Mike's Flying

<!–[endif]–>Well, as we draw to the close of week 3, it’s time to hear from me again.

This week’s main culprits have been the joys of adiabatic lapse rates, and the resulting terminology which is rife with TLA’s and FLLA’s (Three-Letter and Four-Letter-Long acronyms respectively). Also in the mix is a trip to Gibraltar and musical delight.

Well, as ever, I’ll start with the work.

All subjects are progressing at quite a pace, with the Chapters flying (no pun intended) by in Principals of Flight, Engines, Radio Nav, General Nav and Instruments. It’s been a week of Altimetry and compression ratios, of Mach-numbers and Great Circles. Notice that I’ve tactically not mentioned either Systems or Met in the list of ‘fast running’ subjects.

Meteorology (or ‘weather’ for the plebeians is a wondrously weighty subject.

We’ve spent the last few classroom hours looking at a phenomenon called Adiabatic Lapse . Adiabatic Lapse from a Met perspective can essentially be said the tendency of a parcel of air to cool as it rises (air can be modelled as discrete parcels thanks to its poor heat conductivity). The rising is caused by some kind of trigger action (Turbulence, Convection, Terrain, or movements of larger air-masses). The air rises, and due to the drop in pressure with height it expands, decreases in density and cools ().

The rate at which this parcel of air cools with height is known as the Dry Adiabatic Lapse Rate (DALR) and weighs in at approximately 3°C per 1000ft.  Why ‘Dry’? Well, this lapse rate holds true provided the parcel of air isn’t saturated with water vapour. Air with less than 100% Relative Humidity (even air at 99.999999% Relative Humidity) is deemed ‘dry’. The reason for this is simply that air at 100% RH is holding the maximum water vapour it can for its temperature – in order to cool some of that water vapour must condense out as droplets.

Now, to turn water into water vapour requires energy. We say this energy is stored in the water vapour as ‘Latent Heat‘. It follows that when that water condenses it must relinquish some of its latent heat. So as a parcel of saturated air cools, it is in turn heated by the release of latent heat. The release of latent heat is about 0.4°C for every 1°C the air would cool were it dry.  Hence the Adiabatic lapse rate for saturated air (the Saturated Adiabatic Lapse rate or SALR no less) is:

3°C-(3×0.4°C) = 3°C-1.2°C = 1.8°C per 1000ft

But what does all this mean?

These lapse rates compare nicely against something called the Environmental Lapse Rate.

If we imagine a parcel of air at ground level at 60% Relative Humidity and +15°C.  Lets also imagine that there is water vapour contained within this parcel and that it will reach 100% Humidity at 0°C (Cooler air = less capacity to carry water vapour).

Our little parcel of air hits the side of a mountain and gets pushed up (that our Trigger action). As it rises it cools at 3°C/1000ft (DALR, because it’s not saturated). This will happily continue until our little parcel gets to 5000ft. At 5000ft the air will be at 15°C – (5x3°C) = 0°C. This is the ‘Dew Point‘ at which the parcel of air becomes saturated, and conveniently for this little example it’s also the point at which the mountain stops.  But before we consider what this means, we must figure what the parcel of air will do next.

For this we compare the temperature of the air in our parcel with the temperature of the air in the surrounding atmosphere. The surrounding atmosphere follows the Environmental lapse rate, and this is the -actual- real-time temperature lapse rate in the atmosphere (and the temperature can increase with height as well as fall, because the world is complicated and hates Met students).

If the air is hotter than the surrounding atmosphere at the end of the trigger action (i.e. – we’ve reached the top of the mountain) then the air will continue to rise because hotter air is less dense. If it is cooler than the surrounding air it will Fall. Surprisingly if the parcel of air is the same temperature as the surrounding atmosphere it will remain at that height.  It just so happens that the atmosphere at the top of this mountain is at -5°C, so our parcel of air at 0°C will continue to rise.

Its temperature will decrease again, but this time because it’s reached 100% Relative Humidity it will cool at the SALR (1.8°C/1000ft). Loosing water vapour to condensation all the time.

Lots and lots of small droplets of liquid water condensing out of the air.

High up in the sky.

Them’s Clouds.

It follows that if you know the changes in temperature throughout the atmosphere as you climb and you know the temperature and humidity of the air at groud level, you can make a fairly well educated guess at the height of the cloud base.

Well, this lesson is over.

I’ll let you all know about the joys of Gibraltar and the arrival of a very special package in subsiquent posts throughout the week.

Here’s to week 4!

Study for the JAR ATPL belongs in the ‘memorise lots of useful facts and figures’ school of education, with the International Standard Atmosphere (ISA) rearing its ugly head in most of the subjects we’re looking at.

Currently, we’re getting instruction in 8 areas:

• Principals of Flight
• Meteorology
• General Navigation
• Radio Navigation
• Flight Instruments
• Electrics
• Engines
• Systems
  

I could now spend considerable time to go through all 8, giving a summary of the important themes and ideas we’ve covered to date. It would take me all of 10 minutes, and by thus cheating you all out of a meaningful post I could gain precocious minutes in that temple of procrastination – the bar.

(Un)luckily for you, I’ll not sink thus far in my first two weeks of the blog. You’re stuck with my ramblings until I remember that I’ve got a General Nav test tomorrow and actually get stuck into revising the last chapter.

So, what’s life like at FTE? After the veil falls away, how does one function? Is the work overwhelming? What does one do for fun? Will I ever learn Spanish?

A standard day at FTE will see you in 4 main locations (in order of worthyness):

The Classroom

The Crew-room

The Canteen

The Bar

The typical day:

The first lesson or ‘period’ – I may use these terms interchangeably, and I ask you to indulge my inconsistency – starts at 0900 sharp. Breakfast opens at 0730 so there’s no reason to be (too) late.

Classrooms seat about 15, and contain the standard of most modern classrooms – Board, Over-head Projector, Computer with a projector and an Instructor of some description. Lessons are an hour in length and the pace of the teaching is quite challenging, though the atmosphere is much more relaxed when compared with the classic school classroom.

At the end of a class, one joins the mass exodus to the crew-room, where one may partake of light refreshment (tea/coffee/toast/soft drinks). Though it may outwardly appear a fairly civil affair, the 15 minute breaks descent into a surge of semi-comatose students attempting to withdraw their caffeine funds from the northern-rock of coffee machines before their last deposits of consciousness are doomed to the recession of the next period. Then, before we’ve even had time to fully revel in that last metaphor it’s time to traipse back up to the classroom and submit to another hour of instruction.

Lunch falls somewhere nicely after lesson 3 and before lesson 4, and despite the fare on offer is usually greeted with enthusiasm. In all fairness, the food isn’t bad, and there’s a real variety on offer so little complaint comes from my quarter on that subject.

Lunch lasts until 1:30, and usually grants one time to check e-mails and jump onto the FTE network to check the afternoon’s classes (it’s useful to do this, as the schedule can change without warning and does so at least once a week).

The afternoon continues much as the morning had, with only a slight increase in the urge students seek caffeine in each break to distinguish.

After the 6^th period, we have about an hour to kill before dinner, so usually this is taken up by a game or three of Tennis to wind down and release some of the tensions of the day. A quick shower and then it’s off to the canteen for a nourishing and tasty meal.

The next major period, I like to call the ‘I’ll get down to work soon’ period, and it usually lasts until either the ‘holy crap, we’re getting tested on this tomorrow’ deadline, or the much more preferred ‘sod it, I’m going for a pint’ limit.

Then one grabs the wallet and wanders down to the social club to catch up on the recent gossip and comment and generally be social. Bed usually occurs at or before some obscure o’clock in the morning.

Then, in the words of one fabled Instructor: You put in another coin and start the game again.

Well, arriving at Jerez was quite simple. We landed and after collecting my bag and flashing my passport at the immigration officers I wondered through the screens and {insert cliché ‘into the unknown’ sentiment here}.

I was met at the airport by the two course mentors and was very promptly informed that I was a member of course 81, and I would be living in room 28124 for the next 14 months. We wasted no time in dumping my bags and then doing the only thing a sensible new-arrival would do when he arrives a full 24 hours ahead of the rest of his course.

The bar was packed, but I bought myself a pint of the local staple (at 60c a pint, might I add) and sat down with James and Alexis (our two course mentors) and everyone else in the lovely warmth of the Spanish evening. I might add that though it was 22 degrees outside at 9pm people were in coats and shivering. Summer will be great J

The next day was spent at ease; I walked round the airport perimeter for want of something to do and stopped at the threshold to get a couple of snaps of the aircraft that were flying about.

The fun didn’t really start until that evening, with the arrival of the rest of course 81, my peers for the duration of my stay at FTE. To the bar we went (this is a recurring theme, rest assured) and settled down for a few drinks and a general chat. This brings us nicely onto Friday, and the induction.

Everything provided for Phase 1

Though the term ‘induction’ has daunting overtones, though in truth it’s merely the completion of all the dull admin involved in our arrival. We were fitted with uniforms (I’ll have photos when the rest of mine actually arrives, honest!), and given our course materials for Phase 1 of our ground school training. We were talked through the various rules and systems to be observed whilst we were here, and we were officially welcomed by the heads of training. All very nice and ordered. Then, at 5pm we were promptly handed over to our course mentors who had planned a ‘night out’.

Now, let’s examine the term ‘night out’. Firstly, in Spain it’s definitely ‘out’. The bars and clubs are all semi-covered courtyards interspersed with small rooms and with bars dotted all about the place. And what courtyards, stone arches literally hundreds of years old, fountains are scattered almost absently about on the tiled or mosaic floors and palm trees grow from odd places in the courtyards.

However, amid all this style and class we must examine the first part of the term ‘night out’. The Spanish night in this context starts anywhere between midnight and 2am. Somewhere in this bracket, the clubs will open. Yes, Open. The clubs remain open until well into the morning. It is not unusual, I’m told, to be out on the town and get back to FTE for 8 or even 9am. Needless to say, on our little excursion into Jerez we returned at a respectable, but not completely obscene 6.

Saturday was recovery day. Though a few of us did get into town to pick up some essentials (washing powder, a kettle and mug for my room, a bedside lamp and some tennis kit to make full use of the courts here).

Here ends the noteworthy part of the weekend.

Well, here we have it.

This is my blog.

Over the coming months I’ll endeavour to keep you all updated with my comings and goings and my time at Flight Training Europe. There’ll be pictures, there’ll be long ponderous out-pouring with zero semantic content, and there’ll even be news on occasion. But before I get into all the wonders of heading off to Spain, I feel I should cover some of the background, and the story leading us up to this day of (mostly) celebration.

It all started back in June. I’d just received a package containing letters, and for the sake of recursion, some of the letters were just envelopes containing more letters, but this is beside the point. Our focus at this moment isn’t on the letters, or even the package, out focus rests on a small sheet of paper clearly cut from a magazine. One of many I used to get, and many thanks to Bob for spotting them and passing them on. This particular cutting spoke of wondrous opportunities as an Airline Pilot, and it gave two names: BA CityFlyer and Flight Training Europe. The advert was for one of precious few ‘mentored’ training schemes that serve as the only likely way someone like yours truly makes it to being a pilot. The initial sign-up for the scheme was done online, and so I lost no time in putting my name and details down. They called that bit ‘Phase 1′.

Phase 2 was a little more challenging. They sent a series of HR questions (‘name a time when you were in a team, but not the leader. How did you cope, what difficulties did you have to overcome?’), 7 HR questions clearly designed to separate the bulk of the chaff from the wheat. I’ll post my answers if I find them, in the mean-time you’ll just have to live with the following statement: I passed Phase 2.

Phase 3, at this point we’re informed that there are only 4 phases. With nerves racking I had to attend BA CityFlyer’s offices in Manchester for aptitude testing and an interview with the training provider. Aptitude testing comes as 3 parts. Written tests, including maths and physics as well was verbal reasoning and logic tests make up the first. Hand-eye coordination, response-times and awareness of orientation tests are carried out on a laptop with a special keyboard and joystick (much like the RAF pilapt tests). Finally, and Interview with one of the management from Flight Training Europe to ensure that you’re everything you say you are, and to ask more of those infernal HR-esque questions.

After a wait of almost 2 weeks, they inform the lucky ones, myself included, that we’re through to Phase 4, the final Phase.

So, with nerves officially on strike I make the trek back to Manchester (with a thank you to my brother for playing driver). Phase 4 involves interviews with the airline itself, as well as a group test to see how the candidates perform in team situations. The interview remains one of the most frightening moments of my life. Sat in a small room with BA City Flyer’s head of operations and a serving Pilot for the airline, they spend best part of an hour trying to drill out any possible inconsistencies in my responses to the previous phases and to get a real feel for my personality. Exhausting. The group exercise was significantly more fun, though this still falls <em>way </em>short of ‘recreational’. The 8 of us (yes, there were only 8 called through to Phase 4) were given a classic ‘stranded in a strange land’ situation, armed with twiglets, one half-eaten cracker and a dead bee, we had to somehow form a plan for a 3-day hike from the site of our disaster (a rafting incident, no less) to the nearest airport. Debate, decision and desperation ruled the table for 30 minutes and frankly, if we made it out of that place alive I’ll eat the dead bee.

Luckily, they weren’t marking us on plausibility.

To give some Idea of scale, the numbers for each phase break down thus:

P1: 3-400 candidates.

P2: 50-100 candidates.

P3: ~30 candidates.

P4: 8 candidates.

Successful: 5 candidates.

Now, the wait between P4 and that glorious moment when the phone rang and they said I was through was long, it felt like years, but in truth it was about 5 days. A nice voice from Spain comes on the line and informs me that I need to start speaking to a bank about finance, because I’ve been accepted on the BA CityFlyer Scheme and I start training on the 13th of October.

I’m going to skip all the faffing over arrangements and the fiasco hence referred to as ‘packing’ and jump to the part where I start writing a blog to keep everyone informed.

..I’ve finished that bit too now.

Happy reading all!