CB watch: Serious stuff

CB0090701rad
Originally uploaded by Iliya Maksimov

Unfortunatelly I left my camera home, and my phone's battery is too low to use its.
Anyway. This is the latest radar image from Sofia. Clearly visible are tree major sets of Thunderstorms that are making my life dark and loud. Rain is expected any time now!

CB watch: Small but wet

My office is near the white asterisk on the radar image. Although the CB was not very big it brought quite a rain over central Sofia. By the time it was near me it had already died.

Slice on the ground

Who said that slices* should be able to fly? Nobody! And more or less it turns out that they can't. Which, of course, is pity.

Ok! Slices cannot fly, but still they can't understand the way things work. This blog was thought to be only positive, and never negative, but from the time being I am not able to maintain this status.

Since I started this blog I have never wrote about normal flight training. As you probably know since then in my FTO there were two incidents. We were grounded for a month after the first one and only two days after resuming operations there came the second one. This happened on 11th of this month and now is the 26th, which gives half a month already waiting.

But why? Why are we waiting, since the last incident was not that serious? Well... we wait due to someone's lack of ability, or I do not know what, to run a small FTO in a small country.

What I understood is that CAA gave asked for a big inspection of the faulty engine before lifting the ban. For two weeks the FTO did nothing about it. In addition our second plane has some documentation problems, that could result in airworthiness loss.

Readers must know that I am not paying for my training, but the state does. I won my place in this by hard work and with a lot of competition. The money for the training come from the government which decided who gets the pie. For 12 years it was the same FTO. Our FTO. The unable FTO. The black sheep of FTO-s in Bulgaria.

Why this FTO gets the pie for over a decade? Ask the government! I believe it is time for change!

Waiting continues....

* You may ask why my nickname is Slice. Well I graduated English language highschool. It was only the first week of my first year there when we learned what the meaning of "slice of bread" was. Since my real name rhymes with the bulgarian word for slice of bread and is frequently assosiated to it, my classmates started calling me slice. For five years I was known as Slice and more or less this became my official nickname. I still use it on the net, although noone calls me like that anymore!

Back from Montana

No! Not the American Montana. For some reasons I'd like to keep for myself I'd never go to the American Montana. What I am talking about is the Bulgarian Montana, where I spent the last two days.

No! I was not there on a holiday! I was there on business, and to be more exact I was sent there by my current employer Private College of Transportation – Sofia. The local agricultural airline (and airport, and technical base, etc.) needed a Cessna 100 series basic course for technicians, and I was to tech the Lycoming, Continental and Thilert engines used on Cessna 150/152/172/180.

More or less it was a nice trip, but was related to leaving my home not for flying but for work, which, according to my acceptance scale, was “Unacceptable”.

Anyway! Tomorrow, I and the girl of my life, will be going to the city of Smolyan (mountains) for three days away, which is “Very acceptable”.

And about flying? What about flying?! We are in a middle of a second accident investigation, remember?

Still waiting, but yet trying to spend quality time....

I am sorry

Well, I am sorry! For what? For my lack of ambition about this blog in the past two weeks. Well, you'd say, I had nothing to write about since the FTO I fly in had its flight operation seized due to the no-gear-landing that took place on 8th of may. This is partly true, but not entirely. Why? Well, the truth is that last Monday (a week ago) I was told that we are going to fly the next day. The same evening I was at the hotel in Gorna Oryahovica. This was my first opportunity to write in this blog! But I didn't!

Anyway. The next day was my first flying day. That same say I logged 2 hours and 20 minutes while making a closed visual route and (this is important for later) four NDB approaches. That evening back at the hotel was my second opportunity to write in the blog! But I didn't!

The next day my “shift” started at noon. Before that I planned my flights for the day – one visual route (again closed – from and to Gorna) and another 3 NDB approaches, which were this time a checkride for solo approaches (NDB). Unfortunately one of our airplanes had a control cables (horizontal trim) problem and was grounded for maintenance for the day. That meant that the four of us had to fly on one airplane. This was LZ-ASB (pictured). Because it is the only one we have with an ADF (believe or not), a decision was made that we should drop off any visual routes and fly only NDB-s. That meant that I logged only an hour and a half that day, but together with my checkride I flew 2 solo approaches. I like flying solo, because I feel much more concentrated and calm, compared to flying with an instructor. My landings were much better than the ones before and I surely had a lot to write about the same evening at the hotel! But I didn't!

The next morning everything was over! Luckily with no damage or casualties. The first flight for the day was executed by one of my colleagues, whose task was to make two solo NDBs. Once we saw he took off I and my roommate headed towards the AIS (Aeronautical Information Service) to plan our flights. Thirty minutes was the flight time for this task. About 31 minutes after my colleague took off we got called and were told that the airplane had fallen down.

Fortunately this was not the truth! What happened was that the engine (Lycoming O-540) had stopped just prior to landing at an altitude of about 500 feet MSL. My colleague did everything possible to glide to the runway, but was unable and landed on the grass just before it.

He was alive and unhurt, the airplane was absolutely undamaged, only we were all a little scared!

That was the end of our flying trip! The same evening I was back to Sofia, and was again able to write to this blog! But I didn't!

The waiting begins.... again...

P.S. I am now unwilling to comment in details what happened and how come our FTO had two accidents in just a little more than a month! Maybe while waiting I will try to explain at least some of the facts!

Safety briefing

This blog was ment to be about aviation. Since I started it, however, not too much aviation stuff happened to me. As a matter of fact I flew only one hour since. If you have read my previous posts, you know that the reason for this situation is an incident with one of the flight school's airplanes. Because of it, the flight school was grounded by the authority untill further notice.

Well this notice seems to be comming soon, or at least some people say so. Before it is a true fact, however, the flight school had to organize a two day safety briefing for all of its students, including me.

So that is what's happening since yesterday. We go through all checklists (manly emergency ones), some procedures, etc, etc. Which is good. Of course. Will surely increase our theoretical prepareness and I hope the discipline of some of my colleagues (mine as well, because there is always plase for improvement :) NO seriously - I might consider it!). 

What's next? If we get permission to fly by thuesday (as expected), four of us (we are all seven) chosen by the instructors (don't ask how) will go to Gorna Oryakhovitza for five days of flying. And not before that, this blog will be about aviation again!

Still waiting....

CB time

Above is the current image from the wether radar at Sofia Airport, Bulgaria (LBSF). My office is located just 5 kilometers alway from it and currently I am just on the border of the little red thing on the image. These things are thunderstorms making my life terribly noisy right now.

Meanwhile, I am still waiting for the No-fly status of my flight school to be changed.

Lessons learned

If you have read my previous post, you already know that a Diamond DA42 Twin Star, operated by the FTO I train in, landed with no landing gear at the airport I train 30 minutes or so after I landed and 30 minutes or so before I was to take off again.

The accident was not very serious but was enough to close the airport for several hours. At the time it happened three of my colleagues were in the air without an instructor (flying solo). And they were not prepared. They have never went to their filed alternate airport, they did not have charts for it, they did not have even a visual chart (as they were not flying a route, but some NDB approaches). The only thing they had was enough fuel to get to their alternate.

Fortunately with the help of the air traffic controllers they managed to get to their alternate and land safely. We all learned a lesson now – always expect the unexpected and be ready to visit your alternate.

I guess as we did not learn this the normal way, we had to learn it the hard way!

Training goes on....  

Hard day

I don't believe in future telling. When my girlfriend called me in the morning, telling me that she had a dream about an airplane accident I did not look at this as a future event. I just let it pass. Never though of it either. I just went to the coffee shop, checked my email on the laptop (Gorna is beautifully WiFi-ed city) and prepared for the first flight day. It had to start at around noon and approximately fifteen minutes before twelve I was at the airport.

My colleague, who is like my training Buddie (we share the same room) was writing the flightplan and I was making the calculations. Both of us were going to execute a visual flight route around some major cities in the region and back to Gorna.

Wind at our planned altitude (aprox. 4000 ft.) was northwest at 5 ktnots. My laptop calculated the drift angle and groundspeed and after entering some distances it told me that the route was going to take exactly 59 minutes – nice.

My colleague was number one. After him my turn. Estimated time of departure for my turn was 13:55 local time (10:55 UTC) and it was important that we were able to land before 15:30 LT, because around 16:00 a big C17 Globmaster (USAF) was expected to land at Gorna to load some (I guess) candies from the local sweets factory (or maybe not?!). Anyway time was crucial!

That of course was not my colleague's business. So, due traffic, he got to be 15 minutes late. Add to that some service time and my actual departure was 14:20 LT. That meant that we were expected to be at the airport at 15:20 or only 10 minutes before end of fueling time (yes, they were going to stop fueling because of the US whale!).

Good news was that it came to be a very easy route, and my estimated times were even a minute later than actual. Visual navigation turned to be too easy and at some points it turned out that I did not use my map at all. Which was bad, but still I was able to identify every object on ground only by means of memory.

At 15:21 we touched down. Not the perfect landing, but I guess I had some worse than it. Generally well enough for a week and a half rest.

At the stand I understood that I had just half an hour to get something to eat, than another half an hour to file a flight plan for one hour of 2 NDB approaches to the airport. That was just enough for me.

After having an aviation non-related lunch I headed to the AIS with my colleague but we did not get there. Trough the window we saw one of our company's airplanes on the runway with some people walking around it. It was a twin engine airplane, that is used for the final part of the training (ME). What was worse, it turned to be sitting on the runway only on his belly and engine nacelles – yes, it landed with landing gear retracted.

At that point the day was no longer nice anymore... It was hell. I am not going to explain why, but I guess everyone at least estimates the reasons. The good thing is that everyone was ok and no one was hurt. Only the airplane. The accident made me think about some stuff and I guess it is going to teach me some lessons (although I have nothing to do with it). Just think about my options if this happened when I was in the air (the airplane stood there about five hours) – divert to alternate, but what about the fuel, weather, etc.

Now the training is frozen, and tomorrow we head back to Sofia, making some space for the official investigation to take place. After the big guys from the ministry of transportation say their heavy words, we are going to consider restarting training. Until than – we wait!

Stay tuned...

Flying days...

Holidays are over and were well spent. Now it is time to get back to the ordinary things. One of them of course is flying. Today I arrived at Gorna Oryakhovitza - the small Bulgarian city with international airport, which is not used by many airlines and which turns out to be perfectly suitable for flight training.

As this is my second blog post, it is maybe the perfect time to introduce the potential readers to my "flying self" (of course many more introductions to different aspects of it will come later).

I graduated as MSc Aeronautical Engineering in the Technical University of Sofia. My educational profile was operations and maintenance of aircraft and more specifically operations. This means that I, together with another seven guys were selected to get trained for airline pilots on state expense. I graduated in March and only a month earlier started logging fight time.

Me and my colleagues, we fly in a Bulgarian flight training organization which won the state funding contract (it is not the university who is teaching us). This particular FTO operates from Gorna Oriahovitza Airport (LBGO) which is some 250 kilometers away from my home city of Sofia. This means that during "flying days" I have to travel and stay at this small city for at least 5 days.

Today is the day I arrived. Tomorrow is the first of five flying days, which means that everything is according to plan, I should head back home in Tuesday.

Anyway. At the time I am writing this I am in the middle of my PPL(A) program and I just started visual flight routes. This means that most likely tomorrow I will be flying a visual route from Gorna (Oriahovitza) back to Gorna.

Stay tuned.....

Holiday

Post #1 in my new blog happens to appear during the May holidays in Bulgaria. The smart descision of the Bulgarian government to consolidate the Labour Day (1st of May) and St. George's Day (6th ot May, Orthodox) in one big holiday from 1st to 6th of May. Bad news for most of the hard workers, good news for me, because it gives me 6 solid days at home with no teaching (I give classes in an aviation college) and flying (which, although the best occupation I have now, is never predictable, which gives absolutely no space for planning holidays).

Considering all said, I found it the perfect time to shut down my bulgarian Blog, which was serving for nothing but winning me jelous enemies. From now on I am open to writing for the whole world for purposes I do not understand, but I guess are related to my will to show the wide public the trhoughts and stories of a student pilot at first, and maybe a young commercial pilot later.

For the moment it is still a holiday and I plan visiting only great places in Bulgaria i never dreamed of like the "God's Bridge" in the Vratsa Region (pictured) I went to yesterday with my girlfrend!

Stay tuned!

P.S. Bad English doesn't necessary mean bad text :) I hope!