Cloud Surfing

A place dedicated to the journey of going through from the start to getting my pilot license and all of the adventures in between!

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Flight planning for my first navigation flight into controlled airspace. To say I’m a bit nervous is a huge understatement!

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Flight planning for my first navigation flight into controlled airspace. To say I'm a bit nervous is a huge understatement!

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Can you spot the runway down there?

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Best view in the world. 7500 fleets and floating through the sky!

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Passing clouds as I climb!

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Navigating by map and eye! Airspeed indicator is showing a low speed and altimeter is showing passing through 6200 feet while I climb to 7500 feet

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Photo doesn't do it justice! 5500 feet.

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What a view! #cloudsurfing over the great dividing range

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Cloud surfing at its finest

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Nearly at top of climb - time for a #cloudsurf!

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Rising up to go cloud surfing! Awesome way to spend the weekend

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This is what cloud surfing is all about! #cloudsurfing in a #jabiru

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The trusty steed that took me on my first solo navigation flight! #pilot #avgeek #navigation #jabiru #flight #fly #flying

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Navigation Flights

As you progress through your training you end up learning to navigate with just a map and the compass in the plane. Of course you also learn to use the GPS and other navigational aids however you are taught from the ground up how to flight plan and navigate. At first I thought it was a bit boring to learn as there is a lot of planning, weights and balances and mapping (measuring distances and time) and also sorting out waypoints and radio frequencies you’ll need on the way. It is quite a bit of work but you get to fly higher than what you normally do in the training area - and the view is certainly worth it! The air is also nice and smooth once you get higher and the aircraft seems to perform a bit differently. Your turns are smoother and you seem to fly with less effort. The view is fantastic. There is nothing better than being 9500 feet and being above the clouds. It is awesome. A totally different perspective than you get anywhere else. The other amazing thing is when you get to your destination in 30 minutes that would normally be 2 hours by car.  You cover so many places in 4 hours of flying when the trip in a car would take 10-12 hours. Landing on dirt and grass strips enhances your skills but you also get to see a town from a different perspective. I will load photos from my Navigation flights but trust me, they do not give the view proper justice!

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Essential for capturing the hours of memories you accumulate!

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The Journey Part 2 - Let the cloud surfing begin!

2015 had not been the best of years. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t homeless or starving so it wasn’t a crisis but I just had a bad turn of luck. I had contracted a bone infection and long story short it took me out for 7 months. After several hospital stays, hospital in the home care (where a nurse comes to your house daily to help look after you), over 16 weeks of different antibiotics (12 of them through a PIC Line in my chest) and 3 operations I was happy to be walking again without crutches by the start of August. Over the course of that time I had spent a long time thinking about what I would do once I could walk again. Being at home and in hospital feeling very bored most of the time I had a chance to think hard about it. Fly. I had to get back in the air. It was something I had always loved and always wanted to do. As soon as I was healthy enough I would fly again. It seemed a little far fetched when I thought about it, lying in a bed with a drip hanging off one arm, antibiotics going through the other and my leg up in the air bandaged up but I knew it was what i wanted then and there and I would find a way to do it. I remember my girlfriend visiting me in hospital when I told her I wanted to fly again. She smiled, knowing I was heavily medicated, and said “sure, no worries hun. Lets get you walking first though”.  I told all my friends that was what I was going to do and for my birthday that July I got 2 vouchers for flying lessons - one from my friends and one from my girlfriend. Amazing. I am very lucky to have such a great group of friends and girlfriend.

I went down to the Aero Club where it first began and inquired. Flying has changed since I started and there are now different levels of licensing, making it easier to find a level of flying you are comfortable with and more options aircraft types to fly. I decided to go back into flying and would start with RA-Aus - Recreational Australia Pilot Certificate.

September 13 2015 - My new instructor takes me into the briefing room. We discuss what I have done previously and then he briefs me on what we are doing. It is general revision and will help him see what I remember and what I have forgotten. The weather is fantastic and clear and there is no wind. A perfect day for a fly! We get up there and do some turns, ascending, descending and a cuircit and then he talks me through the landing. I cant say I did everything perfectly but I did it without help and felt happy to be back in the cockpit. With renewed vigor I climb out of the aircraft and we go in for a debrief. I book my next lesson for the next weekend and then comes the long week ahead waiting for it!

The last two weeks in September see me do a few more hours of circuits and Emergency procedures, steep turns, stalls and forced landings. It was like riding a bike and after 4.2 hours this time round I am ready to go solo again.   On October 4th 2015 The instructor and I go up and do a couple of circuits. We land and he gets out and says - “Its yours, take it for a few circuits. go for an hour if you like.” So I did - I took it up and did about 6 or 7 circuits. It was awesome and the more I did the better I was getting which made the nerves go and made it that little bit more enjoyable.

Since then I have passed the RA-AUS Pilot Certificate and also the RPL - Recreational Pilot License so I can fly solo and also take a passenger in the General Aviation Aircraft (Cessna’s etc) and that brings us up to March 08 2016 where I passed endorsement on the Cessna 172 Retractable Gear, Constant Speed Propeller Aircraft.

Looking forward now to learning to fly longer distances and adventures with friends!

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September 13 2015 - 1st day back in 9 years! Perfect weather and fantastic front seat view