are used to manoeuvre an aircraft around the air.  Interestingly enough, we've also been learning about the basics of supersonic flight and how shockwaves form on an aircraft as it passes through the transonic speed range and becomes supersonic, although it may be quite a while before I ever get the chance to fly an aircraft capable of this!

It's been a mixed bag of both interesting principles, and also enormous numbers of facts and formulae that simply have to be committed to memory for the sake of our exams. Taking it all in whilst learning an abundance of new material everyday AND keeping up to date with M&B has proved to be rather stressful, but still enjoyable.

The ATPL question bank, one of your new friends during ground school. 

Unfortunately there's no time to relax, as tomorrow we plough on with the start of our third (and enormous) topic, General Navigation! Strangely, this is the topic I've been both dreading and really looking forward to, so I'll let you know how it's going at the end of this week!