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Yesterday I had the oppurtunity to fly through London Heathrow’s new Terminal 5. I didn’t really know what to expect but was definitely expecting the worst based on reports I’ve had heard in the news since it’s opening two months ago — long queues, useless baggage handling, lost luggage, etc. I attempted to reduce my exposure by doing online check-in the day before and utilize one of the terminal’s “fast bag drops”, this way I reduce one of the queues I would have to wait in. I was working in a time range that didn’t allow much room for error, arriving on the very first Heathrow Express train of the day (e.g. I couldn’t get to the airport any earlier unless I hired a car) and T5’s new conformance policies. For those that aren’t aware, “conformance” are a new set of policies put in place to help the airlines remain on schedule — this includes a policy that all passengers have thier boarding passes scanned at the security checkpoint and if there is less than 35 minutes prior to thier flight they won’t be allowed to clear security. This left me about and hour and fifteen minutes from the time the train arrives to needing to be pass security. I show up to the airport and surprisingly I have my bag checked and made it through security in less than 15 minutes… needless to say, I was impressed!

This was also the first time I had flown British Airways. From the time I had arrived at the airport in London until the time we on the ground in Rome, every BA employee was extremely nice and helpful. The pilots even made every effort to keep us aprised of the flight status (we were initially delayed by almost a half an hour but made up the time in the air). I would definitely consider flying them again in the future.

Anyways, that’s all for now… I gotta make it off to the Termini in order to catch the night train to Munich.

I’m back in the British Isles… by that I mean I’m in London. I haven’t been here in nearly three years and frankly things haven’t changed much. Although this time things seem to be a bit more exciting — the first day and half here I’ve seen a sworm of police type activity starting with witnessing a shoplifting/robbery on the first afternoon. It was ammusing that last night a police van started speeding down the street with lights and siren blazing only to get caught up in traffic — the solution — the officers jumped out and started sprinting down the road on foot… they caught-up with the “perp” and threw him in the back of a paddy wagon in a matter of seconds. On the not so entertaining side was the stabbing outside the pub last night — luckily I was not involved.

I saw a theater performance last night called “39 Steps” at the Criterion Theater. I love british humour… it was FUNNY AS HELL! It’s amazing to see an entire production that is so entertaining put on by just four actors (altough they each play multiple parts), it really gets you thinking about the skill involved in being a BRIALLANT actor/actress.

Anyways, about to run out of time at the internet cafe. More to come when I have more time, I need to go find out what there is to do in London when it’s raining cats and dogs — ice bar perhaps?

Woohoo, a blog post!

To the friend (you know who you are) that e-mailed me stating that I don’t blog enough… all I have to say is is the link to your site has been updated.

I must be living an exciting life if this is the only thing that I have to blog about. Perhaps there will be more to come if we get more serious about pub night!

Ok, so I haven’t blogged in awhile… sue me.

That aside, I’ve recently been looking at getting a Plush Bag though I’ve been debating the last couple of weeks on whether or not it’s worth the cost as the model I’ve been looking at would be ~$400. Anyway, yesterday I finally convinced myself the cost was justified and as I head in to make the purchase one of the employees informs me that they’re having a two day sale and that everything is 50% off. Talk about a pleasant surprise, getting something I had already intended on purchasing at full price but saving a couple hundred dollars in the process. A very similar thing happened several weeks ago when I went to Macys to buy a watch — I already had an idea of the model I wanted and when I finally went in to make the purchase they had it on sale for 25% off, saving me ~$125.

Now only if I could plan all my purchases around these unforeseeable events.

Yesterday was the first day of ground school, so I decided to leave work a bit early and get out in the afternoon for another flying lesson.

I got down to Boeing Field about a half hour early to give me some time to brush up on some of the material before my CFI showed up. When she got there she made some friendly jabs at me on whether or not I was going to be “OK” today (referring to my last lesson when I got nauseous in flight). I assured her I was operating at 100% and that I was excited to get back in the air.

After we went through our pre-briefing she sent me over to check the weather. During previous sessions she would pull up the weather on the computer and give me a high-level overview and that apparently wasn’t going to be the case today, she wanted me to check the weather and do so without using the weather computer. This essentially meant I needed to call the Flight Service Station (FSS) and get a weather briefing. I don’t know where all this came from but as soon as I got off the phone with the briefer I was able to cite the area forecast for the next several hours, weather conditions both at Boeing Field and Bremerton National, winds aloft, and the notices to airmen (NOTAMs). All the information that was somewhat cryptic to me in the past I was able to collect and sum up with short one liners such as “BFI conditions, few clouds at 7,000\scattered at 12,000; visibility 10 miles; 220@Niner (winds from the SW at 9 knots)”. Also, to give an idea of the importance of the NOTAMs there was one in particular which was informational of active skydiving at 12,000 feet at ¼ mile west of Bremerton National which happened to be where we’re headed to practice – good information to know!

Once we got up in the air and over towards Bremerton I started running through maneuvers related slow flight – apparently when the CFI says slow flight she really means SLOW FLIGHT. We got to a cruising altitude of 4,000ft and we started inducing low power scenarios by reducing throttle, enabling carb heat, and attempting climbs. The plane was in a constant nose pitch up and we were just barely maintaining our altitude while at 60 KIAS. After completing some other maneuvers we got into the real fun, we brought the plane back up to speed and then started deploying the flaps after we had full flaps deployed we reduced throttle and kept the plane with the nose pitch up. As the plane slowed the stall horn started sounding at ~50 KIAS we proceeded to continue slowing and I then spent the next ~30 minutes maneuvering at ~40 KIAS. To put this in perspective, the Vs1 stall speed (no flaps) is 44 knots and the Vs0 stall speed (full flaps) is 33 knots. Ironically the entire time the stall horn continued to blare and at no time was I concerned about actually stalling, I think this is an indication that my trust in the aircraft is really building.

After a while we decided to go make some landings which would happen to be my first real landings! We went over and did a couple of touch and go’s at Bremerton National before making a final landing at Boeing Field – my flare was off and I ended up bouncing all three landings. I’ll get the hang of it with more practice and although the bounced landings aren’t elegant at least I can get the plane back down on the ground.

Overall, this was definitely my favorite lesson thus far not only did I learn so much but I’m enjoying myself so much more now that I’m starting to gain trust in the aircraft!