VFR Progress Test, PT1

The whole purpose of me going to America was for me to achieve my CPL (Commercial pilot's licence) and the first test on the way to that is to basically take a mock CPL in the single engine DA40 (DA20 or C172 if you're in New Zealand). It's examined in very similar if not the same measurements, from your departure, your navigation skills, diversion, general handling, emergency procedures and then a couple of circuits back at Goodyear.

On the day of PT1, I woke up about 5am for an early brief. I was picking my route up from dispatch at 6am. My route was to fly from Liberty Bridge to Aztec, two very well known points if you're use to flying over southwest Arizona, mainly because theres not much else to see on the ground other than cacti, dried up river beds and tumble weeds. The scenario is that we're flying a commercial flight for a photographer to take some aerial photos of the surrounding area. 

Prior to getting to the aircraft, I had a thorough grilling about the route we had, which MSA we had, the mass and balance, the altitudes we'd be flying and why I'd selected that altitude as well as the weather. There are probably more bits, but I can't remember right now. 


So, that all going well, we moved to the aircraft, I performed my walk around, which included checking the fuel level, the engine intakes (mainly to ensure we had no extra 'passengers' in there), the tyres, the engine tach times and that the airframe is generally all in good condition. That all being good, me, my examiner and our CFI (his examiner) all climbed into the diamondstar and I began our flight. I started with a safety briefing to the passengers  and then continued with the checklists, starting the engine/ testing the brakes, getting the atis and progressing to the staging area where the engine run up test will be staged. 

Following the engine run up, I'd give a take off safety brief before progressing to the holding point and calling Goodyear ground for permission to taxi to the runway. 

Following the departure, we changed frequency to rainbow valley and once above Liberty Bridge I started the timer and changed the heading to start tracking towards Aztec. Prior to arriving at Aztac, and correctly identifying it, I was given a diversion to plan for, requiring a heading, track, altitude based on our magnetic direction and a time to fly there ±3 mins. 

Arriving to the diversion, a small dirt runway called Tonapah, we performed some air work (steep turns, climbs/ descents etc) and some emergency drills such as Practise Forced Landings and engine fires before flying back to goodyear for some circuit variants, flapless landings, glide approach and a standard landing with landing flap.

I then taxied the aircraft back to the stand, chained it up and headed on back inside for the debrief!

First Solo!!!

A very soggy me after the ritualistic,
post solo 'throwing in the pool'

The time has come to go solo. Exciting? Yeah.  Petrifying? Absolutely; considering this is suppose to be one of the most memorable days in your flying career. 

In all honesty, I loved every minute of it. After going out for a few circuits with my instructor first to prove I'm capable, I landed back at Goodyear, taxied back to the aircraft's stand, jettisoned my instructor and set off to the runway for my solo. 

Taking to the sky for the first time was really weird for two reasons 
1- having no instructor next to me 
2- I'm flying an aircraft unaided, in less time than it took me to drive a car by myself.

The DA40s and DA42s in a row in the morning 
before my pre solo check ride.

So now my instructor's gone, and it's just me and the DA40. After the 'Before Engine Start' and 'Engine Start Checks' were complete, I taxied to the staging area to call ground for permission to taxi to the active runway, usually runway 21and  then taxied to hold short. After finishing the 'Before Takeoff Checks', I called tower to let them know I was ready at runway 21 for right closed traffic, and once I had my takeoff clearance I powered up the engine, turned on the landing lights, turned on the fuel pump, manoeuvred onto the centreline and completed my first solo takeoff!!! 

I performed one right hand circuit around Goodyear airport and then made a full stop landing, I couldn't have asked for better conditions, the wind was very calm, and fortunately being early(ish) the sun wasn't as punishing as it can be at 2-3 in the afternoon.

While taxying back to the apron, I still couldn't really comprehend what I'd just done. I'd just flown an aircraft by myself, probably the most significant thing I have done in my life so far. 

As I parked the Diamond underneath the ramada, I was greeted by my housemates, who following tradition, carried me back to the pool to throw me in it. GREAT! The rules are, after your first solo flight, you're feet aren't allowed to touch the ground until you've been thrown into the swimming pool. Which as you can see from the first photo here, happened! 

I can, without ANY doubt, say that this was one of the most special days of my life, and I'll always remember my first solo!

Packing the Diamond after the solo flight

First solo, DONE! 

Logbook's Starting to Fill Up!

So Week 2 of flying has Come and gone. 11.5 hours of flying has been gained and I'm feeling more and more competent each time I take off.
Last week, I covered more of the basics, while trying to bring everything from the previous lessons together, to deliver a more improved flight each day. It may sound simple, and it is, however in the desert, you'll be no stranger to up and down draughts throwing you about the sky. To the extent of having a 5 degree nose-down attitude and still be climbing at several hundred feet per minute. It's all stuff to learn to fly with, after all, not everyday is going to be smooth and turbulence free. God knows last week wasn't!

This week, I've build upon my knowledge of climbing and descending and started stalling manoeuvres and Ground reference manoeuvres. Which was fun! Especially the stalling. I found it quite uncomfortable pulling the power to idle, and pulling back on the control stick until the symptoms of the incipient stall started to arise; light buffet due to the turbulent air from the wing hitting the Diamonds high T-tail, very sloppy control response and the stall warner screeching at me, like "seriously mate, what are you doing?" 

Me Taxying the DA40, taken by my course mate Greg.

Getting there! Filling out the Logbook
with my flight times from my kneeboard.

We'd recover from a few incipient stalls, and then push the Diamond a bit further towards a fully developed stall, by holding the control stick back even more so than the incipient stall. The fully developed stall is evident by the heavy buffet on the aircraft, the nose dropping and the aircraft sinking sometimes accompanied by a wing drop. We also practised the stall in other manoeuvres such as a turn, where if you've already been through ground school, you know that the stall speed (Vs) is higher, so we demonstrated this in a scenario. We found a road in Rainbow valley to emulate our runway, and I performed a standard circuit to line the aircraft up with the road (with safe altitudes of course, we were not at any point at landing altitudes) but instead or lining up correctly, we overshot the runway to simulate the following point. Overshooting the runway requires a correction, and by simply over banking the aircraft (to simulate recovering the runway centreline while at the lower speeds associated with landing) the aircraft showed signs of the incipient stall at a higher airspeed. These exercises are REALLY important to emphasise how vital a good cross check of your instruments are as well as maintaining a good visual cue of what the aircraft's attitude is. It shows just how easy it can be to stall when you're in one of the most critical parts of flight and CTC emphasises this importance from the start. 
       
Right Now, I'm sitting in my room, preparing to start my circuits lessons which start tomorrow which i can't wait to begin!
This is a particularly important week as it's really likely that we'll be going solo for our first time. So before that happens, I need to make sure that I'm going to be ready for whatever comes. I'm brushing up on my radio telephony and my procedures to make sure they go as smoothly as possible.

En-route to my flight, you can
see the apron in the background
with the White Tank Mountains.

Watching the sun set after a day of flying
has to be my new favourite thing.

The Logbooks filling up quite nicely now. As of tomorrow, I'll be on my tenth flight, Basic Circuits, which I'll be conducting around Goodyear. I won't go into the details of the exercises but there seems to be quite a bit to remember; all procedures I'm sure will become easier to remember once I'm in the air. 

My flight debriefs have been made a bit more challenging now, as every day I'm given a new emergency procedure to learn for the DA40. Last week we started with 'Fire on the Ground' and this week we'll move into other areas such as the aircraft's electrical and fuel systems.

Last week, we also had a 737 takeoff and return to Goodyear airport with suspected gear failure. The 737 could be seen flying in a pattern over the airport, while the controllers in the tower worked their magic and grounded all of the nearby training aircraft from CTC and Lufthansa. 

Once everyone was back on the ground, the 737 made a low pass at approximately 400 ft over the runway so the controllers in the tower could check that the gear was in fact down.
We ran out to the side of the runway once we had heard, where annoyingly we missed the landing, but could easily hear the reverse thrust of it's engines as we were heading to the airport's perimeter fence. 

Luckily thanks to the skill of the crew and the control tower, the landing was safe, successful and perfectly orchestrated. 

This is why we train so much, to be able to do things like this when we're called to do them. It's also a perfect reminder that although this is the safest form of transportation, it isn't without it's events, and our training is what prepares us for situations like these. 

Amazing DA40NG at the end of my lesson. I want one.

Yesterday me and the other guys from my course headed off to Flagstaff, which is about 120-ish miles from Goodyear, and about 7000ft higher, 2000ft higher than we fly in the Diamonds! The drive was great fun in the Cadillac, oh yeah, we've bought a Cadillac Deville with a pathetic 4.6lt V8. Laughable really....

What we didn't plan on, was stumbling onto the famous Route 66, which by chance runs straight through the middle of Flagstaff, which of course meant I had to have a photo with the sign! 

After stuffing myself with a nutella and cheesecake crepe (it was amazing) and watching the mile long military trains rush through the city, we headed to the Lowell Observatory which is in Flagstaff, and for any of you who aren't interested in astronomy, this is the place where Pluto was discovered back in 1930. It's a really amazing place, and surrounded in beautiful scenery too! I definitely recommend checking it out if you're ever in Arizona. 
Other that accidentally wondering onto the most famous road in the world, and going to see the site of one of the most important discoveries regarding our Solar neighbourhood, the other surprise for us it that a mere few hour away from our desert home, was this cool, lush green little town. I say cool, it must have been in the high 20s but compared to 40º+ that's cold.

GREEN! In the desert!

I'd definitely recommend visiting Flagstaff if you're ever in the area, or if you come to do your training in Goodyear from CTC.

However amazing Flagstaff is, nothing will compare to our journey home to Goodyear, through Sedona. Possibly, THE most beautiful and jaw-dropping place I've ever witnessed in my life. Our journey towards Sedona, took us down a ribbon of tarmac, which was laid on the side of a a pine tree covered mountain side, which brought us into a stunning canyon. The basin of this canyon, was coated in the smell of pine, covered with small creeks and streams, all being bathed in sun light through one of the canyon's many fissures. 

After approximately 40 minutes of driving, we cam across an even more spectacular sight, shown in the photos below. We were fortunate enough to see Cathedral rock, Bell Rock, Courthouse Butte and countless others!

massive red rocked mountains

Humphries Peak

Us at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, on Mars Hill. 

Driving through Sedona

A photo will NEVER do this place any justice. It's simply magnificent.

Our Cadi, 'Cruella'. And yes, there are 4 exhaust pipes, with
Bell Rock in the distance (5000ft high)

Another beautiful sunset in Arizona. They all are.

First Week of Flying

Goodyear is one of the best 'instagram
opportunity' areas that you'll ever visit.
Shown by my instagram account being flooded
with photos of Goodyear  

So now we've completed our first week of briefings (ground school #2) we've finally been let loose into Rainbow Valley in the DA40. 

Our first few flights have been really straight forward. Straight and level flight, effects of controls yada yada yada. Obviously you need the basics before you can move onto other more exotic lessons; a learn to walk before you can run kinda thing. 

Having said that, this was the perfect opportunity to take baby steps in a new aircraft type, and not to sell the DA40 too hard, but it's absolutely, unequivocally, thoroughly fantastic. State of the art G1000 glass cockpit, soft and comfortable leather seats and an unhindered panoramic view from your seat make this aircraft a dream to fly, despite the best efforts of Rainbow Valley and its constant thermals and up draughts. And lets take a moment to thanks the human who put the air con in these aircraft. You are a true hero. 

The DA40NG ready for departure.

Now, on to the lessons...

My first lesson involved recognising the 'datum attitude' and correcting it when the aircraft deviates from it and then stabilising the aircraft using the trim, all the while keeping a thorough lookout. 

Over the next two lessons, we slowly started to commit our pre-flight checks to memory. This entails a thorough examination of the airframe to check for damage, especially to the leading edges of the wing, vertical stabiliser and the prop, a testing of the aircraft electrics and the control surfaces. Oh and a handy tip, when you're testing the lights, don't stare too closely at the Strobes, because it will immediately incinerate your retinas.

So lesson number 2. It was basically an extension from lesson one, and this time we developed upon our understanding of the controls. This was achieved by adding in the uses of secondary flight controls such as the flaps as well as the effect of different power settings on the aircraft's attitude.

It started as the last one did, with a standard departure towards Rainbow Valley. 
We practiced engine note recognition, where you try to get used to the particular engine note purely from the noise the engine is making. 

The DA40 interior, with the Garmin G1000

Our remaining 2 flights had the objectives on maintaining straight and level flight, in different scenarios, such as if the aircraft has deviated from the datum attitude, if the power has been changed from the original
setting or the configuration of the aircraft has changed, so if we have take off or landing flaps selected. However, you need to maintain a good lookout, the Rainbow Valley area is quite busy with other aircraft and  it also has an abundance of birds. So to make sure you don't smash a Turkey Vulture to pieces or heaven forbid the other way around, you need to make sure you keep a really good lookout. A process that CTC teaches you from day 1.

So after just a week of flying, we've managed to cover the bare basics of flying, as well as nailing down the preflight checks and passenger safety briefs. We've been briefed for our next series of flights, climbing, descending and turning.

My first DA40

CTC's Diamond DA42s

Lufthansa Bonanza to the left and CTC Aviation's Diamond DA42s to the right under the ramadas at Goodyear. 

Welcome to Goodyear, Arizona

Compliments of the cafeteria, fresh Cinnamon
buns for the newbies.
Yes, they were amazing, and yes, they were absolutely massive.

We've been here at CTC's Goodyear base for a few days now, so just before our lessons begin, I thought I'd let you know a bit more about the airport and what it's like here. 

Long story short, its hot. Really hot. 

The first day we were here, we had a bit of an introduction. We were told about the local area's dangers i.e. rattlesnakes, scorpions and other miscellaneous horrible critters, how to take care of ourselves in the Phoenix climate as well as what we had in store for the next week. We also had our fingerprints taken by some really nice volunteer policemen for the final stage of our TSA application, and we were given all of our necessary equipment to fly, including local area charts, plates for Goodyear, our David Clarke headset, single engine and VFR navigation training manuals, our checklist for the Diamond DA40NG as well as the SD card for the Diamond's Garmin G1000 to save our flight data. 

Fortunately for us, we have Friday off as it's the July 4th holiday weekend, so poor old me has to sit by the pool in the sun for the next three days.... How am I going to cope? What pool do I choose? 

How will we survive with two pools? 

Last night, something happened that I wasn't even sure was possible. Well, not outside of America at least. 

We found a pizza place that supplied us with a 32" pizza. I'll just let that sink in. 32 inch. Pizza. Of course we couldn't eat the whole thing, two slices nearly killed me. 

Adding to that, it could have killed several others. With all the food on offer in the states, they're lucky my short's button didn't fly off like a riffle bullet taking out anyone in its path.



So this weekend, while we still don't have any transportation we're planning to go to Goodyear Baseball park where there are going to be 4th July fireworks, hotdogs and a few (many) beers. Pretty decent. As a brit, we are getting a bit of stick for the 4th of July, but it's all in good fun, and luckily we live along side a load of German Lufthansa students, so we tend to deflect any 'war' talk off at them and they forget about us.

However, most of the other guys living here at Goodyear have gone a bit further afield, some have taken a road trip to LA whereas some have gone to San Diego and naturally, you have to go in a Mustang; well you'd look silly otherwise.


As I've mentioned before, we've not yet sorted out our transportation, so today's been another pool day. I know, damn! 

To be a bit more productive then we had been on friday, Greg (course mate) and I decided to familiarise ourselves with the DA40's checklist; in between sunbathing, finishing off the 32"pizza, having a BBQ and jumping in the pool. Whoop!  

On Sunday, we hired a car from enterprise (who have a discounted deal with CTC) so that we could drive around and see the local sights of Phoenix. I definitely wasn't expecting it to be so picturesque. It's strangely stunning, in a sandy/ desert kinda way. 

I've posted only a few photos from our day out, I've been absolutely ramming Instagram with more of them, so check out my instagram link to see anymore.

White Tank Mountains

U.S.A here we come

We've waited for what seemed like an eternity but the day is finally here; the day I fly to Phoenix. I can't really comprehend that this phase of my training has finally arrived. It seemed like only a few weeks ago I was standing in the events hall of CTC southampton meeting everyone for the first time.

So only 3 weeks after finishing ground school in Southampton, I arrived at London Heathrow. As my parents were away in Sardinia due to a date conflict ( as CTC changed our flight dates) I was there bit earlier than the other guys as it was the only lift I could get, so naturally after check-in, I went to the airport lounge, grabbed a beer( or 7) and had a massive nerd-fest watching the aircraft on the apron. Bliss.

I'm not going to lie.... it was pretty awesome, as you can see by a few of my photos below.

After a few hours of plane spotting from Heathrow's 'No. 1 lounge' I went to meet my other course mates Henry and Greg at the bar, where we spent our time waiting for our gate to be announced.

Our flight was slightly different than most others who had flown to Phoenix in the past. Instead of the direct flight offered by British Airways, we flew with American Airlines to Charlotte, NC and then caught our connecting flight with US Airways from Charlotte to Phoenix.

<--- Our ride to North Carolina, beaut A330

So after a good long flight, followed by a shorter, yet delayed flight, we had arrived at Phoenix Sky Harbour airport. I'm not sure whether it was the look on our faces, or the muttering of "ohh .... god!" that gave it away, but I don't think any of us were quite ready for just how hot Phoenix is. There's no other way of putting it, other than to say we were hit, no, smacked in the face by a wall of 40ºC heat. 

We were met at the airport by Sherry, one of CTC's Employees, who was going to bring us to our new home for the coming 6 months. Amazingly, she drove us to a Wendy's on the way to Goodyear for something to eat; suffice to say,  it was amazing.

So now I'm sitting on my comfy new bed in my room at Goodyear and that's my story as to how I got here. I can't wait for the sun to come up so I can check out the rest of the area and explore Arizona!

Ground school .... ✔

So, ground school has come and gone. 6 months, 14 exams and quite a few grey hairs later, I can finally breathe a sign of relief.

CTC Aviation’s ground school phase consists of the 14 CAA examinations; General Navigation, Principles of Flight, Human Performance, Mass and Balance, Radio Navigation, Instruments, Flight Planning, Performance, Air Law, Aircraft General Knowledge, Operational Procedures, Meteorology, VFR Comms and IFR Comms (and breathe….). The pass mark is 75%, so you may think, ok, so I just need that- No no no no no no, if you’re a white tail cadet like me (not attached to an airline) you’ll be aiming to average 85%, I was very fortunate that my hard work achieved a 93% average.

Each Module brought with it a new wave of experiences and a fresh batch of knowledge. You really should stay on top of your studies. There’s nothing worse than delaying revision until the week before your mock exams; which by the way are usually only a few days after finishing the last subject in a module. INTENSE! For me, I found module 3 the most difficult. It may be due to having six subjects crammed into the same time  where I'd normally have 4, it may have been down to there not being much time to redo any exams should I fail, as my training dates in Phoenix had already been published, or it might have been that I found the content of the subjects ranged from the very time consuming to rage inducing - and definitely NOT because of my new found love of frisbee. 

Still, you must remember that not everybody will find each and every one of the 14 subjects absolutely fascinating, and if you do enjoy studying Air Law, I recommend you be sectioned, as you're clearly insane and in need of psychoanalysis.  Having said all of module 3, the course/module structure has all changed for new CTC cadets, so what I've basically done here is waste about two and a half minutes of your life. Soz. 

Now on to the worst bit….. the exams (shudder). 

I remember our module one exams, we were like rabbits in headlights; petrified, vulnerable and perhaps a few of us had soiled ourselves from fear. Having said that, none of us knew what to expect at all, and as the exam countdown timer struck 00:00, we could all breathe a sigh of relief, because all of the knowledge we'd gained in the two months before had all come together quite nicely. It would seem that we were the rabbits who dodged the car.
By the time that the first exams were done, they're nowhere near as daunting. I remember talking to my classmates about how ‘at ease’ we all felt sitting in the exam room and how uncomfortably calm we were. I mean, we weren't sweating, shaking or hyperventilating; instead we were talking, laughing and waiting for the invigilators to tell us to shut up and start.
Like all exams, the worst bits are the few days before, and the evenings after. We all know waiting is THE worst bit. Our CAA exams are all electronically marked and we receive our exam results the morning after the sitting. It's a horrible mix of fear and adrenaline waiting for those CAA 'helpdesk' emails in the mornings after.

Naturally, the best bits of being at ground school are the simulators, of which CTC (in southampton) has 6 (4 full motion simulators and a few fixed based 737s with a few VFDs (visual flight displays)). For any budding airline pilot, they're the closest thing we're going to find to the real thing. We've been able to get into the simulator to have a look at the instruments at work while studying Radio Navigation. We were able to select nav aids, identify them via their morse code idents and fly to them using the ADF and VOR instruments in the cockpit and watch how our distance from them affected the instruments.

The Picture here isn't what we used, we were in the 737NG fixed based simulator (shown on an earlier post), where as this one is the 737 classic. This photo was taken from the open day I helped out at in February this year. My favourite though will always be the Airbus (because Airbus is better) but that's just me and in avgeek circles that's a good way to start a VERY heated debate; it's kind of like asking what's better, Corrie or Eastenders, despite both being absolutely terrible. 

Outside of ground school, you should make sure you have something to relax with. In my house, there were quite a few active people (except for me) who went cycling, running, football-ing (is that a word?) and to the gym too. I didn't think I could afford the time off to go and do stuff like that, so I had an occasional half-hour on the Xbox, so at least my thumbs got a thorough work out. Oh and frisbee, central Southampton has a few great frisbee spots, but I recommend that if you do want to play frisbee, and of course you will, don't buy one like ours which felt like the top of it was made of sandpaper - goodbye sensation in my fingertips.

Towards the end of your time in ground school, you’ll have a meeting regarding your visa for your second stage of training in either New Zealand or Phoenix, AZ. If you’re going to New Zealand, you’ll have to spend half an hour having a chat and filling in a form or two. If you decide to go to Phoenix, like me, you’ll spend approximately 1,000,000 years filling in various forms for your visa, your visa appointment, the TSA and your FAA class 3 medical. Having said that, I think the paperwork is well worth the effort considering the rewards of bright and shiny new Diamond DA-40s. I’ll write a brief bit about my visa experience on a separate page (found to the right of the site)

If there’s anything else re ground school at CTC that hasn’t been mentioned, or that you cannot find anywhere else, feel free to drop me a message in the comments, or send me a tweet / message on instagram. Links are to the right.

All in all, I LOVED my time in Southampton. I met so many great people and I learnt so much more than I thought that I ever could. The facilities are fantastic, the instructors were impeccable and the training was totally tremendous. So, before I thrown anymore alliteration at you, I'll stop and just say, Yep, it was pretty darn good :)

Well done CP127!

Bye Bye, mod 3

Module three is finally over! Which mean that we have no more ground school at Southampton! Now, it's just prep for our 6 exams in 2 weeks time.

In Module three, we've studied Air Law, Aircraft General Knowledge, Operational Procedures, Meteorology, VFR and IFR Comms. 

I can't lie, I struggled with Air Law. I think if you enjoyed it, you're weird. I found it to be such a dry subject, it wasn't something I could really enjoy or engage with. It was just one of those subjects that I had to force myself to learn. On the other hand, AGK and Met were probably the MOST interesting subject from the whole course. 


I found mod 3 quite intense, having 6 subjects to master in the same time frame as I had before for 4 subjects. 
However, studying can't always be done hour after hour, day after day, we all know it get's a bit tedious, so on May 4th, I planned half-hour breaks every now and then to celebrate Star Wars day the way every nerd intended it to be celebrated :)

Met was my favourite subject overall. As far as the ATPL syllabus goes, I think it's the largest and it is definitely one of the most important as we'll be using it day after day for the rest of our careers. 

I also really enjoyed AGK, which is split into 3 parts; Systems, Electrics and Engines (which is itself split into propeller and turbine sections).

We also had quite a few disruptions in mod three as we were all trying to sort out our visas for our flight training stage. Us guys going to the USA had so much to do, form the monstrous visa form (DS-160) to the TSA admin and the class 3 medical. But you can read more about that in the U.S. VISA page. 

I think the trick to module three is to keep up to date with all of your work, at times it's quite taxing, especially when you're stuck studying and the weather's absolutely amazing and the frisbee is calling!

Regardless of the weather and any other external influences, revision was done and as were the last 6 exams of groundschool. Like module 2, I was in bed when I received the emails and again I opened them while hiding under my blanket. I was very grateful to find I'd averaged 93% which gave me an overall average of 93% too. 

Module 2 is over!!!

For the last two months, me and me classmates have been studying hard to complete our 2nd module. For us, this included Radio Navigation, Instruments, Performance and Flight planning. 

I've discussed Radio Nav in my previous post, so I won't go on about it (although it's my favourite subject). 

Instruments. Where do I begin. To start with, I found that I really struggled with it. I couldn't get my head around a lot of the topics and initially, I was quite worried. Luckily, after a lot of hard work, it seemed to click and I actually really enjoyed it! 
Instruments, as the name may have suggested, teaches us how aircraft instruments function as well as what consequences may occur under different external influences i.e. icing. We studied the ASI (Airspeed Indicator), VSI (Vertical Speed Indicator), the autopilot/ autoland system, TCAS (Traffic Collision Avoidance System), GPWS (Ground Proximity Warning System) and approximately a thousand other acronyms. 

The third subject in module 2, was Performance. We used graphs and charts in CAP 698 (don't worry you'll get used to the various different CAPS in Mass and Balance, Performance and Flight Planning) to calculate the Take-off / landing distances for Single-engine pistons, Multi-engine pistons and Medium Range Jets as these figures can change with varying factors such as head/tailwinds, runway contamination and temperatures. You'll also have to remember many many different V-speeds, such as the well know V₁ and V₂ as well as V_mbe, V_s0, V_s1, V_at, V_ref, etc etc. 

Flight Planning was really fun to study. It mainly focused on using Airport charts and Navigation Charts from the Jeppesen Airway Manual, along side fuel calculations, such as calculating alternate fuel, final reserve fuel, contingency fuel, Point of Equal time and Point of Safe return.

After studying for Module 1, I found that I really developed my revision/study technique. To be honest, it helped that it was a more interesting module. After a few weeks of hard study after the end of our last lesson, we had our CAA exams. With the CAA, we receive our exams results via email, the day after our last exams. The morning after, I was woken up by the sound of my housemate celebrating his results. My heart sank as I knew the results were in. Gingerly, I opened my emails up on my phone to see all 4 exam result emails were sitting in my inbox. All my hard work, hard been rewarded, I had achieved 97% in Radio Navigation, 94% in Instruments, 93% in Performance and 96% in Flight Planning, averaging 95% for module 2.