Dublin

Wednesday last week and i decided on a beautifully sunny day i was going flying - after wondering about where to go for the hour, i decided it was about time i headed in over the city - So in the end it was up from weston down to blessington lakes, over the hills to Bray, then up the coast to pidgeon house towers, before hanging a left and flying up the liffey back to weston.

This has got to have been one of the top flights yet, purely cus i knew what i was flying over!! The lakes were easy to spot from miles off and on the way there flew pretty close to the aircorp base at baldonnel, luckilly they'd gone to the seaside for the sunny day and werent about, turned at blesso and climbed up to 4000ft to clear kippure, before dropping back down to 2000 and past the sugar loaf. Once at Bray it was straight up the coast, past dalkey, dun laoighre harbour and over the sea to the towers. Then up the middle of the city, spotting everything, the docks, croke park, trinity, even looked down on work. On up past the park with the zoo and marys house, and finally over liffey valley shopping centre and back down to land very nicely - So the only hassle is i think i need a co-pilot to come with next time and take soooo many more pics!!! any volunteers??

Blessington lakes

Sugar Loaf - (now my desktop)

Deansgrange/newtown park ave - we think the pitch is newpark school

Dun Laoghaire Harbour

Pigeon House Cooling Towers

Trinity College

Mums First Flight

After a while of promising it was mums turn to come up with me today - checked weather and looked ok so had planned to head down to Kilkenny, Mountrath and then back to Kilcock again. But given when we woke up this morning you could kinda tell the horizontal visibility wasn't going to be the greatest - decided we'd go up and have a look about at least and in the end chose to head up to Mullingar and back instead, largely because there was very little possibility of getting lost, somebody kindly built me a motorway (and a canal for that matter) to follow there and back! So again mr GPS came with and kept an eye out to see where we'd been and we took some pics along the way.

Mum seemed to enjoy it - she did get a little quiet as we got closer to the runway for take-off - but I get the feeling most people are gonna be like that - once up up and away things were fine!!



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The obligatory 2 of us pic - (With Classy glasses I must say)


And Look what happens if you look close - who said they werent cool!!


Mullingar

This is what we mean by poor horizontial vis


Finals Zero Seven - spot the spectator

The rest of the photos here!!

St Patricks Day Flying

Took Dad flying on St Patricks Day. 1hr 50 over to Athlone and then up to Roscommon, back to Longford and then the whole way home. After waiting till the plane arrived for us an hour or 2 late and stopping the slight drip from the fuel valve we were off. Door stayed closed this time (just as well) and the whole flight was quite nice on a pretty perfect day tho we seemed to miss all the parades. Also remembered to turn my GPS on and log the whole thing so i have a record of exactly where we went. Have been trying to get it to embed on this but its being a taste awkward. Little bit of fun with another aircraft getting in my way on the way back in but round the circuit again, extending the downwind on towards celbridge a bit and we got down. All good roll up the next one.



The 2 of us
Athlone Lough Ree

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Dunno why i cant get it on one map but hey you get the idea!!

My First Passenger

Robs got the honour of being my first official passenger on friday. We had planned to head up towards kells and then over to slane to have a look at where he'd been canoeing up and down the boyne. Also figured we could go sightseeing and find newgrange and possibly even the hill of tara on the way back. However when we got to the field reports of the clouds getting lower out west and coming from the south scared me off a little and in the end decided to play it safe and jus play in the circuit for a while. Actually it was probably the first time i'd done circuits off 07 so adds to the experience.

Important thing is rob survived and even survived his door popping open as we headed off down the runway - Probs wuda been better if i didnt have to roll over towards his side pushing him towards his open door before getting the chance to slam it shut - but thats the way the man told me to go - and he did at least have his seat belt on :P Well there you go memo to self check doors are closed!!

Had 6 trips round the circuit with 5 pretty decent landings and 1 go-around cus the radio was busy and i cudn't get my call in! only annoyed cus it wuda been a good landing too - I think rob liked it tho and im sure he'll come again to go sightseeing!!

Hour Build Day 1

Went Flying today - first time on my own - and with my own licence. So was all planned for a simple trip out from kilkock up to kells then over to castlepollard, down past mullingar to kilbeggin and then back over to enfield and kilcock again. Now i wont say it went perfectly wasnt really on my heading on the way up to kells and it sort of messed me up and resulted in me being "temporarily uncertain of my position" but after a little time i noticed one of the big lakes in the distance and figured out which way to head from it - after that the whole flight went pretty perfect with regard to headings and timings, so the thing i learnt from the day was to trust the headings i'd worked out and most importantly fly them. I did have to duck below a few spots of cloud along the way home but still enough room to squeeze through. The final bit of excitment came as i caught up with a nice big rain cloud on the way back to the airfield from kilcock. Vis got less and less and the rain got heavier and heavier but could still see the airfield and hence direction to go, so i lit up all my lights to be seen and headed on in through it to touch down ahead of the shower. Theres a picture below of my chariot of the day (an english reg for the clever ones of you) and i have a few others enroute on another puter that i'll try upload 2mo. Good to be back up tho - so hopefully were flying now 1:32 down nother 68 odd to go methinks!!

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So its been a While

After much pressure I thought I should fill ya'll in on a catchup session!!!! I got my PPL at last (tho im pretty sure anyone who reads this probably already knows that!!) I started to get all worked up with a lack of progress due to the weather - I applied for my test on the 23rd of november and didn't get a decent day to do it on till the 28th of Jan - little bit my fault for being busy once or twice - more so the rubbishy wind and rain.

The test it self was a scary scary day - i was in pieces and really cudn't add 2+2 in the plane (shocking) but apparently it went pretty well - rite up until the point of getting back into the circuit - suddenly my head blew up and I messed it all up entirely, cud not put the plane on the ground. Now whether it was due to the wind, my lack of practice or just pressure building up i have no idea, but it was shocking.

So i got what was called a partial pass, as aengus put it " congratulations you've passed!!!! but the examiner would like to see you again soon" Basically i was gonna have to do the circuits again - pain in the ** but all the same far better then it cuda been.

2 hrs worth of circuit practice later (one horrible day and one pleasant day) and they reckoned i was ready to try again and all i needed was a letter to take to the iaa to say the same. So last Wednesday (6th) i went out to the airfield get the letter, but after many fonecalls and string pulling i was informed that i would be doing the circuits that day at 3 o'clock - EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!!!

Well not enough time to get completely freaked out about it, only half, but it all went pretty well. Examiner turned up we headed off out to kilcock, and back in. Standard overhead join and 3 circuits with a flapped, glide and unflapped landing.

This time things went far better and i was much happier with the landings myself. Parked up the aircraft and a shake of the hand later im told i passed ----- YES!!!! Peter Lindsay Private Pilot Licence with 80 hours and 7 minutes!!

SO now what

Hour building: im gonna need about another 70 hrs of flying before i can get onto the next stage of flight training so in a way thats 70 ppl I can take on 1hr trips - start booking now!!

ATPLS: gotta start studying for the 14 exams and hopefully get em outta the way so thats about 15 hrs a week to do - fun fun fun


(whoa this has been a long 1 :p)

Nav and PFL's

Seems I've forgotten to write on this for yet another week - Oh well!!! - I've spent the week doing navigation stuffs including a short trip upta trim and then back to Enfield and Kilcock. After that I was allowed to do it all on my own. The nav part was pretty easy tho as I passed Kilcock on the way out had a close encounter with a robin (other aircraft not the brother) which kinda scared the living daylights outta me and left me wondering about it halfway to trim. At which point I suddenly remembered I was supposed to be finding my way to trim and back. In the end I made it found my way to each town and back home again too!! Also did a trip to Tullamore - Athlone - Abbeysharule - Kilcock. Bout an hour and a halves worth of flying and lotsa fun so I think the plan is to repeat it as a solo flight sometime soon. The other thing i've been playing with this week is Practice Forced Landings where we're simulating an engine failure and so have to pick a field and line up to land in it all gliding. Little tricky to get it jus rite on the height side of things, tho strangely enough I seem to be too high more often then too low. Practice makes perfect tho!!!!