"That's a boring post!", I hear you say? The story doesn't necessarily stop there. I still have a flying experience that I haven't had a chance to write about yet.
As I got back to the hangar after my last flight, Manny was once again standing in the middle of the open doors with flight bags in hand. I turned the aircraft ninety degrees and he gave me the marshalling signal to cut the engine. He immediately opened the door and placed his bags in the back.
"You doing anything now?" he said.
"No. Mel is catching up with her girlfriends, so I'm free for another few hours."
"Good, I want to show you something. Lets go. Help me turn the plane around."
With the plane now aligned back towards the taxiway, Manny started it and straight away began the checklists.
"I want to teach you some skills that are taught to fighter pilots as a fail safe if all of their electronic navigation tools are inoperative. You'll need your map. First leg will be out to Mount Emu, how far is that?"
"Hmm, about 20 nautical miles."
"Good, let's go."
We took off on runway 36 and departed towards the West by extending the crosswind leg - however unlike the normal circuit height, Manny remained at 500 feet above ground level (AGL). This is the minimum allowable height, and requires us to steer clear of houses and buildings, etc.
At around one hundred knots (about 180 km/h!), the world whizzes past pretty quickly. The 'slow motion' sensation that you get when operating at 3000 feet or so doesn't exist, so you have to be on your game.
Manny showed me the basics of navigation using 'dead reckoning' - using only a map, compass and the clock. First you find the distance to the waypoint - estimated, of course. One thumb width is about 5 nm, so four thumb widths away is 20 nm, or thereabouts. At 100 knots, it equates to a certain number of minutes, so as long as one remains accurate with their straight and level, one can navigate places to within a minute.
A couple of cross-checks along the way to make sure we were still on track and it wasn't long before Mt Emu loomed in front of us. Manny climbed to make sure that we would remain 500' above it's peak when we overflew it. As we did, the winds being pushed up the slope pushed us around a little bit, but nothing too bad. We arrived there exactly on time.
Manny then did a tight turn over the other side and explained that the next waypoint will be Lake Learmonth, and because of the smoke hanging in the air, we won't be able to see it until we're almost right on it.
"So this means we'll have to be really accurate!", said Manny.
Our track to Learmonth took us over Lake Burrumbeet and a smaller body of water so the West called Black Swamp. As we got there, I looked down to see all the birdlife with exquisite detail! Large flocks of birds were taking off, getting away from the big noisy thing approaching. It looked exactly like those nature documentaries! I'd never flown this close to the water before.
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| Learmonth Oval |
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| Downtown Learmonth |
As we reached Learmonth (only one minute late!), Manny did a zoom climb - a maximum rate climb - from 500 feet up to 2500 feet. As we did, I managed to grab a couple of quick photos of the Learmonth football oval, which had a game going. It was just like the old computer game Sim City, seeing the tiny little players running about under the lights.
Manny then turned for home. I am very thankful that he took me along for this little nav exercise. As an instructor, he needs to keep his skills up to date and honed. He could have done it alone, but I'm glad he invited me along. I'm sure I'll be doing much more of this stuff later when I begin my cross-country endorsement! It was a very nice introduction to it.
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