Jeremy Zawodny has started ground school where he’ll learn IFR theory for his instrument rating. The fun bit is that he’s posting about it on his blog and plans to keep doing so. This is great, from my point of view.

I’d like to get my instrument rating. It’s something I keep putting off, because I want to get more experience first and because I actually like flying VFR. Cliff has his instrument rating and his route planning always looks to me like a dot-to-dot problem rather than a navigational process. But it’s the next obvious thing to do and it sure would be nice to be able to fly in and out of Málaga, who ban VFR flights at the weekend.

If I go for the accelerated IFR program in the US where Cliff did his, then I’m expected to do all the reading before I arrive. That’s a pretty heavy load and quite frankly I’ve doubted my ability to get through it. But Jeremy is doing the reading as a part of a 10-week course which actually gives me a schedule. Reading his views and the comments from his readers each week makes it feel less like I’m learning in a vacuum. I also strongly suspect that if I do keep up with the reading and his posts, he’d be willing to discuss issues that come up as a part of it.

So it’s inspiration to get moving and do something. Except that I think his second class is tomorrow and I haven’t actually cracked open the books yet!

Jeremy’s initial post already has me thinking: it’s clear to me that my view of IFR flights is not the norm. He’s listed three cons to IFR:

• Longer routes (takes more gas and time)
• Have to deal with controllers and radio
• Higher workload

Now I can understand the first one - Cliff and I regularly decide who is flying based on the route, because his is often longer. Not always, going due north from here, his route is much faster than mine because he can fly over Madrid. I would need special-VRF to do that and they never, ever grant it! Crossing the channel, I simply head north and go across. He has to stick to airways. So, yes, I’ve certainly seen that the IFR route can be longer.

But the other two: huh?

Cliff calls, and says something along the lines of: “Hi, I’m here.” ATC replies with “OK, lemme know when you get to there.” Cliff says, “OK.”

That’s it. He’s barely on the radio and he rarely has to think. It seems so simple.

Meanwhile, VFR, I’m constantly talking to someone and having to work out who it is I’m supposed to talk to next. I have to change my routing in airspace that is just packed with airfields and military zones and they all want to know my intentions and damn, am I glad when occasionally someone simply tells me they have me on radar and it goes silent.

Now Cliff tells me I don’t know the half of it, and maybe he’s right, but it sure does seem like a lot less radio and a lot less work when he’s in control.

So maybe I’ll do the instrument rating just so I can prove it. ;)

Things that happened during the flight with my mother:

1) we ended up without a VFR chart for the majority of the area we were flying over
2) my boyfriend and I descended into major arguments about basic planning (mainly based on heat and nerves rather than actual issues)
3) my mother corrected an Italian Air Traffic Controller when he told me what time it was
4) Austrian ATC gave me a five minute lecture on the radio with every other pilot flying over the Alps sniggering quietly and feeling relieved that it wasn’t them.
5) The auto-pilot died completely

Other than that, it went really well. Honest.

Everything is ready for the next flight. Cliff will do the first trip IFR. We’ll be flying up the coast of Spain and then across to Menorca for a refuel and last minute check before a long water crossing directly to Rome. Then we’ll continue on IFR (so constantly under watch, which strikes me as a good thing) so we can enter the Class A airspace and go directly to the Roma Urbe airfield.

Roma Urbe on Google maps

Click and then zoom out to see the location. It’s amazing, right on the northern side of Rome! That river is handy too, that’ll make the airfield loads easier to spot.

A few days in Rome (yay!) and then we will bundle my mother into the plane and I’ll fly us to Mannheim. Cliff thinks we can route right over my cousins house in Bavaria on the Austrian border, which will be neat. We’ll be high (argh, Alps!) but if it’s clear weather it should still be some pretty spectacular views.

It’s a three-hour flight, which compares really well to a commercial flight: the time you spend queuing and getting your luggage checked in and yourself through security adds up fast so I suspect we’ll make better time than my mother would have with a Lufthansa flight. Certainly more interesting!

I spent formative years in Mannheim and so although I’ve never landed at the airfield, I don’t think I’ll have any trouble finding the airfield from the sky.

See if you can spot it.

See how Mannheim is nestled in between the Rhein and Neckar? The airfield is just south of the Neckar, which is the lighter, smaller river on the north east. Now you don’t plonk runways in between houses so forget about any built up areas and look for a clear field that could fit an east-west runway.

Found it? Hopefully you’ve zoomed in close and ended up at this lovely airfield.

If you zoomed out and got lost and ended up in Coleman, the US military is likely to want a word with you. So don’t do that. And lets hope that I don’t!

Here’s the view as we fly away from our initial destination at Lake Constance. No, you don’t get a view of us flying to it as I was busy with the plane at that point!

At the wing tip you can see the airfield, the same one that I linked to on Google in the previous entry. Let me tell you, it looked a lot smaller in real life.

Especially when I realised there was someone coming in straight at me to land on the same runway, in the opposite direction.

The controller was totally focused and whisked me off to the side (with explicit directions, no chance of me having to pause and work out where the parking was) whilst bringing the jet in. It was pretty impressive.

More about the trip soon, I just wanted to let you know I was back and we had a great trip. :)

I saw this photograph today and had to share.

You can see the full story at Snopes at
http://www.snopes.com/photos/airplane/flightschool.asp — what a landing, huh? Amazing that the pilot walked away, really.

Ben, who was going to be flying with me, contacted me on Sunday to say that he was stuck in Copenhagen with a jet whose wheels would not retract.

A nice young man named Alistair agreed to adopt me for a few days, so we flew out to Shobdon yesterday where we got stuck on in the mud of the grass runway and needed 4 strong blokes and a Landrover to tow us back out. The propellor has frightening green streaks on the edges of the blades but luckily only tickled the grass and didn’t run into the ground.
Today has been better, to be fair, I’ve done some decent flying and been given a grand tour of Enstone which has a great club although the runway is somewhat bizarre.

No idea what the plan for the rest of the week is although I am trying to find some brave young pilot who will join me on some cross-country flights for practice (read: keep me from getting lost). At least the weather is good.

I can’t complain really, at least there are plenty of stories to tell.