Air sgiath a' seoladh nan neoil

Air sgiath a' seoladh nan neoil
'S an domhain liath
Mar dhealbh a' tighinn beo tro na sgothan
'S mi a' tilleadh gu tir

Translation

This flight is sailing through the clouds
And the blue heavens
The homeland appears like a developing photograph
Through the mists as I return to land                                        - Runrig - ALBA

Sunday 3rd July - 

Todays flight saw some changes to the field. a new instructor has descended on Bournemouth Helicopters in the form of a Carl Boyd. Today was my first flight with Carl and was important as he will be my lead instructor for the rest of my PPL training. Not an easy job for him to get to know where I'm at in a short period of time without eating into my flying/training time. After on of my better take offs and a taxi over to the HTA, we set about seeing what I could do. Fortunately i had the flight last week to refresh me after a long spell away from flying. After a few spotless spot turns (spotless as in no problems not spotless as in no spot achieved), we moved onto sloped landings and then into the circuit for a few rounds and approaches.

 - Nose High  

- To the right

When on the HTA it was incredibly hot with both doors on and only 4 knots of wind with ZERO cloud. once we got flying in the circuit it made things a lot more bearable. I should note at this point how much your attention can be strained when you're really really warm, sweating profusely and flying with someone you've never flown with before. 

With the last weekend flight there was the issue of the relay having a fault and causing cancellation of the second flight. At the end of this flight there was a fault on one of the doors as we left the aircraft. Not a problem as we could fly with Carl's door off.  This would have been ok had it not been for the fantastical speed at which the maintenance team threw resources at it to get it fully functional again. This did however mean we had to fly with the door on. Toasty for the second flight. The second flight had us taking a trip off site and out of 'The Zone' (twilight?). We headed up towards Compton Abbas and just before reaching the airfield at 1800 feet, we headed down to Fordingbridge ready for some other skills. Steep turns and Abnormal attitude recovery being the flavour of the day along with a chance to fly 'by the seat of my pants'. Yes i flew with my eyes shut relying purely on my sensations and instincts. Very Trippy! I did a 180 degree turn and climbed 100 feet while fluctuating my air speed from 70 to 35 to 60 to 40 back to 70 knots. A very valuable experience and lesson in trusting my instruments should I find myself in a restricted/zero vis situation. this should not happen though if i am a good pilot flying within my license and abilities, but there may be a once in a blue moon moment where it might.

So for a first flight with Carl it went well. As with all the Instructors at bournemouth helicopters, they bring a whole different mixing pot of experience and skills to the 'table' which makes for interesting learning and flying when I get to fly with a few of them. I look forward to future flying with him and have no doubt I will have masses to learn as I have already from Richard, Gary, Dave and Mike.

So as they say, onwards and upwards. TTFN

p.s - More random quotes to start the blogs to come. They might get more random as I go along