So my first week is complete here at FTA. It entailed a re-sit of a PPL exam (which I passed) 1.3 hours of dual flying in a Tobago TB10 aircraft and a ton of study. We started with or intro into the college on Monday and then that same afternoon got stuck in with our ground school component of the course. The first two and a half days we covered Air law, Met, Nav, AGK and the favorite human factors...
On Wednesday afternoon we sat a internal PPL exam which was basically to see where the standards of us were all at. Of the 6 people on the course our marks ranged from 71-85%. 70% is deemed a pass by our regulator CASA and 80% is deemed a pass by FTA. It was a tough exam as I had done my CASA PPL exam over a year prior to that so it involved a lot of revision. Upon recieving my paper I saw a lot of silly errors in which would have seen me score a better score if I had reviewed answers upon completion. Anyway a pass is a pass.
Moving on to the flying. We had a mass brief on the aircraft and also on local Class D procedures here at Parafield before we went up with our instructors. Our route would take us to the western training area here in Adelaide where we did GFPT type of exercises. From the get go I was nervous and I felt it showed as I was all over the place on the ground with my checklists.... When flying we completed stalls, steep turns and practice forced landings on fields etc. I was also able to show of 65 degree steep turns at 500ft AGL which I had never done before which was fun!! My air work I felt was good considering my lack of flying in previous months.
Making our way back from the training to the circuit was not complicated here, but in an aircraft which is 300hp more powerful and weighs 300kg more than what I am used to it handles very differently. This is also the first aircraft that I have flown with a CSU just to make things trickier. Whilst in the circuit things had to be done at a faster pace... We did 4 circuits 1 normal configuration and 2 in a flapless configuration.
Debrief with my instructor was that there was room for improvement however was told of no major issues. Looking forward to getting out there again this coming week.
