Practise area

This week I had a lot of solo flights, constantly touch & goes in the pattern of Falcon Field, not really a lot to talk about, I did about 40 landings in 3 hours so after practising landings all week it was time for something else.
Today I was planned for two flights in the Southeast practise area.
This is a very big part of airspace where a lot of flightschools send their students to practise different manoeuvres (stalls, steep turns, forced landing, precautionary landings, slow flight,...)
This place gives a good view of how Arizona would be without humans.
Very very veeeeery dry (almost desert) with somewhere a lost cactus or three and if you see a lot of green threes in the middle of nowhere it's probably a dry river.
If you go to populated areas then or area's where they do agriculture you see suddenly between sand and dry grounds a lot of green.
this consumes A LOT of water to keep grass and threes growing at a temperature of more than 40°C and a humidity of only 10-15%.
The special shape for the grounds for agriculture (circles) are made to safe as much water as possible. This plantages give a nice view from the air like you can see on the pic.
This morning I started of with my solo-flight which was planned at 0530 but we had again an unexpected delay of 1hour.
At 0500 my weaterpreparation was done, my mass en balance were checked, I only needed my signoff from an instructor so I should have left on time but suddenly the power went down. It was almost totally dark at dispatch, the runway lights were out for a moment (the backup generator started working very fast, this is necessary for an airport) and the most important thing, the radar was down as well...
Because of that no solo-students were permitted to leave, we had to wait until power, radar and radio's were back working!
15 minutes passed, 30 min... we were starting to dream about having beds or hammocks (hangmatten) at school, to have a breakfast corner with hot cacao (yes, we miss our free cacao for the coffeemachine at SFA!)...
If you are tired you start thinking about crazy, sometimes unpossible (but nice) things!
Finally after 45 min the power was back, and we could leave finally...when we left, the next guys arrived already for their preparation.
The delays of the whole day could start, if one aircraft is late in the morning all the following flights have the same problem because the schedule is so tight.
With the result that my second flight was delayed for 1 hour as well.
I only took off at 1500, the hottest time of the day. I started the engine with 47°C at the ramp.
I had the feeling of being thrown with my clothes in the pool again like my first solo, you are sweating so hard at that time of the day.
Downdraughts and updraughts of 500ft/min were not exeptional. At least one every 5 minutes and I can tell you, it's very hard to fly and control the airplane at that time.
But anyway, both flights were nice, I learned a lot and they delivered me some nice pic's.

See you!

First solo

I made a video of my very first solo flight.
Thanks to some guys to be there so early in the morning to take pictures and watch me flying.
Today I had my second solo flight and tomorrow again a flight of 1.5 hours.
It begins to go faster now but it's nice like this, i've been on the ground long enough!!

Sorry for the shaking hand but it gives you a view of what's happening here:)!
Thanks Pieter and the rest to be there, I appreciate it!

Enjoy!!
comments or suggestions, always welcome...

SOLO!

This morning my alarm clock woke me up (the fifth time this week) at 0300.
An hour where all normal people are still sleeping but in our appartement there are no 'normal ' people. I was even happy I could wake up so early.
After I succeeded my pre-solo check on Thursday I had my first SOLO today.
So reason enough to be alive and kicking, to be prepared for my first flight without instructor.
First I took off with Jeff (my instr.) to make 2 landings with taxi backs, than he left the plane and I could restart the engine myself and take off for 3 normal patterns.

The feeling was super-mega-fantastic-awesome!!
I had quite a bit off stress at the moment I closed the canopy and asked my taxi clearance. The fact that I'm flying with an aircraft as expensive as a little house and than a lot of camera's that were pointing on me did the stress-level increase a lot.
There is almost no place for mistakes...
But I enjoyed it soooooo much, the air was smooth, the landings were good and I made it back safely at the ramp...

Thanks for the guys for making pictures and getting up so early as well!!

Ciao!

Monsoons

360 dagen per jaar zon, dat zeggen ze hier toch...
Deze morgen schreeuwde m'n wekker me wakker om 3.00u.
Met kleine oogjes de badkamer insloffen, snel een douche en dan een klein ontbijt.
Dit was mijn tweede ochtendvlucht deze week maar ondanks het vroege opstaan hebben ze veel voordelen (geen/weinig turbulentie, niet te warm in de cockpit, een instructeur die nog maar pas wakker is...)
Gisterenmorgen: prachtig weer, 30 graden bij take-off, niets van turbulentie...
Vandaag: Thunderstorms: wind 240/10 Gusting 25
Na een halfuur wachten heb ik mijn vlucht gecancelled, niemand ging de lucht in en terug extra delay op de checkride...

Dat ze regen hier niet gewoon zijn was te merken, alle straten stonden blank en op de weg ging iedereen zo traag als een slak...

Tot de volgende & happy Indepence Day in Belgium

Week 4

Hi!

We have internet again!
Last monday our internet broke down so we had no internet for the whole week.

but we're online again and a lot to tell about last week!

I thought I would be solo by now but 'offcourse' there were some unexpected days without flying.
I don't know why but they didn't plan me for 6 days after each other so with these delays I'll have my pre-solo check (a check where they want to see if you can fly and land safely and can handle the radio properly) on Wednesday and my first solo on Thursday.
Today there was another solo and afterwards there is a little "SFA ceremony" (you get a bucket of water over your head and then back at the appartements you are thrown into the pool and between the car and the pool you cannot touch the ground).

This weekend we went shooting in the shooting range.
We just entered the shop, said that we wanted to do some shooting and she gave us 2 guns (one semi-automatic and one revolver) together with 25 bullets per person.
In Europe we can't imagine normal people walking around with a gun but here it is common. for the price of 600 dollars you have already a normal (=deadly) gun and as there is no law against carrying guns almost 70% of the population has one.

On Thursday prom 11B arrives as well, we're looking forward to see you again guys!






Everyone that didn't fly was on the ramp to encourage the first solo's
Teamspirit!

Wet'n Wild

Today we went to a Waterpark called Wet'n Wild close to Phoenix.
The park re-opened on the 1st of July but it was know by a lot of Americans apparently.
It was suuuuuper buzy resulting in long waiting times for every water-ride.
Nevertheless, refreshing water and lots of sun made it fun!

Morning flight

This morning I had the first flight of the day.

- At 03.15u wake up call screams me awake.
Than a quick shower and a little breakfast to catch our schoolvan at 04.00u.
Things to do before the instructor arrives:

• Prepare a weather briefing
  
• Check the squawkbook ( = the maintenance logbook)
• Make your mass & balance for the flight
• Ask the keys to Mike and do the preflight checks at your aircraft (check the fuel, airframe, oil level, tires, all the lights,...)

When the instructor arrives I brief him about the weather, he explains the goal of the mission and what he expects from me and off we go.

You may think it's crazy to get up so early but it is really worth it.
You see the sun rising above the mountains, the air is sooo smooth with no bumps at all and a temperature of 30° at 5.30u is nice.
The airspace was very busy this morning but this is good to learn to handle the radio.
At 0600u I was schooting patterns together with 5 other aircraft for one runway and between that there were even take-offs. This is something you will never see in Belgium.

Still 3 missions to go before my solo check, if everything goes well I'll be flying solo next Friday!

Some pic's:

1. sunrise
2. dispatch
3. pre-flighting my airaft at 05.00u

Finally

After being on the ground for 5 days we are finally flying again!
The good news is, our instructor finished his last students and from now on he's ours (dennis, pieter, arnaud and me)!
If everything goes according to plan with no cancellations or unexpected things happening some people will already be solo at the end of next week.

Something about my flight today:

- flew at 11.30 LT and because of the heat (41°) thermal turbulence was present everywhere.
I praise the person who invented our seatbelts, without them we would be bumping with our head against the ceiling all the time.
The keywords for an afternoon flight are: "try to adapt to everything" but the heat is sooooooo... intentsive it's nearly impossible.
When you come out of the airplane you are dehydrated from top to bottom and drinking water during the flight is not tasty at all, you swollow hot tea without any taste at all and you have to make shure you're not spilling it all around because a "bump in the flightpath"

We did some traffic patterns: you take off, climbout, make a left or right turn to stay parallel to the runway and then you make your descent to land again.
The only problem is: we fly with a "glider".
On final, I cut the power and aim for the numbers with about a descent rate of 500ft/min.
Normally you should be stabilised for the final approach when setting a good pitch & power (=performance).
Parameters checked, descent rate was almost nothing...
Throttle to idle, pulling out the last notch of flaps (which causes a lot of drag).
Then, suddenly, when overflying a golf court, with an updraught & quite a bit of turbulence my head almost bounced against the canopy
Our DA 20 was just climbing with 300ft/min?!! Pitch down to try to correct, the power was already to idle, flaps were fully out and still we were climbing and there's nothing more I could do...the airplane was just climbing/gliding on the hot air...
The only thing you can shout: GO AROUND, full power, flaps back in, call the tower you go around and make another pattern. The best part of this: 5 minutes extra flying time!!
very frustrating when you try to make a good stabilized approach...
BUT not considering the bumps, the flights are supermegafantastic!!

Happy landings!

4th of July

This weekend, 4th of July = Independance day.
SATC was closed so no flying activities; that means it was just crowded at the pool all day long.
As we've seen the pool already for many times by now we planned to go to Tempe in the evening for some real local celebrations of the international holiday.
Tempe is an old city close to Mesa with a lot of univerity students where there is a nice atmosphere to hang around with some friends.
Apparently it's very known for it's fireworks (and they have good reasons for believing that : It lasted uninterruptly for about 40 min)!
Of course this caused a lot of problems when we had to leave our parking spot because people came from everywhere (with their car, offcourse!) to see the spectacle.
In stead of waiting between all the traffic jams with some (crazy) American drivers we waited on our van. And I can insure you: American drivers are not used to see it: funny faces all over the place!

Aquarium

Hi there,

Things are going very well over here.

To make it a bit more pleasant at our appartement we've bought an aquarium with some very special fish!!