The Life of a CTC Wings Cadet Pilot: 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!