My sortie was scheduled to start on 1500hours, but today's wind was bloody strong, coming from heading 210. The windsock was seen "hanging" at nearly right angle to the pole. For take-off from runway 03 (means runway's heading is 030), such wind is called headwind and aircraft can take-off faster and at a shorter take-off run. However, such wind will also cause the aircraft much harder to land and the aircraft will sort of like floating along the runway. After waiting for an hour and a half, my instructor finally gave up waiting and let me go back.

This means tomorrow I will have to combine both Stalling 2 and Circuit air exercises together.

NO sortie today as we attended the graduation of Batch 8. Finally those seniors of mine graduated as they had been studying here for more than 2 years due to delays and lack of aircrafts and flying instructors! The actual duration for this course is actually maximum 20 months! Luckily when my batch entered here, the problem has been resolved and I hope my friends and I will be able to graduate in time!

Again, we were treated with free lunch at the hotel. Buffet style. Haha. I dare to say that most of us went for the graduation was not to attend the function, but to eat!

After lunch, we had our briefing about Circuit. Basically Circuit is about take-off,climb, make a 180 degree climbing turn, maintain 1000ft straight and level, then when abeam the runway's threshold, make a decending turn 180 degress and align with the center of runway to land. Not that easy as it sounds as we need to make RT call at certain height and also keep a lookout of other aircrafts and also know how to land safely.

There are mainly four types of landing:
1) Normal
2) Flapless
3) Glide
4) Crosswind

As I have mentioned before in previous post, landing is one of the most critical stage in flying. Honestly, until now it is always the instructor who will be there to guide and assist me side by side to land the aircraft. He has yet to teached me the technique to land the aircraft and I always follow through and feel the way he lands the plane.

Eyes: Scan the instruments and maintain runway's centreline.
Right Hand: Adjust power throttle to maintain suitable rate of descent
Left Hand: Adjust control stick to maintain correct and constant airspeed.
Feet: Adjust rudder to maintain aircraft in centreline and arrest yaw effect due to lower power / wind.

I have already clocked 7 hours and 30 minutes so far. Around 4 to 6 hours more and I will start flying solo (Circuit).



I am finding skins related to commercial aircraft or piloting. But this skin is the best so far. If anyone of you has any information regarding that, please sms/call/email me. Thank you.

Just came back from the morning sortie, called Stall 1. Ok, "stall" in this context means a condition in which an aircraft or airfoil experiences an interruption of airflow resulting in loss of lift and a tendency to drop. An aircraft with very low power and airspeed, and still wanna maintain the straight and level flight will have to pitch up (higher angle of attack).



However , this increasing angle of attack can only last until the aircraft stalls at the critical angle of attack (normally 16 degrees). The symptoms approaching the stall are:

1) Cockpit is quieter than usual (due to lower power).
2) High nose attitude (due to higher angle of attack).
3) Low airspeed.
4) Controls become very sluggish.
5) Buffeting/vibration of aircraft body and control stick

Recovery from stall:
Release backpressure from the control stick slowly. Aircraft's nose will start to come down. When it is about to reach level, give full throttle to reduce height loss. Apply rudder to maintain straight flight. After airspeed reaches more than 85 knots, climb out of dive.


My performance today regarding stall was not good enough as I released the back pressure on the control stick too fast on the first try and the aircraft starts to dive! On the second try, I released the back pressure and applied forward pressure at the same time, so the aircraft dived again! On the third try, you may think I gonna do it correctly but I was not! Haha. What I did was I applied the full throttle when the aircraft was starting to dive and not during nose level!

I have recognized my mistakes now. That is just the first step. To learn from the mistakes and not to repeat it are the next steps to go. After reading all my sorties, I do have a lot to learn. My instructor said that he's training me and my batchmates to be individual pilots. Individual in the sense that I do not have to rely on anyone to manoevure the aircraft. When I go for solo flight, I can only rely myself!

Gotta buck up more! I am going to start to make a simulator to help me in flying. Hey, it is not the real simulator machine! My version of a "simulator" is that I use imagination and picture out the way I fly and all the procedures that need to be taken , and then write them down in papers and then do the simulation everyday. It's like doing the same thing over and over again until the thing becomes a habit. Just like driving.....

..... you know that you don't brake when you see the traffic light turns orange.....

=D