Maps N Watches

completed: IF2, GH8, Nav 1

had 3 days of early morning sorties straight. so that meant i had to wake up early. to top it off, the first day my sortie got cancelled coz of bad weather. what a bummer. wake up early for nuts...

so i did IF2 with 17, and it was good. starting was a bit rusty, but got a hang of it after some time. see, usually we fly visually, meaning we look outside the aircraft to judge our attitude, whether wings level, or if we're climbing or descending. we're not suppose to look at our instruments that provide us height change and aircraft attitude info. but its always easier to look at instruments to fly rather than looking outside.

then when we do IF(instrument flying), we wear a hood, and realize i'm trying to peek outside to see the attitude. i think i'm just a lil confused hahaha...

anyways, IF2 went well, and 17 was cool. what is nice about flying with him is, he's been in our place before. he just graduated a few years ago, so he knows what problems we face as a student. he's more understanding. and he's been through hell before reaching where he is today.

GH8 was a solo sortie, and everything was nice. except the part i had to hold. and hold and hold. for like 15mins. i wasted 15mins holding.

Navigation1 was a brief intro into navigation. the route was pretty much straight, but there's quite a bit to do. luckily i was flying with 17, as i said he's understanding, so he took time to teach which was good. half the time i was lost, not the route part, but the things i had to do hahaha

oh for nav i was suppose to carry a stopwatch, but there was not enough. so i ended up borrowing my friend's watch to use as a stopwatch, and my own watch as a UTC time reference. gosh, i look so stupid with 2 watches lol

mostly the taking off part is a bit troublesome, which i'm still blur about. i think i'll get it in time though. so its HAT at the holding point, set course, then CLEAR, and once in awhile FREDAH checks. and the same routine before, overhead, and after the waypoints on our route.

navigation is mostly map-to-ground reading, so that we constantly know where we are. for example, we make sure we're over a river at a certain time, or beside a hill at this time. its just constant reference to map to locate ourselves. which is not that hard, it just takes a lil time to read the map, while flying the plane, logging in your nav logs, and occasionally answering radio calls. i'm kinda intrigued with map reading actually. its quite fun picking out the features from above. and also finding deserted towns in between valleys faaarrr from civilization. what do they do with their lives?!

the irony, sharman was never a map guy. i was in the boys scout till standard 6, and never ventured it again after that. then again, i was never much of a badan beruniform guy as well :P

but looks like i'm stuck with uniforms though :D

As I was going up the stair,

I met a man who wasn't there.

He wasn't there again today,

I wish,

I wish he'd go away.

.

- variation of Hughes Mearns poem from the movie "Identity" -