It's been a little while, it's because of a combination of things, having some free time to go flying (not much over the weekends) and when I did have time, Melbourne's fickle weather played a part in cancelling a number of bookings! 

So today couldn't have been a better day to go fly, I took some time off work to do it and boy was it worth it!

 I was booked into TXH, one of MFS's new Warriors and you could really tell in the cockpit, although I didn't get that "new plane smell" equivalent to a new car. Regardless it was tight! 

 It was an early morning lesson and I thought on a Friday it would be quiet, but I was wrong, start up circuit requests were being denied and traffic for take off was backing up on both the eastern and western runways!

After run ups we departed for the training area for some EFOTO (Engine Failure On Take Off) exercises over some fields. I didn't know what it feels like to completely lose power and I felt a sense of assurance that with loss of power the Warrior could still glide! Being busy getting away from the airport my instructor and I figured it would be busy in the training area and it was while we kept vigilant lookout when we performed the EFOTO's. Setting 500 feet as the altitude we take off from, engine failure was simulated. The first thing to do was to lower the nose attitude so a glide speed of 73kts was achieved, the next thing is to select a field to land on 30 degrees to the left or right of the current heading, fly towards it and if possible perform the checks, I can't remember the acronym but if there is time, to check the carby heat (turn on) check mixture on full rich, fuel pump on, switches/magnetos to both,  switch fuel tanks. If I am sure that I will make the field, set flaps and by that time it was 500 feet and we would have touched down. If more time permitted the other checks could be performed, which from memory was to turn fuel pump off, fuel mixture to off, battery master off, magnetos to ground? hatch open or at least unlocked. 

After a couple of attempts it was all pretty easy, because it was simulated all went smoothly I am not too sure how I would fair if it really happened and at Moorabbin while taking off, I asked my instructor about this and on runways 35 it would be possible to land on the golf course but on 17 I was told it was a little more tricky and would have to land on a factory roof!!!

 The other exercise was the GAAP overfly entry procedure. We entered at GMH and my instructor performed all the calls, the tower was really busy! But we got our clearance to overfly at 1500 feet, seeing Moorabbin during the overfly was a great sight to behold with the circuits busy and so much traffic so early in the morning, upon overflying we were asked to join late downwind following a cherokee while we saw another cherokee turning for downwind for 17R.

 On finals it was cool to see traffic lined up for both runways for takeoff up to five in the queue (cool for me to see but maybe not so cool for those stuck in traffic!!!).

Most excellent lesson and I am getting closer to going solo, exciting times!

more later.

nick