First Navigation Flight.

September 27th,


                        A day after my first ever Navigation flight , from Kota Bharu airfield to Dabong, approximately 101 nautical miles or 187 kilometers back on fourth .. I will not be afraid to admit it was a little disastrous. From difficulties in maintaining a particular direction of flight ( heading ) because I was reading the Map or crosswinds ( wind blowing from the left or right side of the aircraft ) up to 32 knots or  59 km/h, or difficulty in maintaining a set altitude ( in my case ,5000 feet ) due to updraft winds and so on .. I felt like I was introduce back into flying again. Clearly, this is a wake up call for me, that my previous flights were not as significant as this exercise , Navigation. One has to Aviate, Navigate, and Communicate in this exercise.

                                  Navigation is all about Planning, Executing, Monitoring and Modifying , and clearly I still only possess the traits of Executing. In Navigation , one has to go through a labyrinth of work just to prepare a cross-country flight, from Plotting Maps, to Navigation Logs ( calculation on our aircraft speed base on wind conditions, minimum fuel requirements, our estimated elapsed time to a destination and so on.. ), and then preparing a mass and balance sheet ( calculating the location of the aircraft's center of gravity, take off distance, and landing distance , etc... ). Lots of work had to be done in order prepare for navigation, and I hope I'll be able to master the skills required for Navigation soon !


                    Unfortunately , during my flight yesterday, nobody back-sitted me so I don't have any pics on my nav flight, however , the day before yesterday , I managed to backsit my own batch mate's nav flight, which according to him, also 'kelam-kabut'.. Here are the pics I manage to take..

On our way to Dabong, low clouds...  Hard to identify ground features..

Looked like the clouds was spiraling.. 

Looking abit busy inside..

On the right side of the Aircraft, dark clouds above and low clouds below..

And we diverted before reaching our destination because of the weather, as you can see as we turned this is how it looked like..

        On the other hand, here are pictures of my flight 2 days before yesterday, it was an instrument flight, and Captain Aung was my assigned instructor,he's a Burmese.. Was introduce into the 'unusual-attitude' exercise.. Unusual attitude is the simulation of our aircraft entering any abnormal conditions like a sudden extreme climb or a sudden extreme descend and we have to recover from those kind of conditions. Trust me, if you were sitting behind this flight, it'll probably be like a roller coaster ride, and the G-forces are Crazy! 

Before flight, going through checklist..

How to recover from an unusual attitude..

Entering an unusual attitude.. As you can see how high our aircraft's nose was pointing! Photo enlarged on purpose to give a clearer view of what it looked like!

Maintaining straight and level without looking outside, purely relying on the screen in front of me..

Quotes

 F.O Chun Wei, of the A330 fleet of MAS:

•    '' It is ok to do badly, you learn more by falling. Most important you find your way back up, fix the problem..''
•    '' You are James's son, he is a great photographer and he is dedicated to his work, that is why he is great, you can learn alot from him.''                                                                                                                       
•    ''Sometimes the closest help you can get is just around you..''

F.O Bryan See, of the B 737-800 fleet of MAS:

•   '' Navigation, do lots of preparation. Study the maps. Wind calculation etc. Know your whereabouts and situation awareness. ''  
•   '' Hand over controls when workload increases. If solo , choose to only do paperwork when stable  on a specific course.''                                                                                             

                                                                      
 Capt. Jackie ( Instructor ) :

•  ''First time Nav is like this, don't worry..''

  Ragu (graduated senior from HM and KLIFA) :

•  ''Try to draw out your routes and remember the steps. Remind  yourself why these steps are important .. No one is perfect on their first flight... And you  have many more to come..You'll ace it brother.''

Note: Would like to thank the kind seniors who have been helpful to me lately and to guide me through this. Thank you Guys! I'll be honored to fly with any of you one day on the right hand sit!

Bad Hazy Days ahead...

September 19th,

                        Went to hangar today with high hopes of back sitting a flight , turns out the weather decided to go against us today.. Haze out from nowhere! Thankfully , I back sitted an instrument flight. Meaning to say ,  flying by reference to instruments in the cockpit. Therefore visibility outside didn't do much harm to the flight. But still, today's visibility was not good at all.. No flights were allowed to training areas and also navigation flights. Hopefully it'll be better in the next few days. Here are a few snapshots I took from the back sit.. as you can see, how bad it was today..

Senior Cadet Daniel of Batch 44. Deliberate 'awkward' smile before checking engine fuel. 

This rear view shot from the plane as we were flying inbound into the airfield from the sea. As you can see, how bad it is from the sea.. We basically can't see anything.

Both pilots working together 

Left : Daniel

Right: Instructor Capt. Jackie

Look at the horizon... There was NO HORIZON!

Flying overhead the runway..

What it looked like From Land to Sea..

Hopefully days like that will not last long.. A lot of us on ground are itching to go flying again soon!

Another Lucky Flight!

6th September,

                      Today was suppose to be an ordinary day, report at hangar, have lunch, and go home. But today was special, and Magic happened.

                       I was not programmed to fly today by the Flight Ops , but the opportunity came.... One of my batch mates who was suppose to fly today called in sick. I was then texted by a friend of mine if I wanted that slot.. I traveled 'faster-than-the-speed-of-light' from the flight briefing room to the flight ops room ( Just exaggerating... The flight briefing room was just a few feet away from the flight ops room) to get things sorted out, and poof! I got a slot to fly today! Prepared within an hour, and was ready for airborne as soon as Capt. Mani landed.

                        Before I continue, I'd like to add a special thanks to Capt. Mani for braving his gastric today and continue on flying with me. I got the news he's got a slight gastric and thought we weren't able to proceed, but thankfully, he wanted to continue flying with me . Thank you Sir and Get Well Soon!!


                        Right, and so, today's exercise was on the 'infamous' Steep Turn. My type of aircraft has been known to make people who sit in the back sit nauseous. Its crazzyyyy G-force is intolerable for some. For those who wanted to know what it feels like, just imagine something REALLY heavy sitting on you, pressing you against your sit and you won't even be able to lift your arm!




To give you an idea of what it looked like:

                     

Prior entering the Steep Turn, my batch mate, Rafael  took a snapshot of the turn before even he, could not even lift his arm when reaching the the steepest angle !

           Today's flight was rather bumpy, we had winds blowing from our right , below, left and everywhere.. The strongest we've encountered was wind blowing from the right at 48 km/hr! It was like a mini roller coaster ride up there today. Thankfully we managed to finish the flight before the winds got stronger.


           The chance to fly today was a gift. I haven't been flying for awhile because I was not scheduled, but everyday since the last I flew I came to the hangar without fail, and this opportunity presented itself to me.

Today's slot reminded me : The Diligent Ones will be awarded for their diligence in the most suprising and pleasant way.

It also says: Never Give Up.