A small update on the situation

Recently I've been extremely busy and it feels all things start to stack up quite a bit. I've practically done aviation-related things from eight to ten hours a day and don't seem to have much of free time for the next few weeks or so.

In addition to some few theoretical studies we have left, I've now been starting to practice question bank exercises more intensively. The final six exams will be on the 16th and 17th of next month. After that, all of it will hopefully be finally over. I have experienced some anxiety since I really want to repeat my success and pass also these six exams on the first time. However, studying seems to be much harder now that summer is knocking on the door and weather gets better and better, so I just have to focus and repeat to myself that passing these exams is the best way I can make all aviation-related things move forward.

We have also had our first briefings on the next phase, which is IR-training in the FNPTII simulator. Our course actually had some simulator flights already planned for this week but we requested to postpone those until the exams are over.

... :)

In addition to school-related things, I have two other flying-related things going on that have been taking a lot of my time. Both of them could be described as work, which I am extremely happy for. However, I've decided not to go too much in depth on those until things become more clear. I don't want to hype things before something actually happens for real.. Also, I have to somehow figure out how to write work-related things here since it's a bit more complicated than writing about school :)

I recently also joined Malmi Aviation Club and was going to start flying with their Cessna 172 and Diamond DA-40 but decided to put those things on hold until I have a little less going on...

Mei 28, 2014

Mayday mayday mayday!

Our Mayday holiday started today and since me and one of my course mates didn't have anything special planned for the afternoon, we went to a nice place near EFHK to watch some airliners landing to runway 22L. I'm not very much into plane-spotting and don't even have a real camera but decided to take a few iPad-quality pictures for this blog :)

Japan Airlines / Boeing 787 Dreamliner

Flybe Finland / ATR-72

Finnair / Airbus A340...

...which apparently lost two of its engines right before touchdown ;)

April 30, 2014

ATPL phase is coming to its end..

The ATPL theory course is now coming to its end. We've finished Radio Navigation and Meteorology. OPS and FPP are only a few hours short and then we only have a little of AGK and Mass & Balance left. We have yet all but the Radio Navigation exam to do, but we've had a few practice exams. It seems the theoretical studies will last for a few weeks and we'll be doing the TraFi exams sometime in the second half of next month.

IFR

After the exams it's time for the IR(A) course and some 35 hours of simulator flying. It seems I'll also be doing something else that's flying-related after the course but I'll get into that later :)

April 29, 2014

A Visit to Finnish Meteorological Institute

Recently our course visited the Finnish Meteorological Institute, which is situated in Kumpula, Helsinki. We got a presentation on what the institute provides for aviation and how the meteorological information is gathered from different sources and then presented as aviation weather data.

A few screens on one desk. Maybe one of them could be used for facebooking without losing too much data?

It was interesting to see how all those many different sources of information and weather data is gathered and made into an SW-chart for example. This visit was of course part of our ATPL meteorological studies, and with this it came to its end. So now we're supposed to be ready for the school exam!

The Airbus A320 in retro-livery :)

April 25, 2014

A Visit to EFIN

Last week we visited Finland's Area Control Centre (EFIN), which is located in the city of Tampere. The visit was part of our Air Law studies and we were actually about to go there earlier on but it was postponed to a later date.

Area Control Centre of Finland

The Area Control Centre is responsible for coordinating air traffic that fly over Finland and traffic between airports on national flight routes. We got a short presentation about the building and the history of Finnish ACC, whichafter we could go to the main room where all the actual ATC service and communication is done.

Air Traffic Controllers doing their job and us watching closely :)

It was interesting to see how the controllers managed different flights and very often talked to their closely workmates about situation-related things, informing each other about incoming flights and changes to flight routes or altitudes. Of course there was a lot involved so I didn't get hold of everything that was happening.

The workspace

All in all, it was a nice visit and of a sort that's becoming quite rare nowadays. EFIN is being transferred to Helsinki and it seems getting a visit after that will become much harder.

Meanwhile, ATPL studies continue and hours go by. We've been mainly going through Meteorology, Flight Planning & Monitoring and Radio Navigation. Actually we finished the latter a while ago and already took the school exam. I got 88%, which is okay. Only five more school exams left and then it's time for the final challenge..!

April 03, 2014

Night flying above Helsinki

Feeling confident from the late night solo excersise, today I went to fly after sunset to see how Helsinki looked from the air at night. I very much liked night flying when we did the course last summer and was lucky to get an instructor who encouraged to continue flying at night every now and then. I also took my girlfriend with me since she also wanted to enjoy the view.

Katajanokka

After careful preparations and checking that the weather indeed was perfect, we managed to take-off in to the night sky. I immediately got a great feeling from the flight and was happy to notice that I didn't get any difficulties or extra pressure from night flying. After all, the surroundings are so familiar to me that it brings very much extra confidence to everything, it especially makes navigation easier. I still, however, plotted all the required radials and DME-distances to be able to fly back to the airport using only the instruments as a navigational reference.

Porvoo's oil refinery yet again. Looks like a city with skyscrapers.

Some instructors and therefore also students seem to have developed a strange fear and anxiety over flying at night but my personal attitude is that it's atmospheric, challenging and brings some very nice variety to daytime VFR-flying. After all, it is a totally normal and legitimate way to fly when you have the right plane, proper training and necessary equipment on board. And what's most important, it is very fun!

On final runway 18. The fact that the Airport Duty Office couldn't turn the PAPI-lights on brought some extra challenge to the landing!

Maret 13, 2014

My first flight this year!

Lately the weather has been very nice and this had led me to think more and more about going flying again after the long winter pause. Yesterday after school I went flying with my schoolmate sitting as a passenger in the C152 for the first time. We flew from Malmi to Nummela and Kiikala aerodromes and then returned back a while after sunset. I was supposed to go flying myself after this trip but it was getting late and I decided to go home instead and booked a plane for tomorrow.

EFHF at sunset

So today I took the OH-CVP and went flying. My main goal was to fly the compulsory three take-offs and landings in order to be able to carry passengers again so I first spent a few minutes in the traffic circuit whichafter I flew to the Porvoo training area to do some basic flying excersises. I did the usual slow flying, steep turns and stalls and was happy to notice how well everything went despite the couple of months of being in the ground.

It's getting dark..

 After I returned from this flight, I wanted to fly another one so I made all the necessary calculations and preparations and waited a while for the sun to start setting. My goal was to take off at sunset and fly for about an hour before returning and making one touch-and-go landing before coming to a full stop. This was in order to log the compulsory one take-off and landing at night to be able to carry passengers also at night.

Porvoo oil refinery at abut 18.40 local time.

Everything went well and although it wasn't pitch-black when I came to the landing, I logged the last 18 minutes as night time since it had already been over 30 minutes from sunset. In Finland's requlations, night is the time between sunset and sunrise when an unighted obstacle can't be clearly distinguished from 8km distance. As you can imagine, this definition is quite interpretational :)

OH-CVP

Maret 12, 2014

First half of ATPL theoretical exams passed!

Last Thursday and Friday I took the official exams for the eight subjects we've been studying since last autumn and managed to pass them all on one go!

We had two consecutive days to do the exams and I chose to do Air Law, AGK Instruments, Human Performance & Limitations and both COM-subjects on the first day leaving General Navigation, Principles of Flight and Performance for the second day. The first day went quite fast since the subjects didn't involve a lot of calculations or complex problems, but rather just questions and answers you either remembered correctly or didn't. My second day of exams took much longer. I needed almost all of the time available to do the NAV and Performance subjects since they involved lots of calculations. Luckily I managed to handle the stress much better now than last time and didn't run out of time on any of the exams.

Eight exams passed, six more to go!

I'm happy with the results, although a few subjects like Performance and POF have gone a little better in the practice exams than they went now. However, there was also a few surprises like the 97% from Air Law, which was something I didn't expect after still being stuck in the 85% region on the day before, and getting 78% from the school exam..

In conclusion, this time around it feels like I've managed to learn from my mistakes. I studied much harder than last time when I took the CPL exams and I think it's thanks to the few failures that I now managed to get a better grip on things. In the CPL, the amount of work and motivation required came as a surprise to me but now I knew better what passing these exams with good scores actually takes. I think this is the case for many other students in my course too, since only two out of twelve passed the CPL exams first-time, but now in the ATPL course someone has yet to fail a single exam.

Now my current goal is to pass the remaining six exams on one go and would be very happy if my average score would start with a nine. So far it's looking good :)

Maret 06, 2014

Infinite Flight

I got an iPad Air for Christmas and of course had to search for everything aviation-related from the App Store right away. I found this nice flight sim called "Infinite Flight", which I can very much recommend. You can fly with mainly passenger jets and there's many more limitations mostly because of the limited platform, but I've still enjoyed it very much.

I think the hook for me is that you can plan flights, and make real, mainly VOR-based, IFR-flights, manage the autopilot and set waypoints etc. In addition, landing is actually quite challenging and requires you to stabilize the approach or else everything will fall apart very quickly.

Here's some pictures:

Blue1's B717 is a nice, familiar addition to the fleet.

The cockpit of an ERJ-195. The instruments don't actually work but all important parameters are presented quite nicely otherwise.

A Norwegian B737-800 taking off from one of the airports in the Caribbean.

Quite a nice climb gradient here.

Okay, now back to the books.. :)

Februari 28, 2014

Flying to Copenhagen and Kuusamo

The past two weekendends I've been away a bit more than usually. Two weeks ago I got a chance to fly to Copenhagen in order to travel to southern Sweden from there and then drive my sisters car all the way back to Finland. It was a nice trip and I finally got a chance to listen to lots of music by myself while driving. There's nothing better than a long drive and a handful of Anjunabeats- and Future Sound of Egypt -trance music collections!

The weekend after that I flew to Kuusamo with my father for some skiing. It was very nice, although the temperature was about -30 degrees! Here's some flying-related pictures I took:

Our ride home from Kuusamo was the A319. This time I didn't even try to gain a jumpseat position, since I wanted to accompany my father for the duration of the flight. Takeoff sure was quick and with lots of flex power, since it was so cold.

A little anti-icing before takeoff. If I recall correctly, this was my first time I was a passenger on a flight, which needed to go through the remote before takeoff.

My first time in the business class. Food seems to reflect modern times. A few slices of roast beef and cold spaghetti...

...but at least the champagne was free of charge! :>

Januari 25, 2014

The final year begins!

Here we are again! Today was our first day of school this year and it started with five hours of Air Law studying. This year is going to be the final one and my estimated graduation, if all goes well, will be sometime in the autumn, whichafter I will probably very soon find myself from a flight instructor course.

Lately we've been studying some extremely complex mathematical formulas, that only an airline pilot can master. This includes triangles, squares, rectangles, arrows and circles :)

So, for now the ATPL theories continue and we are yet quite far from the finish line. There's still weeks until the first eight exams and after that we still have six more subjects to go through. Then it's time to start the required 35-hour simulator training for the instrument rating, after which we'll get to fly the Piper again. I'm looking forward to that!

Something about the current situation:

Just before Christmas, Flybe Finland announced that from now on new pilots will have to pay for their type rating on the ATR-42/72 in order to land the job. I've heard rumours that other things will also have to be paid by the employee in the future. This came as a complete surprise to many people and what makes it even more strange is that we just had the employment seminar a while ago and of course this was not mentioned at all. So, things are not looking so good at the moment! We'll have to see how all this turns out. My guess is that this will lead to a pilot shortage in the future, but it's too far away to affect my generation of pilots-in-training.

Januari 08, 2014

Christmas holiday begins!

Now it's time to take a little break from studying and travel to Joensuu for some Christmas and New Year holidays. Merry Christmas to all fellow pilots and readers and see you next year! :)

Desember 20, 2013

ATPL studies continue..

A little update on the current situation:

We've now studied ATPL theories for a couple of weeks and a few subjects are only few hours short of completion already. Now it's only one week left until our Christmas break, whichafter studying will continue on the 8th of January. I thought it would take a long time for me to get accustomed on theoretical studying again but actually it was quite easy, even after the long period of just flying. So far studying has been quite fun and I enjoy my time in the class. I'm relieved that I didn't get the same "will this never end" - kind of desperation I experienced at the start of CPL theories!

The everyday view from the classroom. But wait, who's there at the apron? :)

What's also happened in the past few days is that we went to an employment-related seminar organized by FPA (Finnish Pilot's Association). It was specifically aimed at pilots who are currently unemployed or in training. There were representees of four Finnish airlines and each told basic information on the airline and its employment prospectives in the near future. In my opinion, the seminar was a nice opportunity to scan the participants a bit and meet people, but its content was quite useless. There really was not much new information and somehow I feel that some airline representees had lost the point completely. Their presentation was merely and advertisement for the airline. Who needs to know how nice and comfortable material are some planes seats made of in the current employment and market situation?


Here's a short overview of the presentations from the unemployed pilots perspective:

- One of the companies will recruit in the year 2016 at the earliest, but maybe not even then, and applying will be possible for anyone who is trained as a pilot provided that he/she has passed the psychological tests approved by the company. Currently this means that only students of a certain flight school can apply. Even if their evaluation was ten years old. Nice!

- Another company needs a few new pilots every now and then, and everyone is free to apply, but their demand for pilots will not be growing anytime soon and there will not be an open recruitment anytime soon.

- The third company's need for new pilots will be based solely on the current regional jet pilots returning back to the company from which they were borrowed a few years ago. All pilots can apply, and about 30-40% will be suitable, but there isn't going to be too much of vacancies in the near future.

- The fourth one doesn't recruit openly, but pilots can apply via email and rumour has it that one pilot has once gotten a job!

So, things aren't looking that good at the moment, but really I didn't learn many new things from the seminar and such there's no need to get all depressed over this. Everything just is like I knew it is. Hopefully it will get better one day.

Desember 16, 2013

My first post-CPL flight!

I've now completed my first flight as a licenced commercial pilot! I took the C152 and flew about an hour first in the traffic circuit and then at the training area.

AWB and a crisp winter afternoon

 I thought at first that it would be strange flying the Cessna 152 after a relatively long pause but I was surprised how well everything went. Maybe it's like riding a bicycle..

Almost all boats have been pulled up from the water. "Winter is coming!"

I originally thought that as soon as I get my license, I'll start asking for friends and relatives to come on board but since I got my license so late in the autumn, the weather's getting worse, days are getting shorter and most of my time is dedicated to theoretical studies, I guess I'll postpone those flights to next year. However, I'm happy that I got airborne at least once more this year :)

Heading back to Nokka.

I now have two flight time -related things to accomplish myself during other training. Firstly, I need to have 50 hours of Pilot in Command cross-country time before the IR checkride. The CPL flight training syllabus doesn't give that much hours for some reason. So I have about 3,5 hours left. Secondly, I have to have 200 hours of total time before I can start flying the King Air C90. If I consider the minimum of 15 hours I get from the IR course, I still have about 4 hours of flying left. These hours are supposed to be flown with own discretion and with the school's airplanes, and are included in the course and its price.

Desember 10, 2013

ATPL Theory Course begins!

450 hours left.

It is now time for us to sit through the ATPL theories, which started today and will last until April. So the whole winter will now pass in the classroom studying some in-depth aviation theory. Our theory course covers both the ATPL and IR theory requirements, and the total amount of classroom hours will be 450. There are 14 different subjects in this theory course, which are essentially the same that we studied during the CPL course. They are:

010 AL = Air Law

020 AGK = Aircraft General Knowledge

• 021 AGK Systems (Airframes, engines & electronics)
• 022 AGK Instruments (Flight instruments and -computers)

030 FPP = Flight Planning & Performance

• 031 Mass & Balance
• 032 Performance
• 033 Flight Planning & Monitoring

040 HPL = Human Performance & Limitations

050 MET = Meteorology

060 NAV = Navigation

• 061 General Navigation
• 062 Radio Navigation

070 OPS = Operational Procedures

080 POF = Principles of Flight or "Aeromystique" ;)

090 COM = Communications

• 091 VFR COM = VFR Communications
• 092 IFR COM = IFR Communications

Only one of these subjects is totally new and it's called IFR Communications. Of course many of the old subjects have now some new additional things to learn (like high-speed aerodynamics in POF and polar stereographic charts in NAV), but most of the items are familiar from the CPL course.


This time we are doing things a little differently compared to the CPL course. We will go through half of the subjects, do the school exams and then the Trafi (Finnish CAA) exams out of the way before going through the other half. In my opinion, this is a huge improvement since now you can concentrate on 6-7 subjects, pass the exams and then "forget" about them and start worrying about the other half, instead of keeping current and remembering everything from all of the 14 subjects at once.

So, here we go again!


PS: I will be posting at a slightly lousier pace from now on, since well.. theory is theory and there's really not much to say about my daily school-life. Wake up in the morning, go to school, sit there for seven hours, go back home exhausted, open the computer, start going through question banks, go to sleep.. and so on :)

November 11, 2013