Recent good weather has seen Multiflight PPL student Adam Rahnavard make excellent progress with his flight training. Here’s his summary of hour 34 of his training towards his Private Pilot’s Licence at the Multiflight Flight Training Centre at Leeds Bradford International Airport, Leeds, West Yorkshire, UK:
“I would be lying to say I did not have some nerves ahead of my hour long solo regional nav but I was looking forward to it and had planned/studied the route in great detail. Everything from altitudes to journey times and from MATZ penetrations to ground features I was ready to go. I arrived early so I could re-check all my planning before factoring wind direction and speed. By allowing myself a little more time helped settle any nerves and the weather was good with bright blue skies. Paul checked through the route with me again step by step so I was clear on every point. I checked out the aircraft under his supervision and off I went….all down to me.
Taxi and take off were straight forward as usual. I was offered an immediate take off which I accepted and taking off on runway 32 was given a left hand turn so I could pick out Dewsbury as my first check point. I set my heading, speed and altitude and moved comms from Leeds Tower to Leeds Radar. Before long I could see Dewsbury and was on time. My next step was to turn on to my next leg aiming for Snaith disused airfield, which was located near the M62 just before Snaith village. My calculations took me straight to it which gave me a huge confidence boost I was doing everything correctly. At this point I moved comms from Leeds to Doncaster as I would need initially a basic service from them and permission to transit Doncaster Airport’s airspace briefly to the north. This was granted as I moved from Snaith to Winterton just north of Scunthrorpe, my calculations again were accurate and I arrived abeam Winterton but slightly right of track. This was no great issue as I was able to turn over Winterton for my next leg. The views of the Humber estuary were amazing and I could see the Humber bridge very clearly. Having turned on to my next heading I crossed the Humber and M62 and set track for Melbourne airfield which seemed to come up quickly, on route I could see Breighton disused out to my left and Pocklington glider site to my right. Over Melbourne I moved comms to RAF Church Fenton to see (as it was a Saturday) if the MATZ was active and if a MATZ penetration was needed. On contact it wasn’t but just a Tower service today. The controller asked me if I needed to be any closer than 3nm miles north of the airfield, I didn’t, so he confirmed a basic service and that no further permission was required. I identified Acaster Malbis again on route to my next check point at Boston Spa and the A1 motorway as my cue to move comms back to Leeds for zone re entry. This was granted over Eccup and I landed just under an hour after I had taken off which was good timing by my calculations.
Paul was very pleased again and more so once I confirmed that really I had no real issues and I had flown the exercise well. Next steps are to plan a diversion and if that goes well Paul said I will be completing the rest of my solo nav. This is all very exciting and would suggest if I can keep working hard and the weather goes my way my PPL may not be too far away. The purpose of this blog is to share my experience of learning to fly at Multiflight and maybe its too early for me to start offering advice to anyone thinking about starting but I will say this that of course my new skills are down to the excellence of Paul’s training and Multiflight as a whole but the one thing that has really helped on top of this is my radio skills. I really worked hard in the early days to get good at this and I recall Malcolm Dobson, the Radiotelephony (RT) tutor, saying if your RT is good you can deal with almost any scenario confidently and safely…these are some of the truest words I have heard during my training.”