VTM @ SFA

This week Vtm came by at the Sabena Flight Academy to do some interviews about the financial part of a pilot training.

Groundschool week 8-9

We have reached the two months of groundschool now! Although it goes extremely fast, we can feel that we have had two months of ATPL theory already! The workload keeps on rising, now with the BFC and the upcoming tests there is a lot to do at home! But that doesn't mean we don't make any fun anymore...with a teacher of POF/jepessen you will always make fun!

Now next funny thing that happened today was the last lesson of Electrics for Prom6. We ended with computers and the famous OR and NON gates...remember first three years of secondary school in "technology", a.k.a T.O. Anyway, that's finished now, the only thing that has left is a test of AC next tuesday. Same week on thursday we also have a test of communications. The theoretical part of this course ended as well, only the practical part has to be done now. So that's two courses in two months that ended! And in a while a third course will be ended, Flight planning or General Nav. Few....it's going fast éh!

Next things that will happen are the last flight on BFC for the first half. So this will be followed by a second briefing as we keep on going to the more complex and complicated sessions/flights. Still 4 to go...

Now we are at the part where we use the full cockpit (see picture: the six instruments in the red square also called the basic T) of a piper archer to climb, descend, turn and keep our speed. 

At first sight not so difficult, but you have to take many things into account in a very short time. Yes, i'm talking about seconds! With a good training though, we can all make it!

Have a nice weekend all! see you

Alex

First BFC session!

Hi All,

This monday we finally got our first BFC course, at least my group did.

The course was planned in the afternoon, after having operations. We had our lunch at Belgocontrol and then, right on time, we started flying on the simulator.

When my other teammates were flying, I had to write down comments, rules and the tasks we had to do during the flight. During the first session, you only have to do some basic flying tasks like turning, climbing, descending, changing power etc. Though it sounds very easy, it certainly isn't!

First of all I had to study a pitch-power table, as I explained in the previous post. Studying this is not so difficult, but using it in practice is much more concentration-asking as I thought!

So the instructor tells you what to do, for instance climb with so much feet per minute, and you have to put all the parameters correctly to do the task. The only instrument you use in the beginning is the Attitude Director Indicator (this is a gyroscope which shows the horizontal and vertical attitude of your A/C)

You put the necessary thurst, you pitch up the same time untill you reach the right attitude and then you keep the aircraft like that. If you have to do this for couple of minutes, pulling on the yoke, you will start to feel your arms tingling! So we "trim" a bit to release the pressure from the yoke, to make it easier for the pilots! You see, pilots don't have to cope with so much things, brilliant invented systems make it easier for us...

Ending the course with all movements at the same time and a view of a complexer cockpit, we had a debriefing with the Do's and dont's and that was it! 18 o'clock in the evening...time to go home and study physio a bit!

I can't wait untill the next session!

Regards,

Alex

Groundschool November '07

Hi all,

It has been a while since I posted something over here...I know. The reason for this is first that it's getting quite busy at the SFA. Many courses are getting finished, or nearly, which results in a couple of progress checks for the coming weeks. Yet that's not the whole story, we started the Basic Flying Course too, as you can read on a previous post. Because we are split into 4 groups, one group has BFC while the others have free during that time. That's something very nice for the two following months. My first course of BFC will be this monday in the afternoo

n, starting with Operations in the morning...a new course!

Previous week was a kind of hard week too since we had many lessons of Electricity. Only two lessons are ahead of us and the last one is the test, so actually one more lesson and we are finished with this subject! I will be very happy...and I think Prom 6 too! Anyway, it's a course which we cannot skip (an Aircraft has a lot of electricity) but it's a relief when it's over.

Next, operations will be given by the same instructor as Mass & Balance. The course itself will handle everything about emergency procedures, normal procedures, what's happening in a cockpit during the flight, how they manage everything etc. For this course we'll have a couple of visits and flights in an AVRO simulator at our school, which of course is the fun part!

For those who don't know what an Avro is, here is a picture.

As the pilots of this type of aircraft call it themselves, the avro "looks like an eagle, flies like a chicken". Or was it the opposite way?!

Another interesting course thiq

s month is Flight Planning. We are now making flightplans for a large jet aircraft, calculating the desired fuel to be able to fly that distance, calculate the flight time, the optimum altitude at which we can fly, etc. Somehow it's comparable with Mass & Balance, where we calculate the weights on an aircraft and add them to the flightplan. Since altitude, speed and fuel vary with the weight of your aircraft, you have to know both courses very well to make a correct preparation.

Next progress check is Physio, friday afternoon. So it's time to start studying everything about our heart, lungs, the way we breath, why we breath, what effect does height have on our breathing and how our ears work. A little bit of Biology here, but the most important things to know are what negative effects does flying have on our body and health and how to cope with them. Quite interesting though, certainly if you know that some accidents are due to bad knowledge of these effects, eg. lack of oxygen.

Now it's time to continue with those physio things and then start to have a look at the pitch-power table for the Basic Flying course. For your information (A typical expression of Prom6) a pitch-power table is a table which gives you the correct values of how much power to set (your engine) if you are climbing and you want to maintain a certain speed. 

Regards,

Alex