I spent the day at National Flight, in their servicing department at Toledo Express Airport. I have my original sponsor for the intensive to thank for the opportunity to learn there. I had a lot of fun and learned quite a bit from all the amazing people I met there. I started my day in the FBO, and was there for half an hour before realizing I was in the wrong part of National Flight. I felt a little idiotic at the time because I went to the wrong side of the airport, where they keep the hangars for the planes, not their servicing area. When I realized I was in the wrong area, the lady behind the desk very kindly directed me to the servicing area for National Flight, where I signed in for the day at 8:30, a half an hour late. I was then handed over to the turbine shop. I spent three hours with the mechanics down there and learn various things. They said that it was a quiet day for them, as only two mechanic were in the shop this morning. The other eight were out of town, assisting clients with their engine needs. I got a tour of their shop, where engine were on hoisted onto turning pedestals for easier access to the top and bottom of the machines. One of the mechanics point out the crates saying that those were engines that had yet to be worked on and that they came from all over the world, Japan, Denmark, Vietnam just to name a few places. I didn't notice how many crates were there until they pointed them out, but there were at least a good 25 crates sitting and waiting to be worked on. One mechanic was working on overhauling an engine for a Conquest, a twin prop, small aircraft often used for charting geography. He said the it needed 1000 horsepower to pass the overhaul and he's only been able to get 960hp, and that this was his third time stripping the engine and reassembling it, trying to find an issue. That has to be frustrating. The other mechanic was taking apart an engine from a Californian aircraft used to fight fires, they had quite a few of those engines. He was inspecting each part and looking for ones that needed to be replaced. He was an NDT specialist. NDT stands for Non-Destructive Testing, it's a method of testing used to look for cracks and damages that the eye cannot see. National Flight uses florescent testing for NDT, which the mechanic went through the process using some parts to demonstrate NDT for me. I had a lot of fun at the turbine department, despite not putting my hands on things. I had a lot of fun talking aviation with them as they labored away on adjusting the bearings in the engine, or torquing bolts to the right degree of sturdiness. After the turbine shop, I was handed over to a pilot, he works behind a desk as a coordinator and such, but he was a fellow pilot and we were sharing all sorts of trips and adventures. He had his own Cessna 172 that he bought and tore apart from propeller to tail, and he was rebuilding it, apparently he was also a mechanic at on time as well. He described to me the process of getting an engineer to approve design changes and such. He walked through an example that was in the hangar, where a latch on the door had a small crack around one side, and the customer wanted a section removed and a new part retrofitted to cover where a small three inch long section of the door was going to be removed. It was a lot of paperwork and communication with their engineer to approve one small change on the aircraft to fix a small crack, I couldn't believe it!
All in all, I learned a lot there in just one day. Im sure I'm missing stories in here, there's just so much to talk about! This was a very valuable session and I walked away firmly understanding a mechanics role in aviation and the different people it takes to service an aircraft.
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After spending several hours the previous day searching through moving boxes for photos that my grandpa had from World War II, I found more than just photos. I was able to find his military files, his combat medals, multiple photographs, his flight logs, and even his aviator glasses he'd wear when he'd fly. I started reading through his files and discovered that he not only served in World War II, but also served in the Korean War as a trainer for Radar Operators. I plan on doing a segment with my grandfather's history in aviation for my presentation, as I find his story inspiring as I pursue a career in aviation. Unfortunately, he passed away when I was young, so I don't have very many memories with him, and my dad (his son) said that he didn't talk much about his time in combat, so I have his records to go by. While sharing my blog with family and friends, I also found out that on my Mom's side, my third cousin flies an F18 as a Naval Aviator for the US Navy. He attended the Untied States Naval Academy and has a Bachelors of Science in Aerospace Engineering. I was able to get his contact through my aunt, and hope to contact him soon. This morning I spent time looking through a book called Deny Them the Night Sky by Eric Shulenberger. Deny Them the Night Sky is a book solely about the 548th Night Fighter Squadron, which was the World War II squadron my grandfather was a part of. The book details some of there duties during the war. I knew that they flew over Nagasaki and took pictures after the bomb was dropped, but I didn't know that his squadron was the front line in capturing airfields on the Japanese islands. Often times behind the squadron were various bomber aircraft, and the 548th would land at the airfield to make sure that it was captured before the bombers would land. I also was able to log some time on my simulator doing traffic patterns and ground maneuvers that my instructor and I went over on September 5th. Such as the S-turns along a straight reference point. I also practiced landing by trying to keep the aircraft on line with the airstrip so I would land on the runway. It was harder than I thought. At first, I had issues with keeping the aircraft in the middle of the runway but after two to three attempts, i was able to successfully land the aircraft. In the afternoon, I went into school to get some work laid out for my presentation. I have an overall idea on what I want to talk about in my presentation, and started to plan viable methods of presenting my information. I decided I will have my lessons on loop so people can see what I've been doing first hand, and I also want a panel of my tri-board dedicated to my known family that serves/served in the aviation forces. I would also like to include pictures of different systems I learned about like engine types and the pitot tube. As well as have my log book, plane information checklist, and maybe a model plane for people to interact with.
I was able to receive more flight time, despite the Piper Cherokee 140 being in the shop for its annual maintenance. The club owns another plane that is more complex, a Piper Arrow II, which they don't let new members fly right off the bat. Fortunately, my instructor thought that I'd be able to learn some basic procedures and ground maneuvers in the Piper (the videos attached below): My mother and I ventured out Friday morning and headed towards Dayton, Ohio: home of the National Museum of the United States Air Force. A way to obtain proper flight training is through the Air Force, however my parents and I are more inclined on the path of me earning a degree from a college. The Air Force base is majorly aircraft from service, but a newer section deals with experimental and presidential aircraft. So, even though I aim to be a commercial or corporate pilot, there was still bound to be useful information I could learn. I went when I was four years old, about fourteen years ago, and the museum was significantly smaller than its size today. It's comprised of eight large hangars full of aircraft, and we spent a total of nine hours viewing and reading about different aircraft and their engines. It's so big that after all that time, we left still feeling like there was more to explore! I have to say the aircraft I was looking forward the most to seeing was the P-61. My grandfather served in World War II. He was a radar operator on the infamous P-61 (pictured below). What makes the P-61 special? Well, it was the first US produced night flier, and one of the first aircraft to feature a radar onboard the aircraft, which was used on night missions to scout incoming, foreign aircraft. But my grandfather had an interesting role, his squadron's mission was to fly over Nagasaki everyday, after the bomb was dropped, and take photos. So why was seeing one of these aircraft so meaningful? Most P-61s were salvaged or destroyed after the war. Then, after my first visit on Friday, I went back to the hotel room and started reading about aircraft engines and instruments and how they work for two hours; I became fascinated. At first I struggled with understanding the concept of a jet engine, but after looking at them divided the next day at the Air Force Museum, I had a better understanding of them. However, my favorite engines were the cyclone engines that had the pistons arranged in a circular pattern where each piston was in a different stage of compression. The clouds rolled in quickly this afternoon, but it didn't stop us from flying below the cloud shelf. I'll admit, judging the distance from the clouds is a little hard, and you need to know with a VFR because the FAA mandates that you be 500 feet below or above the clouds. I pulled the piper cherokee 140 out of the hangar and my instructor asked me to pre-flight the aircraft by myself. I went around step by step, and forgot only one thing! Thats pretty good considering I was doing it from memory and didn't have a checklist on hand. After the pre-flight we started up the aircraft and took to the air (all which I recorded below). The cherokee's annual maintenance was due tomorrow, without it the aircraft would be illegal to fly. The club's mechanic works out of the Tiffin airport, so my flight lesson insinuated doing some basic procedures such as 360 degree turns, sharp bank turns, running through emergency landing caused by engine shut off, taking off, traffic pattern work, slow flight, and more. Most of the work I did with my instructor, he was as hands off as possible and I can say that learning through experience has greatly benefited my knowledge. With each lesson I am building more and more confidence in my own ability to control the aircraft. After we dropped the plane off at Tiffin, the treasurer of the club met us at the airport with the club's piper arrow II, so we didn't have to drive back. The arrow is a more complex plane than the cherokee 140, due to 60 more horsepower, direct injection, retractable landing gear, and the ability to feather the prop. On our initial flight lesson, yesterday, my instructor hesitated to say wed fly the arrow while the piper was down, but at Tiffin, he was excited to get me behind the yoke. He was even talking to the person that does check up flights (a bi-annual flight to make sure you know what you're doing) about how I fly very well for how new I am to the profession. Now he was going to let me fly the arrow, I can't lie, I was a bit excited and nervous at the same time. So nervous that I thought I hit record on my camera, but only took a photo... But my instructor still remain hands off for the flight back, despite the aircraft being noticeably faster than the cherokee. He let me do the entire take off, taxiing, directional turns toward Bowling Green, and a couple of maneuvers we did earlier like the 360 degree turn.
Today is the first day I get to spend at the Wood County Regional Airport. The fog this morning is very heavy. Which is really unfortunate because I am working towards a VFR license (Visual Flight Rules), which is one that relies not on the interments in the cabin, but solely the visuals around and outside the aircraft. As you can imagine, fog makes it very difficult to see outside the aircraft, so my lesson was delayed for an hour or so. In the meantime I decide to run over the pattern work one more time before I ventured out in the actual plane. Finally the fog cleared and I was able to meet up with my flight instructor at the Wood County Regional Airport. We would be doing our lesson in a piper cherokee 140 (pictured below). We started by going over preflight check lists and examining the aircraft before flight. Then we started the aircraft and taxied out to the proper runway. My flight instructor whole heartedly believes the best way to learn is hands on and experience so I had to do some of the radio communications and had the do the taxiing. Then came takeoff, while he manned the throttle, I had to keep the aircraft centered on the runway and lift up on the yoke once we reached 65 knots. After we started our climb, I had to navigate to an open space without clouds (VFR pilots aren't allowed to fly through clouds) so that we could rise above them. Then we did some turns and went certain headings so I could get a feel for the aircraft. The we went over a slow flight procedure, where you fly the aircraft as slowly as possible, which for the piper cherokee 140 is about 50 knots. After a short while, we headed back to 1G0 (the designation code for the Wood County Regional Airport), where he landed the plane and I taxied back.
I woke up excited today, ready to assemble the final piece of my simulator! I unboxed the yoke (which came with a second throttle attachment) and set in the screws to hold it to the table. Then all I had to do was plug it into the computer, and... a calibration screen popped up. Now Calibration for the rudder pedals and throttle controls was easy because there were that many buttons to program, but the yoke had six multidirectional buttons in addition to the rotating axis that you had to program. Needless to say, despite its time consuming values and horrifically long process I still had just as much motivation to dive into the simulator. Then came the next issue, the throttle control I was using had a USB plug-in, whereas the throttle control that came with the yoke had a special circular plug-in, and apparently the yoke reads the special plug-in throttle, but not the USB throttle plug-in. So, after a quick swap of throttle controls, I managed to get it working! (With the extra throttle control, I am going to see if I can program them to control a second throttle so I can fly a twin propeller aircraft). Anyway, I started my first flight with the controls. Now since I needed to get a feel of how the simulated aircraft reacts to the movements of the yoke, I started the aircraft on the ground, got it airborne, and tried some basic flight maneuvers such as sharp turns and leveling off at specific altitudes. Once I finally felt somewhat comfortable behind the yoke, I reset the flight and wanted to try the flight pattern (a pattern used at every airport to keep planes from crashing, kinda like a traffic circle in the sky). Below you can see my not so perfect attempt to go through the traffic pattern in the pictures below: After lunch, I headed into school again to take more notes on my fluid mechanics course. I got through two more hour long lectures giving more formulas and definitions for term common used in the field. I even attempted two of the problems walked through in the lecture, and almost got them right, but learned from my errors and saw where I needed improvement (Below are the notes I took on these lectures:
This morning and most of the afternoon, my mother and I drove out to the Wood County Regional Airport to meet with a club officer from Eagle Air Flying Club and learn the details. A trip to scout the organization we were leaning towards getting lessons from. The club has many members and two very well kept pipers in individual hangars that we got to tour. Another perk to joining the club, is the networking I can do with the other members at the monthly meeting times. In addition, the Eagle Air Flying Club's rates were at prices you cannot beat. If you're planning on flying at least three times a month, it would be about twenty to thirty dollars cheaper than the other flight instructors in the area. Both my mother and I agreed that the club was the right choice and signed up then and there, after our meeting with the club official I was instantly put into contact with a flight instructor to schedule a flight time.
I had to head home right after in order to prepare for a golf match, so the day was cut short. However, I did notice a package on my doorstep when I arrived home, and it was the yoke I ordered a few days ago, it had finally came. Unfortunately I didn't have enough time to open it before I had to leave for my golf match, so it's a task for tomorrow! All morning I spent contacting various flight instructors about their rates, lesson overviews, and availability. As much as I would like to place names on my blog to compare and contrast these criteria, I did not ask their permission to and do not wish to undermine or misrepresent them or their business in any manner. I was, however, able to get a hold of three different flight instructors in the area, and talk with them for quite a bit. Ultimately I decided a flying club, called Eagle Air Flying Club, out of the Wood County Regional Airport had the best available program. They readily had two to three flight instructors and two aircraft: a piper cherokee 140 and a piper arrow. So I set up a date on Monday, August 28th to discuss further implications.
Then I made my way up to school to take notes on the fluid mechanics lecture from Boston University. I was able to get through the first hour long lecture that was mostly an introduction with a definition of a fluid, and a simplified derivation of a formula to calculate shearing stress. This morning I spent time searching for valuable resources to research properties of aviation. My intent was to find a challenging course that I could grapple with. Since down the road I wish to study aerospace engineering, I figured there might be some solid courses I can reap the benefits from. I came across and app on the App Store called iTunes U, U for university as most of the lectures are recordings from Universities. Liberty University offers two different courses on iTunes U, pertaining to aviation: Turbine Engine and Jet Transports, that deals with engine theory and operations; and Airplane Aerodynamics, which exhibits different applications of physical principals that commercial pilots and fixed-wing pilots encounter. The first topic was too complex to comprehend in the first ten to fifteen minutes of the lecture, and the second wasn't an engineering, like I was looking for. So I kept looking. University of North Dakota (a college with a well known aviation program) has a video lecture on iTunes U, but it was a simple ground school detailing an introduction to flight. Then I found a course, not specifically working with flight, but it was an engineering course that I could understand and was still relevant to the intensive. The lecture is from Boston University and is on fluid mechanics, the first twenty minutes or so provide a well detailed explanation of the course, and it seemed like it would challenge my knowledge of physics. All the meanwhile, I began to move, piece by piece, my simulator to the large screened theater room in my basement; this is where I set up a table, cleared the floor, and placed a chair to prepare the space for the simulator pictured below (minus the yoke, I was still waiting for it to be delivered at the time): -talked with advisors about sponsor issues -planned air force museum trip After I finished, I made a trip to school to discuss issues with my sponsor for the intensive and update them on my progress, plus I had hoped to receive advice on where to advance from my current standing. Withal, I devised a plan, and it started with planning a trip to the air force museum near Dayton, Ohio. So I called and found that they have simulators for certain aircraft at the museum and one specifically is only open on the weekend due to it being new. They're at a lull in their season as summer is drawing to a close, so they shouldn't be too busy. Next I talked to my mom and we are headed down there on Friday September 1st.
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AuthorMy name is Rory Hopkins, and I have been fascinated by the world of aviation since I was a child. Now I plan to pursue a career in the aviation world. ArchivesCategories |