Page 109 - Wish Stream Year of 2019

really start cramming for the two sorties planned for the next day.
Day 8
Sortie 3 went ahead straight after the weather brief. A nasty front was moving in and we wanted to do both sorties before it arrived, with a quick turn around on the ground. Sortie 3 included all checks up to and including the after-take- off checks (76 from before plus 80 new ones) and a few radio calls thrown in too. On this flight we needed to maintain a direction and altitude whilst looking out and doing other tasks in the aircraft – harder than it sounds. We were both still suffering from the phenom-
Day 11
It was now time to learn the circuit. The circuit is basically an oval over the airfield you fly before coming in to land. When flying the circuit, you take off, do the after-take-off checks and radio calls, begin to fly the oval and go almost straight into pre-landing checks and radio calls. You then do a touch and go where you touch down on the air strip and take off straight away again and then you’re straight back into it. One circuit is six intense minutes and you fly it for the whole 50-minute sortie. You have almost no margin for error on Sortie 7. We would be flying the cir- cuit at altitude as if the runway was at 4,000 ft;
enon of engine starts, brain stops. Unlucky or lucky depending how you look at it, we were not able to fit in the 2nd sortie before the front arrived, giving us some more time to work on bits highlighted during the 2nd sortie over the weekend.
Day 9
On Sortie 4 we would now be expected to do the full take-off departure and recovery to the air- field mostly un-aided. The sortie was on chang- ing power and applying flaps which change the lift of the aircraft simultaneously. 62 more checks to have learnt and more radio calls. At this point the getting to and back from the sortie became much more difficult than the lesson in the air itself. We went straight into Sortie 5 – Climbing and Medium Turns. This was quite a fun lesson but was hard to enjoy when stressed out about the return journey you’re yet to conduct. The learning curve on the course is such that you can find yourself behind it quite quickly and it’s dif- ficult to keep up with, especially if you’re having to correct issues with previous lessons. At this point the frustration of bad weather at the start of the course was turned on its head as we hoped for some bad weather so we could return to one flight per day and catch up!
Day 10
Sortie 6 would be on purposely stalling the air- craft (having your nose too high for the power you have so you start to fall out of the sky) which again was quite a fun lesson. We had gained back some ground on the learning curve, but still not where we should comfortably be. We had sortie 7 planned for after lunch but the instruc- tors noticed that 2 sorties a day was becoming counterproductive, so gave us the afternoon to consolidate.
they obviously don’t let us loose on the real airfield from the start. Sortie 8 (a second lesson on stalling) that was meant for the afternoon, how- ever, was skipped due to time so later the same afternoon we were into sortie 9 which was the circuit for real. With two days left one of the final two Intermediate OCdts had been informed he was not at course
A nasty front was moving in and we wanted to do both sorties before it arrived...
standard and was let go.
Day 12
From starting the course with 10, the final OCdt flew two more sorties on everything we had been taught in preparation for the test the next day.
Day 13
The final day and the final flying handling test. You own the flight from start to finish. You take off and depart to a training airspace, demon- strate all the skills you have been taught, and return to do a touch and go, circuit and then landing. Whilst I was proud of how much I had learnt over the three weeks and performed to the best I could have on the final day it wasn’t enough to make the grade. Massively disap- pointed but also somewhat relieved; it had been an especially stressful last week. At RSBs 5 weeks previously, I was told some people are born to be pilots and others are not. I now know I don’t have the necessary skills to learn at the pace the course requires. In seven weeks’ time some OCdts of CC191 may be in the position I was in at RSBs. My advice to them would be to consider what they would regret more, failing grading and going to clearing, or never knowing if they could have been an Army Air Corps pilot. I would make the same choice again.
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