Monday 10th March: Day 1

Today was the first day of my CPL (Commercial Pilot's License) course, at Bournemouth International Airport. It also happened to be the worst weather day of 2008 so far, and unsuitable for my initial flying. In Bournemouth, we had horizontal rain and a thunderstorm. The wind at 1000ft was 65kts and the wind at 2000ft was reported at one point to be 85kts.

(just for perspective, the venerable Cessna 150, which I have been flying since October, cruises at around 85kts at 2000ft, so I would have been able to stand still in one direction, and zoom along at 170kts in the other. NOT SAFE!)

So instead today was spent hitting the books. Aircraft systems revision and some theory on twin engined aircraft, retractable undercarriages and complex (that is to say constant speed) propellers.

All my flying at Bournemouth will be in a Beech Duchess like the one opposite.

I'll first be working on the 'multi-engine' rating, which is around 6 hours of flying, and should take a week (weather permitting). In my case this is integrated into the CPL course and there is no separate test. If I pass the CPL test, I'll automatically have a multi-rating issued.

Flying with two engines is safer, because if one fails the other one can get you home. However there are new skills to learn and twice as many engine dials and settings to monitor. So it should be a busy week, weather permitting.