Where have all the blogs gone?

It's been 2 weeks since my last blog. I can't believe just how slack I've been about updating my blog since I got back from the states. I know I've had to spend more time at the airport - even though I've done about 10% of the flying I would have done at Goodyear - but have I really not got enough free time any more?
Anyway, here's a quick update. This week saw Toddy and myself start with a new Instructor, Brian Rogers. So far I'm quite impressed - he definitely knows his stuff alright, and his bedside manner is a little bit easier than our previous instructor. Although, to be fair to our previous guy, if it wasn't for him we wouldn't have done our RT test. He was really pushing Toddy and myself to get it done ASAP, and he eventually went ahead and booked it for us last Friday. So with 30 minutes warning I was sat taking the Radio Telephony Operator License test with a CAA dude. Fortunately I passed, as did Toddy when he sat the test after me. So far nobody else on our course has sat the test, and I don't think anyone on the previous course to us have either. Feels nice to get it out of the way, even though at the time I could have put our instructor through a blender.

So this week I managed to get in a sim session and a beautiful early morning flight. I've uploaded an album to my website - showing a few piccies of me starting up, taking off from Oxford, and flying past Blenheim Palace. It was a great day, and I really finally felt back in the swing of things. I just hope I can keep that positive mood going.

Hopefully now I'll have something decent to report on the blog, and once we start flying airways over to Bristol, Bournemouth, Cambridge etc, I'll have some more nice pictures.
My good buddy Jeroen starts back at Oxford on his First Officer course on Monday - hopefully I'll get chance to buy him a coffee in Starbucks - it'll be the first time I've seen him since he dropped me off at Phoenix Airport in November.

One last thing - I have no idea these days who (if anyone) is actually reading this waffle, so I'd really appreciate it if you could leave a comment for me - just so I know whether it's even worth keeping this going or not.

Thanks

Simon

Some flying done...

... But mostly sitting around waiting for some good weather. 2006 is gone, and we're now 2 weeks into 2007. I've now flown the aircraft twice, and been in the sim twice. Back at Goodyear I was flying at least once a day, so this is a bit of a shock - and very disappointing.
Some of the other guys have been getting a lot of sim time in, but our instructor seems keen to do things by the book - which means being scheduled for a flight, but then having to cancel because of bad weather. Aside from the course taking longer than planned, and therefore costing more money, it means I am getting a little bit ground happy. I feel my flying skills had rusted over somewhat in the 3 weeks or so between leaving Goodyear and starting flying at Oxford, but now that it's been 2 months since leaving Goodyear, and I've flown twice...... and that's not taking into account that what I was taught in Goodyear seems to be different to what is expected here. *shrug*
I can't complain too much - the view out of my 'office' window is still much better now than it ever has been.
Anyway, here are a few piccies taken out of the back of the aircraft the other day. I didn't have my camera with me, just my mobile - but the piccies aren't that bad. Hopefully soon I'll get some decent piccies and videos.

Just popped through a gap in the clouds

A lot of rain had fallen the night before (pic taken 10th January)

Right base entry to runway 01

First mission in UK done

After a week and a half of waiting, I've finally had my first mission in the UK - hooray!
I've been scheduled for flights, but the weather has been pretty miserable, with either low cloud, high winds, or freezing fog - meaning flights for myself and Toddy have been binned. One of the sim missions was also cancelled due to a blown projector bulb, but today everything fell into place, and we both had an hour and a half in the sim.
Needless to say, after having not flown for 6 weeks, and not done much in the way of advanced instrument work for 8 weeks, we were both a little rusty, but we muddled through ok.
Tomorrow we are scheduled for another mission in the sim, and that should be it for 2006. Hopefully in 2007 we'll get stuck into it, and get some proper flying done.
For now, here's a nice sketch that takes me back to my CPL skills test...

First Officer Fundamentals

Sorry it's been a while since an update, but the last two weeks have been incredibly busy. I did eventually get sorted with a new car too, which has made things a lot more pleasant for all of us.
I've now finished two weeks of First Officer Fundamentals, and I'm happy to say it exceeded my expectations by a huge amount. We spent the first week (which should have been the second week) going through presentation techniques, how to prepare an analysis of a company, how to put together our CV's, and also had a few people from airlines come in to talk to us. One of them was John Monks, and the others were ex-OAT guys who were now working for airlines. It was a very useful few days indeed.
This last week we were in the hands of two guys who had been brought in to tell us all about Crew Resource Management. One of them was an ex-BA Training Captain, and the other was a current BA Captain (he had just flown in from Singapore on the first day, so was suitably knackered!)
We all had a great time, both the guys (I should probably say 'gentlemen', but they would probably take offence at that) were very friendly, funny and approachable. After being told the previous week that all Captains were 'crusty old farts' this came as a bit of a shock. They even took us all out for a beer on one of the nights.
On Thursday we had to give a presentation on an airline disaster. Ours was Air Florida flight Palm 90, the 737-222 that crashed into the 14th Street Bridge on the Potomac river in Washington in 1982. I spent a lot of time trying to recreate it in flight sim, and with help from Steve and Lee we put together something pretty nice. I'll put it on my website here when I get chance.
We had to give our presentation to one of the APP courses doing ground school - I remember us lot sitting through one 12 months ago... where has the time gone...
After the presentation we took a short break before being given our wings. We all feel pretty good now we have the extra gold bars on our shoulders and gold wings on our chest. First day back in uniform tomorrow so we can all strut around for the next few days feeling pretty special :-)
Now it's time to get serious and start flying again - working towards our Instrument Rating. I'm paired up with Toddy again, so we should have a bit of fun along the way. It's also time to get my CV in order, and start researching some airlines, brushing up my interview technique, and generally getting mentally prepared for what may happen over the next few months. It's going to be very hard work, but if I get the help and support from my family that I've had this last 12 months, I'm sure everything will go ok.
Oh, and congrats to my good buddy Jeroen, who did his Nav Test in Phoenix yesterday, and should be doing his CPL cross country today. Congrats and Good Luck mate!

Car hunting

I've just spent the last three days running all over the country looking to buy a car. We sold ours before going to the USA, and upon return to the UK we had planned to borrow my dads spare car. Unfortunately, it had a problem with the alarm system, and had to go into the main dealer for repair - leaving us no way of getting around. The hunt for a car started, and after much internetting, and much zooming around in the Porsche, I finally found something today and drove away 30 minutes later. With one day left of my break before starting back at OAT, we're going to try to make the most of it and get out and about lots tomorrow. Guarantee it'll be awful weather (again).
Not to worry, hopefully now things are on the up. I'm looking forward to getting back to the airport again, and meeting up with some of the guys. Surprisingly enough OAT have failed miserably to keep me notified as to what the plan of action is - but fortunately Wing Commander Todd had the necessary details and was able to forward them on to me.

Now it's time to go chill out with a couple of drinks and a movie, as it's gonna be back to hard work again as of Tuesday...

Home!

We made it home! Yippee!!!

It was touch and go for a while though - my friend Jeroen was picking us up from our apartment and taking us to Sky Harbor, but he was delayed coming to get us. I couldn't get hold of him either as he was flying, and when he was 30 minutes late with no contact, I was starting to worry. He eventually called to say he was ok, back on the ground, and on his way. Phew!
We made it to the airport with about 2 hours to go until the flight, so we were fine. We made our way over to the BA desk and found nobody else there. We just wandered straight up and checked in... something I've never experience before - and in total contrast to the monumental wait we had when checking in at Heathrow.
It turned out that the flight was half empty, so we were able to get three seats together no problem. We finished checking in our luggage (six big cases, a rucksack, a holdall, a laptop bag, a small case for Georgia, a pram and a car seat!) then wandered through to be poked and prodded by security people. Things have relaxed a little, but they were still very thorough. No problems other than us having two laptops to explain, but they were fine in the end.
The flight boarded soon after, and we got through to the front of the queue at the gate (babies - useful)
Once on the plane I asked a member of the cabin crew if we could possibly go up to the flight deck once we were back on the ground at Heathrow. This was something we could have done on the way out to Phoenix - a lot of the guys off the course did but we couldn't be bothered at the time. I explained to her that I was a pilot, and let her take my Class 1 medical cert as proof (everything else was packed away...)
She came back a short while later and said it was fine, but literally 30 seconds later the first officer turned up and asked if we wanted to go up to the flight deck now. Too right! All 3 of us went up there and were made very welcome. They didn't even throw us out when Georgia tried pressing all the buttons...
The flight crew were very nice and chatty, and even let me stay up there while they were getting departure clearance and loading up the FMC. It felt good when the cabin crew called up as I wasn't in my seat, and the Captain said 'it's ok, he's up here with us. He's a pilot, so he'll be staying here a while longer'. They offered me the chance to come back up at the end of the flight too. It was nice to see all the faces of the toffs in first class when I wandered back out too :-P

Back to the flight - and everything went pretty well. Georgia slept for about 5 of the 10 hours. Clare managed to sleep some too, but as always on a flight I couldn't get comfortable. 10 hours of being crammed into a small seat with no legroom - not great. We made it back to Heathrow with 20 minutes to spare, but unfortunately this time was eaten up when it transpired that the aircraft that was in our parking space was delayed, so we had to sit on the taxiway for 30 minutes waiting for a spare ramp.

We eventually got sorted, off the plane and picked up all our luggage. We then had to track down the airport cars people - they'd wandered off because we were late coming through. They go off the landing time, but that was ages ago... we eventually found the dude, and after cramming all our bits and bobs into his people carrier, we were on our way back to our home. 10 minutes into the drive and it barely felt like we'd been away.

We made it back to our house after one hour fifteen, and I just closed the door when my dad rolled up, looking quite flash in his new car (Porsche Cayman S, in bright yellow) Georgia seemed pretty happy to be home - what with all her old toys being here. All in all it was a very nice journey back. None of us seemed jet lagged at all, which helped.

I'm still going through the mountain of mail from the last 20 weeks, and we still have a couple of cases to unpack. We're getting there though. Soon I'll be back at Oxford starting the next phase of training, but I'm going to do my best to enjoy the week off.

I'm not sure how often I'll update this blog now to be honest. Maybe once I start flying again I'll feel like there's something to say...

Righto, time to get to bed. Twenty to four in the morning is quite silly...

Leaving on a Jet Plane

First post - just making sure this blog is working ok.
If you're reading this, there's a good chance you've just read my last post on my other blog. We're still in Goodyear now, but tomorrow we will be heading back to the UK.
It'll be nice to get back to our house and see our family and friends again. Not so nice to see the British weather again....