Navigation

I've commenced the 2nd part of the training here, which is the visual navigation training phase. Army guys would know it as "topo", short for topography. Of course, being able to do it all alone high up in the sky, enjoying the scenery along the way sure beats those army kind of topo exercises. The features to find while "topo-ing" are usually prominent, such as large towns, airstrips, mountains and lakes.

Rockingham

nice coastal scenery

A typical navigation flight (whether with the instructor or with me alone) usually lasts 3 hours (unless I'm unfortunately lost or even worse, crashed). The preparation for the flight starts the night before the scheduled flight, with the drawing of the track between waypoints to waypoints. The magnetic degrees of the track and the distance between the 2 waypoints are found and written into our flight planning sheet.

cant remember why i take this picture, i think the mountain is supposed to be Mt Solus

Blue skies

On the next day, usually 2 hours before the estimate time of departure of the flight, a copy of the day's weather forecast will be obtained from our operations room. This copy of the weather forecast will tell us the cloud base, the significant weather, the wind direction and strength and other miscellaneous stuff, such as airstrip condition, parachuting activities at some areas etc. With this forecast, we will plan according to the altitude we'll fly at, and obtain a forecasted groundspeed. The groundspeed will allow us to estimate how much fuel we'll need for the flight, and the time we'll reach our destination.

Mt Saddleback, name given for the saddleback shape of the 2 peaks

more mountains, not sure what's the name

Again, our training is divided into flights with the instructor and flights by yourself. Solo flights are the best, as it is almost always a photo taking session for me. Flying by the coast enjoying the scenery almost made this whole thing so unreal. I would never have imagine myself doing this 1 year ago.

Serpentine Reservoir

North Dandalup Reservoir

Lake Cooloongup & Lake Walyungup

Yenyening Lakes

Lake Banksiadale

Instrument Panel: (Top L to R) Airspeed indicator, Artificial Horizon, Altimeter

(Bottom L to R) Turn and Slip Indicator, Directional Gyro Indicator, Vertical Speed Indicator