I elected to make today’s lesson a ground briefing to go over some things that will happen during the flight test.

I spent 0.8 hours going over some questions that I had about how the flight test is going to go. After that I wrote the “mock exam”. Here is how the next couple of weeks are going to shape out.

I am going to find out what my mark was on the mock exam. If that is 70% or higher than I’m good to go for writing the real written exam …

I’ve come down with a cold that hit me pretty hard today. I was supposed to go on a solo flight today to prep for my pre-test flight on Saturday. That didn’t happen.

So instead I spent the day studying for the PPL written test and bummed around in MS Flight Sim. I finally updated my “ground school” section with a post about intercepting a NDB track.

School has been going good. We’ve already had a test in Instrument Procedures which I think I did alright in. Next class we will be …

I am going to illustrate how to intercept a NDB track using MS Flight Simulator 2004 in a perfect world (no wind to worry about).

There are certain times that you will need to track to a NDB at a particular heading. This is mainly used in two situations:

1. You are using NDB (LF/MF) airways.

2. You are using a NDB approach into an airport.

In this example we want to intercept the Buttonville (KZ) NDB at 150°.

Step One – Tune and Identify

The first step involves tuning your nav radio to the Buttonville …

A buddy of mine told me today that a squatter had registered flywithblake.com.

I’m not sure if I should feel honoured (that my site is large enough for a squatter to care) or angry.

Don’t worry, I wont be buying flywithblake.com for any amount of money!

It’s been a busy few weeks, nontheless my training is progressing nicely.

My goal of getting my license at the end of the month might be pushed back a few weeks mainly due to weather. However I think that I can get the written portion complete and my flight portion at least booked before September ends.

Today’s lesson went well. We went over some of the flight test excercises.. mainly upper airwork. It’s been a while since I’ve done them.. but they went ok.

By the time we got back the ATIS was …

Yesterday’s class (instrument procedures) was all about NDB/ADF and VORs. Specifically I learned how to intercept an NDB track and fly it inbound or out. Also learned about VORs and how to track radials.

I spent some time scouring the net trying to find a good NDB/VOR simulator that I can play with. I have MS Flight Sim that I could do some practice radio nav stuff (see my previous post) but I want to get the concepts down first.

The Flight Simulator Navigation site provides an excellent history into how NDBs …

School started up again for me yesterday for this semester. An interesting topic was brought up during the lesson… which direction should you slip.

I was always taught to point the ailerons into the wind. That is, if the wind is coming from the right, apply left rudder and right ailerons.

However my teacher suggested that this might be a bad idea. In a Cessna 172, the static port is located on the left side of the plane. Because of such you should always slip to the right (rudder right, ailerons left) …

I came across this clip at liveatc.net. It is from the Toronto Centre (CZYZ) feed.

I couldn’t help but chuckle at the controllers misfourtune.

Listen to the clip!

It’s on! I plan on going to the airshow on Monday.. should be interesting. For those of you who can read NOTAMS:

060908 CZYZ TORONTO FIR

CZYZ PURSUANT TO SECTION 5.1 OF THE AERONAUTICS ACT, AIRSPACE IS

RESTRICTED SFC TO 10000 FT MSL WITHIN 5 NM RADIUS CENTERED ON

433727N 792541W (CNE GROUNDS, APRX 1 NM W TORONTO CITY CENTRE AD).

EXCEPT FOR CANADIAN INTERNATIONAL AIRSHOW PARTICIPANTS AND

EMERGENCY MEDICAL/RESCUE ACFT NO PERSON SHALL OPR AN ACFT WITHIN

THE AREA DESCRIBED UNLESS AUTH BY THE AIRSHOW AIRBOSS AT 416 917

4681 0609011400/0609011630 AND 1630/2130 DLY 0609021630 TIL

0609042130

The lesson in the sim yesterday went without a hitch. It still wasn’t fully repaired so the rudders on the left seat were broken.

Spent an hour doing things like unusual attitudes and mock flight exam stuff. Pretty uneventful. My telephone rang (I forgot to turn it off) and my FI paused the sim to allow me to turn off the phone. Too bad you can’t do that in real life

After the exercises, she moved the plane into a 10 mile final in IMC. I descended the plane using …