Copper State Fly-in

All my solo navigation flights to date - it's fair to
say we are quite familiar with the local area now.

On Friday I flew and passed progress test three, which went really well. It is a visual navigation test based on "dead reckoning", meaning that you plan the route before hand on the chart, figuring out all the timings and headings in advance.

If you do your maths right, fly carefully and have an accurate wind forecast you should find yourself at each planned point at exactly the planned time. This rarely happens. But on Friday it all came together, I don't think I was ever more than a minute or a mile out even on the diversion leg, which is planned in the air.

After this, we did a practice forced landing from a simulated engine fire onto a little dirt strip, and a couple of "touch and go" landings at a different airport before returning to base. Everything went smoothly, and the few small errors I did make must have gone unnoticed as I was given top marks for the test. What a contrast to progress test two!

This week is looking very slow on the training front while I wait for the others in the group to pass their tests (I am keeping everything crossed hoping we will be home for Christmas). But I should be able to fly my cross country qualifier. This is a minimum 300 mile solo flight with full landings at two other airports. It will be a long day but I think a lot of fun as well. It will be pretty much the last solo flying I will do, as we don't get to fly solo in the twin engine aircraft sadly.

In other news, British Airways have just re-opened their Future Pilot Program for round three. If you or anyone you know would like to apply, don't hang around as they generally only give you a few weeks to apply. It's good news for us as well, it seems the demand for pilots to fly the new A320 fleet out of Gatwick is greater than expected and the jobs are there waiting for us next year.

Copper State Fly In

Four planes line up for a formation takeoff, while the
Stearman and its baby replica (below) show off

Last week, on pain of torture, we students were strictly forbidden to fly anywhere near one of our neighbouring airports, Casa Grande. The reason? Something called the Copper State Fly In was being held there, one of the largest in the US. What is a fly-in exactly? I wasn't sure really, but I was willing to find out so a friend and I decided to drive down and see what was happening.

What we found was basically organised chaos. The entire apron, and several dirt lots, were completely full of parked aircraft of all types. Some of them were clustered in groups, such as the ultralights and the kit-built planes, while others seemed random. If there was a pattern, it seemed to be the more interesting your plane, the nearer you could get to the middle where the action was.

Milling around the area were hundreds of people admiring the machinery and chatting to the owners. Planes were constantly arriving and departing from the single, uncontrolled runway. Some just flew circuits but others showed off their formation flying or did low passes over the runway. Planes constantly taxiied in and out of the busy apron, and how no body got minced by a prop I do not know. This sort of thing would never be allowed in the UK!

The awesome Lightning kit-build two seater. I want one!

There was a strong show from the experimental and home-built categories, a popular and affordable option for private ownership, if you have the time and skills. These are certainly not the shonky box-like death traps you might imagine, but often very modern, high performance composite aircraft with advanced avionics. Take a look at the Lighting for example - it can cruise at 140 mph while burning 5 gallons per hour and is fully aerobatic. Not bad for something you can knock up in your garage in a few hundred hours.

The Commemorative Air Force museum also put on a good show with an impressive number of still-flying and very highly polished WWII era planes including a B25 twin-engine bomber that was so shiny you could see your face in it.

Another kit aircraft, the Cozy has the engine and prop at the back, the
elevator at the front and the fins and rudders on the wing tips.
Either a genius design or plain contrary I'm not sure...

Little and large!

Someone has got far too much time on their hand for polishing.

Two Phoenix Transitions

The flight line at dawn - Red Mountain in the background

Phoenix Transition 1

As predicted, our move to Falcon Field over on the east side of Phoenix has not gone entirely smoothly. The operation here is cursed with a horrendous computer system for planning and dispatch that is the source of a lot of stress, maintenance is a perennial problem and I don't think the staff were quite ready for the extra workload of 45 extra students, 10 instructors and two more aircraft fleets.

Despite the wrinkles, we are making slow but steady progress and getting familiar with the area. I have been lucky with another excellent instructor who also happens to be an examiner and hence knows exactly what we need to learn for the tests.

Yes, another test is looming — progress test three — due around the end of this week. This one is a navigation test, where a flight is planned and flown on visual 'dead reckoning' techniques, no radio aids or GPS allowed!

Falcon Field - our new home base

At some point en route the examiner will call for a diversion. We then have a few minutes to plan a new leg in the air, figuring out the distance, time and heading (accounting for wind), altitude, fuel burn and arrival time. Arrival at the diversion point must be within three minutes of our stated time, which is actually a lot more generous than it sounds. The hardest part is flying the aircraft competently and keeping a good lookout while our head is down and hands are busy figuring out all this stuff.

It is also a dead-cert that at some point the engine will "catch fire", and we will need to execute an emergency descent to a forced landing on a suitable spot with all the associated checks. A forced landing in a small plane is really no different to a normal landing in a glider, except the glide ratio is a lot worse and there are no air brakes, so good judgement of our height relative to our landing spot is needed. We don't actually touch down in the desert of course, once the examiner is happy the engine will magically restart and we "go around" which is simply a full-throttle best-climb get-the-hell-out-of-there manoeuvre.

Airspace

Phoenix has some of the busiest skies in the world. Of course, there are commercial jets in and out of Sky Harbor, one of the world's busiest airports. But the good weather and large distances attracts lots of general aviation (small private planes) and skydivers. Then there are extensive military operations, helicopters, some gliding and ballooning and of course heaps and heaps of student pilots. One of the ways this mess is kept in some sort of order is through classes of airspace.

An airspace is simply a defined region of space that has special rules attached to it. They may start at the surface or they may be suspended in mid air. Their boundaries are clearly shown on our maps, but sadly no one has yet worked out a way to mark them in the sky so these vital boundaries are totally invisible to the pilot.

Some types of airspace are strictly off-limits to us, and entering them even if briefly and accidentally has serious repercussions. Prohibited and active restricted areas fall into this category, as does class B airspace such as the one protecting the busy Skyharbour international airport.

Others we can use, but only if we follow the correct procedures. Our own base for example is a class D airspace, which means we can only enter if we are in communication with the control tower.

Airspace around Falcon Field

There is a lot of other airspace near Falcon field. Just to the west we have Sky Harbor's class B starting at 2700'. Our airport is at 1400' and we fly the pattern at 2400' so this does not give a large margin for error.

To the south we have the busy Phoenix Mesa Gateway airport which operates regional passenger jets. It has not only a class D zone to 3900' but also an instrument approach, which means large, fast traffic will approach the airport through 'our' practice area without looking where they are going.

Just south-east of this is restricted area R-2310 which for years lay dormant, but is now used for testing unmanned military drones. Let's not tangle with those!

Above all this, between 5000' and 10,000' is a huge aerobatics box used by a local company for upset recovery training. We will be doing this course soon, which is going to be an amazing experience, so I'm not moaning too much about that one.

Finally, a little further south we have some very busy parachuting areas and some radio beacons where a lot of people practice holds and instrument approaches. These latter two are not strictly airspace, but definitely best avoided.

Phoenix Transition  2

Sky Harbor seen from the transition

Phoenix Sky Harbor has its three runways running east-west, and with its extensive airspace and constant traffic it effectively cuts the entire area in half making it very difficult and long-winded to fly from the north to the south of the city and visa versa.

To address this problem there is a special route called the Phoenix transition. This allows small aircraft flying visually to enter the class B airspace and fly straight across the ends of Sky Harbor's runways.

Although this sounds balmy, flying at right-angles over the middle or ends of a runway is fairly safe as all the traffic taking off and landing will be well below you. You will only be in anybody's way if they make an early go-around or missed approach, meaning they didn't like their approach to land and want to climb up and try it again. Plus you have air traffic control keeping a close eye on things for you.

Still, it is not something to undertake lightly and student pilots are not permitted to try it. So it was a nice surprise when our instructor decided to shoot the transition during a lesson last week. It was quite an experience trundling overhead down-town Phoenix and one of the world's busiest airports, the heavy traffic passing just below.

Downtown Phoenix, with the Chase Field baseball
stadium in front, roof open.

Goodbye Goodyear

The school parking ramp looking is deserted as the planes
are shuttled over to Falcon Field

No, sadly I am not headed home just yet, but we are saying our goodbyes to Goodyear municipal airport. After nine years, the flight school is leaving and relocating to Falcon Field way over on the other side of Phoenix.

We have mixed feelings about the move; it seems to be due to corporate machinations rather than anything aviation related, and it is a shame to lose such a great base just for financial reasons. The new base is massive with lots of flight schools operating from a large new building, and the airspace around the twin-runway airport is positively buzzing with students from around the world. To move to a busier and therefore arguably less safe airspace does not make sense to me, but what do I know? I am just a lowly cadet.

Unfortunately my instructor has resigned (again — I hope I don't get a reputation) so it looks like there could be some delays ahead. In anticipation I have been packing in as much flying as I can in the last fortnight. As a result I am nearly two-thirds of the way through the course.

I am now just shy of the 100 hours milestone — one of several points in a pilot's career at which he is at the greatest risk statistically. Why? I suspect it is the point that you really feel that you know what you are doing, but you are very wrong! I will try to remember that I am still very much a beginner.

Today I flew the last of three land-away double solo trips. It was a fiendish route with a ridiculous number of turn-points several of which were difficult to spot. But it went really well, and it was a joy to fly in the smooth air of autumn now the temperatures have reached sensible levels and the turbulence has abated. The cafe at Chandler Municipal Airport is now my favourite, and I hope that we will be able to make it a regular stop after the move. I think Goodyear will also be a regular stop, one tinged with nostalgia for students and staff alike.

Until next time. Goodbye Goodyear!

Training wheels are off

So much as happened since my last post I don't really know where to begin.

Yesterday I flew and passed my second progress test, although only just. Luck was not on my side as I had the schools most famously strict examiner and a nasty hot, rough afternoon to fly in. I didn't do myself justice but at least I got through.

So after feeling a bit down about the test, it was wonderful to fly today's solo navigation flight which could not have been more different. It was a calm, mild day (only 32C), I was assigned one of my favourite planes. The route was familiar but also had some longer legs which allow just a little time for sightseeing and contemplation.

For us, the person in the right seat is either an instructor or an examiner which means stress, concentration and hard work. It's great to get up alone and be the master of your own schedule. Every check feature and turn-point appeared at the right time, in the right place just as my planning said it would. Visibility was almost unlimited at 7500', the desert was looking majestic and I could look down at Phoenix far away festering under a yellow sheet of its own pollution. Once back at base, I threw in three glide circuits just to check I had not really forgotten how to glide and land properly, and they too went perfectly. If only I could have flown like that yesterday; c'est la vie.

Solo navigation

Much of our time now is spent on solo navigation routes. These are flown with good old fashioned "dead reckoning" techniques as used by sailors for centuries, with a bit of help from radio navigation aids. We do have some very nice GPS units in the planes which will navigate for you, but frankly that is just cheating.

The routes typically take about two hours, and the school supplies a list of the points they would like us to fly to. The rest is up to us, and there is a great deal of planning and paperwork required before we can actually fly.

The night before, we can mark the route on the map. This is not simply a line, but all the information we need for the flight. There will be checkpoints chosen so we can monitor our progress, drift lines to help assess wind, information on altitudes, headings and times to fly for each leg, radio frequencies to use, airspace to watch out for and so on. This is the most time consuming part.

The next job is the flight log, which is a kind of manual spreadsheet. Starting from the bearings and distances from the map, we have to work out what headings and times to actually fly. This does not sound too hard, but there is a lot to take into account; magnetic variation and wind affect the heading (which way you point the aircraft to achieve a particular direction on the ground). Wind, pressure and temperature all affect your ground speed which can be quite a bit different from the speed indicated in the aircraft. The flight log comes along with us and gets scrawled on extensively during the flight with timings, frequencies and any other information we wish to record.

Then there is the flight plan form to complete and file over the phone, the mass and balance to calculate, the risk assessment to complete and the all-important weather briefing. All this gets presented to the duty instructor to pick holes in, who will grumble a bit and finally authorise the flight and endorse our logbook. Finally there is just the dispatch log-out sheet and the aircraft tech log to complete. For every hour flying, there is probably another hour of paperwork to go with it.

Just some of the paperwork for tomorrow's flight

Flying the routes is very busy at first. In addition to the usual aircraft handling and numerous check lists we are navigating using the planned data and the map, trying not to get lost and fanatically looking out of the windows like a crazed meercat for other planes.

At the same time we need to talk to a lot of different people on the radio. We have two radios, each of which can be tuned to two frequencies and flipped between them. Even so, there are times when I wish there were three.

We will always be tuned to a frequency for the local traffic so we can report our position and listen to where everyone else is. The flight plans we file have to be activated by radio. If we are lucky, Phoenix Sky harbour or Luke Air Force Base will give us a radar service called "flight following" where they keep an eye on us and maybe warn us about traffic and other hazards. Usually though, they cannot be bothered. We need to talk to air traffic control when arriving and departing, and finally most airports have a recorded weather/information service we are required to listen to.

After all this planning and flying, we have a bit of down time then it is time to start all over again. In this case, doubled...

Tomorrow is another big day; my first land-away solo. This time the route heads way down south out of familiar territory and all the way to Tucson. Here I must land at a strange airport, run by mean and scary controllers (maybe), figure out how to refuel the plane and myself, then fly a different route back. Twice the paperwork yes, but I'm sure more than twice the fun.

Sightseeing

After a wonderful three-week visit by my wife, where we squeezed in all sorts of tourist stuff around my flying schedule, she had to go back home last week to work in rainy old England. Sounds very unfair I know, but I'm sure the boot will be on the other foot in a few years time.

I will leave you with some pictures of our travels around Phoenix, Tucson, Patagonia and the surrounding countryside. Until next time.

The red rocks of Sedona

Scottsdale

The roof opens at the immense Chase Field ballpark (we lost again)

Some gorgeous girl I met at the baseball getting into the local culture.

Cactus flowers for lunch

Ten engine madness at the Pima air museum

Worlds smallest flying aircraft - six foot wingspan.

Epic Saguaro cactus near Lake Pleasant

There's tons more but I would bore you and it's dinner time. Tomorrow; Tucson!

UPDATE 21/9/13. The trip to Ryan Field near Tucson went great once I'd finally waded through the sea of paperwork. There proved to be at least six of us doing the route today so there was a sort of relay breakfast going on at the excellent airport cafe. On the return flight I managed to get the thing up to 8500', which is pretty good for these temperatures. Nice and cool up there, great views and hardly any traffic. A couple of times I made the classic error of talking on the wrong radio, with the consequence that Tucson approach now think I am an idiot. Oh well, they are only the second largest airport in Arizona. I should apologies to the radar guys for saying they can't be bothered with us. They were great today, covering me for the whole trip and handing off seamlessly between centres. Incredibly actually I remembered to open and close both flight plans - I must be getting the hang of this flying lark now. Tonight we are heading to the 24th Annual Goodyear Oktoberfest held in one of the maintenance hangers by the German Air Force. 1000 people are expected and the band and beer are flying in from Germany. Prost!

Fly by night

The flying lessons are in full swing now. I have a packed schedule; often my flying buddy and I have two missions per day, many of them solo.

Our instructor recently left the school, lured by a job flying small twin-piston passenger planes in Florida and our new instructor — by popular opinion one of the best — is pushing us hard. She's excellent but does have a bit of a penchant for very very early mornings. Well, it does get us out of the heat (it's only 30 degrees at 4am, but still 40 at 4pm) and early morning are all part of the airline pilot experience.

Better still my wonderful wife is over on an extended visit. Life is good!

Seeing where you are going

There are basically two types of flying — visual and instrument. When flying visually you navigate, avoid traffic and handle the plane based 90% on what you can see outside the window. Visual flying is what small aircraft, gliders and private pilots do pretty much the whole time.

To fly visually you obviously must be able to see where you are going. We have some fairly complex requirements called the Visual Meteorological Conditions, and these bascially specify how far you must be able to see and how far away from clouds you must stay.

If you do not meet these requirements you are by definition in Instrument Meteorological Conditions and let's hope you have been trained and got your Instrument Rating, or you are now in some serious trouble.

Practicing instrument flying under the "hood"

In instrument meteorological conditions you may be able to see quite well, or you may be able to see absolutely nothing. You may now have to handle the plane entirely on what the little dials indicate.

To navigate you must rely on radio beacons on the ground, GPS still being quite novel in aviation. And to avoid hitting anyone else you are going to need help from an air traffic controller. Instrument flying is what airline pilots do 99% of the time.

So... what if you have excellent visibility and no clouds but it happens to be night time? Is it visual or not?

Well, oddly enough it depends on what country you are in. Some say yes, some say no, some say you will need an extra rating on your licence. Here in the USA they are quite happy to let pilots fly visually at night, and in fact it is part of our training requirements. (In the UK it used to be banned, but they have recently allowed it.)

Flying at night

So what is night flying like? A lot of fun, but also a little scary. We usually start the lessons just as sun sets, this way the later part of the flight is in true darkness but first we get some beautiful sunsets over the dramatic desert scenery which is wonderful.

As night falls, landmarks slowly disappear and lights on the ground become your main navigational aid. The surroundings rapidly become unfamiliar and it is easy to get disorientated even very close to home. Roads and towns show up well, and airport beacons of course, but lakes, mountains, railways and the all-important horizon slowly fade away into the night.

These days we live surrounded by bright artificial light and people rarely take the time to walk in the dark, away from habitation. Hence they often don't realise how much you can see. It is never truly dark, there is often moonlight or starlight and even when it is cloudy some filters through. If you give your eyes time, trust your feet, and do not use a torch, you will be amazed at your own night vision.

Final approach at night. There is a parallel runway to the right
and the four white lights (PAPIs) to the side of the left runway show the
pilot is a little high on this approach.

In the plane, we keep the lighting of the instruments and the cockpit low. As the flight progresses and the eyes adapt we keep turning it down. Slowly night sight develops and outside features start to reappear. Strangely, you can often see things better if you don't look directly at them.

Usually the air will be calm, cool and smooth though we had one memorable flight picking our way between thunderstorms, diverting and then diverting from the diversions and finally making a dash back home just before the heavens opened.

Runways are festooned with coloured lights, each of which has a special meaning to the pilot. But these lights are surprisingly difficult to make out when you are not lined up with the runway, making judgement of the circuits more difficult. Height too is harder to judge and the final approach feels quite strange until at last the runway surface texture appears in the landing light at about 10-15 foot and the landing is quite normal.

The scary part? You can not see the mountains. And engine failure. In a single engine aeroplane an engine failure is a pretty big deal, which is why we practice for it so much. But an engine failure at night when you can't see the ground is a lot more worrying. If you can see the ground — because it is lit — then it is probably not where you want to land. If you can not see it, you have no idea what the surface is like until you 'arrive'. I suspect this is why they don't let us do solo navigation flights at night.

Bye bye, sunshine.

Now I am signed off for both solo navigation and solo night flying, I have a busy few weeks building solo hours leading up to the next progress test. This is quite a big event in our training, and is similar to the private pilot licence skills test back home. Well... I passed it last time!

Ups and downs

Common sense suggests that if you work steadily at something, you will get steadily better at it. But as usual, life disagrees; improvement goes in sudden jumps and sometimes you have to get worse before you get better.

Left: how you think you learn
Right: how you actually learn!

Two weeks ago, things weren't going very well, and despite a successful solo flight I was really struggling with flying circuits. One problem was workload — I needed at least two extra brains to cope with the radio, traffic, circuit pattern and actually flying the plane. This is a frustrating barrier because there is no systematic way to overcome it.

The second problem was adapting to a different method of controlling the plane during the most critical part of the flight — final approach. In all my previous flight experience, the philosophy has been to control the air speed with the stick/yolk/elevator and the rate of descent with the throttle/air brakes. Here, on final, we do it the other way around meaning I had to constantly fight my automatic responses. Sometimes previous experience can be a hindrance!

These two difficulties led to a horrible lesson where nothing seemed to go right, and my instructor reasonably decided not to let me fly solo again. I felt frustrated and depressed, which was compounded by the apparent indignity of having to ask the boss for permission for extra training flights.

I need not have worried, he was a total gentleman about it and also offered a lot of helpful advice. The first extra lesson went a little better, but I decided to make use of two of the three lessons he offered just to consolidate. The second lesson too went reasonably well as did the three solo circuits I flew afterwards.

However the next item on the timetable was my Progress Test 1. Had I really killed my gremlins? I was not convinced, and felt sure I was bound to miss radio calls or be unable to fly stable approaches. It didn't help that the briefing was at 7.30am and the test eventually took place at 2.30pm leaving plenty of time to stew.

By this time was stinking hot (42C) and bumpy. Neither me nor the examiner were looking forward to it. I was, I felt, rather lined up for a fall. Being a bit nervous I made a fairly fundamental mistake almost straight away, skipping over an entire checklist. Fortunately I realised before entering the runway and was able to rectify it.

Like the big boys, we aim to fly to the runway on a fixed
slope of 3 degrees. To help, lights called PAPIs are installed
which will show whether you are above or below this slope.
There's nothing clever going on; they are just "Ovaltine
tins with a metal plate welded in at 3 degrees." (David Gunson)

But then something unexpected happened — just when I needed it everything fell together. Suddenly I had time to think during the circuits. Each time I rolled out of the final turn I found myself on the correct slope, and managed to keep it stable all the way down. Even the landings were pretty good.

Perhaps it was the examiner, who was one of the most friendly and calming instructors I have flown with. But I think it is more about the vagaries of the learning process — I had finished getting worse and was quite suddenly getting it right. Tasks that were taking all my concentration just a few days before had become automatic, spare brain capacity had appeared. Incredibly, I found that I was even able to manage a friendly chat (about gliding) during the circuit. It felt almost as if someone else — someone much better — was flying for me. In the debrief the examiner had nothing to criticize except of course for the checklist cock-up and gave me an excellent mark.

So a valuable lesson learned; progress will not be smooth and I should not get upset and frustrated when things don't work out as planned. Help is waiting. I will not blame myself for failures, and I will not take too much pride in successes either. As Baz Luhrmann said;

"sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind…the race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself. Remember the compliments you receive, forget the insults; if you succeed in doing this, tell me how."

Going solo

This morning I flew my "first" solo flight — and subsequently suffered the traditional dunking in the pool in full uniform by my classmates.

The first time you are trusted to fly an aeroplane solo is a significant and memorable moment in any pilot's career. Whatever your opinion might be, the instructor has decided that you are skilful and safe enough to execute a circuit* in sole command of a valuable aircraft without undue hazard to life or property. It can't be an easy decision for them.
 
For the student, it's an exciting but nerve-racking experience, the aim being to do nothing new or different, just get the thing around and back down safely. Only there is no-one to correct your mistakes, point out deviations or help you out on the radio any more, it's all down to you. There is no-one to talk to either, but I still chunter away just the same.

I wasn't expecting to go solo today, partly because there was too much crosswind on the runway, and partly because recent lessons had not gone as well as I had hoped. But a lot time spent at the weekend "chair-flying" around imaginary circuits seemed to pay off.

I flew six circuits with the instructor; two normal powered, two without use of flaps and two glide circuits where the engine is cut at some distance from the runway and the rest of the landing executed "dead stick".

You might think that a glider pilot would be at some advantage here, but a Piper Warrior with the engine idle is no glider — it descends laughably steeply, something like 1 in 10, and my first attempt was headed well short of the runway threshold. At least I got to practice a 'go-around' (abandoned landing) which is a very important manoeuvre used to get the hell out whenever things are not looking good during a landing.

So I was a little surprised when at the end of the lesson the instructor said "good job", pointed out that the wind had dropped, and sent me off to do a circuit alone. Despite the fact that I have had two "first" solos already — in gliders and motor-gliders — there was enough new and different about this experience to make me just a little nervous.

It's normal practice to tell the control tower it is a first solo, so they can try to get you around without any holds or modifications to the circuit. But this did mean holding short and waiting for quite some time for a big enough gap in the traffic. With no airspeed there is no ventilation, the doors and windows are shut and it is 36C outside. By the time I was cleared to take-off I was melting.

Normally we fly lessons with two students, one instructor, 200 lbs of fuel and a fair bit of baggage. On this flight I was alone with 60lbs less fuel, so the plane was somewhat more... lively. The 'rotation' (take-off) speed of 65 knots came around very quickly and when I reached the cross-wind turn at 500' I was still over the runway.

The circuit was, as required, boring and conventional and I don't think I fluffed any radio calls today (at last). The approach was one of my better ones though the ensuing landing, while in no way dangerous, certainly left no doubt that I was back on the ground. All that remained was to taxi back to the parking where my instructor was waiting, looking mightily relieved.

After a couple of hours of consolidation training in the circuits the next hurdle awaits... progress test one.

* A 'circuit' consists of a take-off, a rectangular loop around the airfield usually to the left and a landing. You get to practice taking off, various check-lists, lots of radio work, flying the climb, levelling off, traffic awareness, holding altitude, turning, descending, use of flaps and of course approach and landing. Most of the key pilot skills in fact, crammed in to just five or six minutes.

The standard circuit