Well, it’s about time for a new entry here.
As you probably guessed from the title, I’m now done with all my training.
So what happen since my last post:
After I finished all the theory examinations, I still had to take some flight training and two check rides. While I did do the theory in England I decided to go with Iceland for the flight training, simply because it is way cheaper and I had a good feeling about the flight school.
As you probably know, Iceland is pretty far up north, and it was still winter when I got there. Doesn’t take a genius to figure that the weather could be rather challenging.
And indeed challenging it was.
The flight school told me I’d have to plan for about 4 weeks to complete the training, so that’s what I planned for, booked the flights and accommodation accordingly.
Flight training was planned to consist of 10 hours single engine IFR flying and 10 hours multi engine VFR and IFR (5 hours each).
So the first week went pretty well. The weather was fairly cooperative and I had one flight instructor assigned who flew with me. Therefore all the single engine stuff was no problem and completed in a couple of days. One day we had to go through a layer of clouds right after take off and picked up some ice. But as soon as we broke through it on top the sun was burning it off faster than you’d believe. Same picture on the approach, except no sun this time so we had to land with quite a bit of ice built up on the wings. After we parked the plane there were still about 1.5 centimeters (about 1/2 inch) of ice on all leading edges.
Then the weather decided to become crappy. Nothing to worry yet, still got 5 hours of IFR on the multi engine to fly after all. And that plane had a de-icing system installed so no worrying about icing any more.
But then, just about one week into my flight training, Murphy’s Law hit with all it got. First it was so windy that we couldn’t fly, then the wind, after weakening a bit, brought snow with it which fell so dense that the visibility dropped to nearly nothing. Then, my assigned flight instructor had to leave for his other flying job and the school had to find me another instructor (no big deal, but took a day that, guess what, I could have been flying). The next day, the weather was okay but not that good, during preflight inspection I noticed the oil dip stick had separated from the filler neck cap and was lying somewhere in the oil sump (the whole thing is a rather awkward design and it’s kinda difficult to push the dip stick back in and when you force it in it separates from the cap. Seems to happen rather often). According to the mechanic that wouldn’t have been a no-go item but both the instructor and I felt better with having that fixed right away, which took pretty much the rest of the day. But wait, there’s more. The very next day, we were taxiing to the runway for take off, out of nothing the left main gear tire got flat. Well, you can’t take of with that. Heck, you can’t even taxi with that. So we were stuck somewhere on a taxiway, a hundred meters from the active runway and about a mile from our hangar. After we waited for 1 hour (don’t know what took ’em so long) or so the mechanics came with a new tire which they changed right there on the taxiway (took another hour). We finally took of with some 2 hours delay.
I then finished the remaining training within two or three days which left me with a week remaining for the check rides. Unfortunately Murphy hit again.
It was a Thursday that I was given the paperwork I had to fill out for the ICAA to apply for a check flight. On friday I handed them back to the training administrator because he needed the chief flight instructor to sign them and he would then take them personally to the ICAA. Well, sounds good, but didn’t work out. The chief flight instructor wasn’t in the school that day. So I lost the entire weekend. On Monday the Chief flight instructor finally signed them so the training administrator could take them to the agency. My flight back home was booked for Thursday by the way. So that left me with Tuesday and Wednesday available for the check rides and the weather forecast wasn’t really appealing for both days. As if that wasn’t enough it looked like there was no examiner available for the next two weeks. So I was going crazy trying to figure out how to get the checks done.
Around noon on Tuesday I got the relieving call that they were able to find an examiner and my check flight would be the very same day. So I quickly did the flight planning for the VFR part of the check flight (fortunately I had flown the same route before during the training so I just had to adapt the flight log according to the weather and did not have to measure all the distances and course directions), walked to the airport, jumped in the plane (did the preflight inspection first of course) and flew over to Reykjavik to pick up the examiner. As luck would have it our departure was delayed for another hour because the examiner lost a tooth during lunch which he had to get fixed first. Turned out that during this our the weather cleared out nicely so that the VFR portion of the check was no problem at all anymore and it turned out to be one of the nicest flights with the low standing sun shining over snow covered mountains but melted away in the lower terrain with the ocean always in sight, a couple of big clouds standing around us but none in your way.
After we were done with the VFR flight and all the maneuvers we landed at our planned destination and took a break. I took some photos (see below) and the instructor who was riding shotgun filed an IFR flight plan for our return flight to Reykjavik.
The flight went smooth, no weather problems or anything, luckily, so that just after 7pm we kissed the concrete runway in Reykjavik and I had passed my final CPL ME/IR check rides with just one day left before my departure back home.
The good thing about Iceland is that there are not many people and even less pilots, so the civil aviation agency is pretty quick in processing paperwork. My examiner took all the paperwork to the ICAA (which is located in Reykjavik) the next morning and I was able to pick up my brand new license the same day.
So I figured if I have to got to Reykjavik to pick up my license why no spend the whole day there and walk around the city. And that’s what I did. I took the bus to Reykjavik and spent the day exploring the city. At some point in the afternoon I went to the ICAA and picked up my license.
Turns out it was good that I had the check flight the day before because the weather was horrible the entire day. Low clouds with rain showers and gusty winds would have made the flights at least difficult if not impossible. But it was a nice day in the city after weeks spent mostly in my hotel room and the cockpit of an airplane (well, I didn’t mind so much the latter but the former got kinda annoying).
Having the CPL complete, that left only one thing to still be done: the Multi-Crew-Coordination training, or MCC.
That’s a ten day course teaching you how the work is split between both of the pilots in airplanes flown by two pilots (basically all airliners).
It consists of a theory portion teaching you the psychological aspects, how people behave in a crew environment, how to talk with each other (or how not to) and stuff like that. But the main portion is actually flying with another pilot. Not in a real airplane though, it’s just a simulator. 20 hours of Sim training are split into 10 hours as captain and 10 hours as co-pilot.
It’s not really that complicated, just very different to all the flying I had done prior to this course where I was the sole Pilot, some hours with a flight instructor or another pilot as passenger but it was always me flying. And now you suddenly share tasks, which takes some getting used to.
But I had a good time, met a couple cool people with diverse backgrounds.
So now instead of staring at the computer screen to learn stuff for examinations I’m staring at the screen searching the internet for jobs.
Who knows what will happen next, when and where I’ll find my first flying job.
Until next time…
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