Folks!
Yesterday evening I had another flight lesson at Weiner flight school. This lesson´s topic: "Navigation And Blind Flying". I´d like to give you a report of this three and a half hours lasting lesson where 10 students were led by two instructors (note to all: we should keep the amount of students limited on four per lesson!).
First of all we all started and followed the flight leader after we were taught one hour of theory (!!! - remember, we were 10 more or less talented students) about using the set square (geometric triangle) and non-permanent pencil on the shrink-wrapped map of Smolensk.
In this first exercise we should had been able to recognise the grids we were in due to special land marks the instructor gave to us. It was a bit tricky because we needed to stay in some sort of formation flight while doing the id work on the landscape. After this we all (mass-) landed at the final airfield ... ordered and without crashing ... besides me, of course!
In the second flight we were ordered to different airfields on the Smolensk map. Once there arrived the instrctors gave us a destination airfield in a special grid. Our job was to calculate the distance and course to this airfield that we had to reach. After all calculation were done we took off, headed to there and landed properly. Quite simple, uh?
Finally we came to the top exercise of this evening: blind flying in crappy weather in the middle of the night. Same steps as before to consider:
- - calculate the distance
- calculate the course
- calculate the approximate flight duration
Once set and done all we needed to do was to get up onto the stormy runway which was quite tricky because of the bloody winds. We were suggested to climb up to 3000m over airfield before we started our blind flight towards the Orsha airfield at a heading of 160° and a speed of 250 kph (IAS). Due to always changing flight parameters I decided myself to go below clouds a bit earlier then calculated (< 9 mins) and ... luckily there it was: my destination airfiled at Orsha!!! Now I call myself now a
lucky Weiner ...
After all I´ve to admit that I definitely need more training on my naviagtion skills. Let´s see what kind of navigation lessons we can put together!
Cya later, says Weiner-Frank!
