Day 14

The beginning of week 4 of my training, and with the weather set to be flyable all this week, I hope to get to the half way point by Friday. I now have 9.8 hours in my logbook, out of a minimum of 28 for the course requirement. 1.4 of those hours were today on a NavEx, or navigational exercise.

Navigating in the air can be a tricky business. Pilots never get lost however, they simply report being 'temporarily unsure of position.

To the left is a map of my route today.

We took off from Bournemouth and headed generally NW until we found Blandford Forum. Then I had to fly as accurately as possible my planned heading (taking account of the true bearing, magnetic deviation and wind variation) to try to get to Branscome at my planned ETA. The black hand-drawn line on the map shows you the route.

Then north to Bridgwater again with a planned heading and ETA, and then finally east over Street and Castle Cary to arrive at the small village of Tisbury, again using a planned heading and ETA.

Having done this lots in the Cessna (or the Cesspit as I heard an Air Traffic Controller refer to one today) I thought it would be fairly straightforward. However the GPS is not allowed to be used during training, and at 140kts airspeed, there's not much time to think. Blandford Forum to Branscome, 15 minutes. Branscome to Bridgwater, 10 minutes.

My instructor, Mark, also did a very interesting thing. After making each turn and getting set-up straight and level, he'd take away my map, and only give it back 3 minutes before the ETA for my next turn. That way, I was forced to fly heading, speed and height targets, and not worry about the nav until nearly at my next waypoint.

You may think this is unfair, but actually its the best way to fly. With the map on your lap, the subtle tendency is to start meandering around, flying from town to town, looking down all the time. This way you could go wrong and get completely lost. By flying a heading and then seeing how that matches up with the map half way along a 10 minute leg, you can then measure any error and correct it. If you are 3 degrees off track after 5 minutes due to the wind blowing you off course, then by making a 6 degree correction to your heading (3 to get you parallel and 3 to bring you back in) you will hopefully have got back on track by the end of the leg. Anyway, its complicated but fun, and there's more tomorrow so I'll not bore you further.