Richie’s Rants!

Apologies for not updating my blog lately. Been really lazy and busy… Anyway, about my flight test on 16th May. I passed it! My testing officer was a WWII veteran… How cool is that? Flying Mustangs. When I was doing my stalls, he keep saying ‘Forward stick! Forward stick!’ in a gratey old voice. Really gives me the fighter pilot feel. Hehe… He’s 86 and the maneuvers he pulled, some of us find it hard to handle! Amazing, isn’t it? I would love to do that when I’m much older too… Hopefully…

Hehe… Now, I’m certified to take passengers up to my training area, where to next? Its my private pilot license (PPL)! To get a PPL, I will need to do some nav exercises and I was supposed to fly to Byron Bay near Gold Coast for a couple of days before flying to inland Australia at Lightning Ridge in Queensland.

On Monday the 23rd, as I was travelling in a valley "trench run", my engine started to cough and splutter and running roughly! Within the next few seconds when engine failure checks are done, we (namely, my classmate who’s the pilot, my instructor who’s the pilot-in-command and I) lost 500ft! There’s not a lot of room to play with, especially when we’re only about 1,000ft off sea level! This happened in a place called ‘The Worm’, so called because anywhere else is restricted military airspace where general aviation planes can only fly at 1,500ft at the most. We were caught in a situation, either land at a field below us or try to fly back to an airstrip which we passed about 20km away with hills in between us. Our plane were able to maintain height so we try to cough and splutter our way back to the airstrip. We managed to crawl back to the airstrip and landed the plane safely and just nice, managed to stop in front of a fence before we crashed into it. The police, fire and ambulance services were very prompt as when we had it running roughly, a Mayday situation was declared and these 3 services were immediately activated. Some of the townsfolk knew who we were when we managed to get back into town, but I guess that the fact that my plane could be heard from miles away and with smoke trailing from the engine helps too! Thankfully, we didn’t see the smoke in the end, if we did, we would probably make a wrong assumption and land the plane in the field instead! Apparently, turned out that one of the exhaust valve bolt wasn’t tightened and it got loose which resulted in the engine losing one cylinder. With one cylinder gone, the plane can’t climb, how amazing is that? Grr… If its really the maintenance guy who maintained the plane cause this error, he ought to be shot! For he’s risking people’s life with minor oversights like this! I’m thankful I’m in one piece and the next few days in the small town was like terrible!

Oh, don’t get me wrong, its not that the town is really terrible but their main street is just one street with a few shops around. Within 10 mins, we covered the whole of main street and that’s it! 3 people who dropped out of the sky and with nothing to do… And worse of all, I spent $300 in there in 3 days on necessities like food and lodging… This is the worst holiday I’ve ever gotten! I’m supposed to be in Byron Bay by the sea!!! Not in the middle of a valley with nothing to do! Thankfully, the plane got fixed on Wed and we originally wanted to meet up with 2 other planes over at Lightning Ridge so we flew to a coastal town for a night and from there, proceed to the next leg of our journey, but this wasn’t meant to be…

When I started taking off on Thu, as I was turning to head for my planned route, the plane lost power for a couple of seconds… and that got me worried as hell, cause I was the pilot and so we decided to land and see what the problem was. We can’t find out what the problem was but we came to the same conclusion that we aren’t going to cross any mountains in that shit plane. Hehe… Unanimous decision. Altered flight plans for a trip back to Sydney flying by the coast… At least we flew by the coast… Took a couple of pictures too… Hmm… Its a good experience for surviving an actual situation but even when the engine is gone completely, we’re trained to handle such situations by landing the plane in a field. Being able to get out of the field is another matter entirely though… But we’ll be able to walk away and that’s all that matters. Live to fly another day, I always say…

One more thing… I ate so much in those 3 days in the small town that I’m getting weight! WTF!!! I need to get some exercise done!!! Grr…

Well… I completed my Training Area Solo Check yesterday!!! That means I can fly into the training area by myself. The training area in which I’m flying is probably about 60km by 50km area. It might seem to be a big area but when you’re flying at about 180km/h, that doesn’t seem like a lot of space to fly.

I might have passed the solo check, but I have an actual flight test on the 16th May and that is the Monday after the coming week! Not much time left, and that means I have to fly for at least 9 more hours before I can take the test as I have a lot of things to catch up on… The feeling of flying is like soaring through the skies like a bird. And talking about birds, do you know that pilots fear birds as well? Especially when we’re coming in to land? If a bird strikes a plane, although it’ll be hilarious after we landed, but in actual flight, its dangerous as the bird strike might damage the plane’s wings, engines or cockpit glass which might endanger the actual flight! Anyway, I’ve seen a couple of eagles soaring through the skies scouring for food and prey and I was flying above the eagle. It looks absolutely majestic!

I need to fly 9 hours before a major flight test… Can you imagine? That means my flying’s gotta be perfect! Sigh… But I’ll do my best, because I WANT to be the best as flying has always been my dream. To reach for the skies and soar above the rest…… Its a dream coming true