Birthday Headsets

So for our birthdays in August, we each got each other some cool matching headsets for the Sling from MGL Avionics. Here I am trying them out with my other gifts and cards. And the good news is that our plane got registered today... ZU - ZDL !! Great going!! And "Hot Stuff" is expected to fly next week as well.

ZU - ZDL takes shape

Thanks Ivor for these latest photos of our Sling coming together at The Airplane Factory in Johannesburg. We had a little wobbly initially with the colour. We asked for a slightly deeper metalic red but initial photos distorted the colour and we nearly had it repainted back to original Sling red from the photos we saw. However lighting can be deceptive and we decided to stick with the metalic shade you see here. Looking awesome!

Hot Stuff!!

I know one is supposed to be original but this is the colour we have chosen for our Sling, so there will be a few of them around, but only one called "Hot Stuff". ZU-FNM arrived in Durban last weekend and ours will be the next red one here soon. It's getting very exciting as D-Day arrives to collect the plane and fly it back to Durban. Also exciting is my 85% pass in navigation today, so that makes it 7 exams down and only one final exam on Aircraft General to go.. that's the technical stuff, like where do you put the fuel, what does a carb do etc.. so nearly there!!

The same colouring and style of our Sling plane in production

Solo awards braai

Enjoying a braai at Light Flight School on Tuesday, Geoff and Noel handed out licence certificates and Solo awards to their students. Thanks guys for my certificate and for getting me this far. The sky's the limit, or is it?

93% for Mets

This one was better. 93% pass for Meteorology. It was a difficult exam though and required some guesswork - like knowledge of South African weather patterns in winter and summer ito movement of low and high pressure systems, and the cause of Berg winds for example. Anyhows, this makes it 6 exams done and only 2 to go.  WooHoo!!

So now it's Navigation re-write on Friday and Aircraft General on Monday. Let's hold thumbs.

Back to the drawing board

One of my flying instructors, Brad (centre) pops around for a drink and a braai with Llewellyn (right) and myself (left). This helped me re-focus after failing the Navigation exam yesterday and today it's back to the drawing board. I have Mets and Aircraft General next week as well as a re-write of Navigation on Friday.

It's definitely do-able, just needs me to refocus on that horrible  Whizz wheel thing I only bought this week for some of the calculations needed for the exam. I prefer to understand a concept and then manually calculate the answers using the formulas I know. Anyhow I never got to use the Whizz wheel in the exam and preferred to draw out the wind vectors with my protractor and did some angle measuring. Not good enough to pass but will get there with a bit more practice this week.

For Mets I have been doing some reading on some of the strange abbreviations you find to describe weather in Metars (Meteorological Aerodrome Reports) - here they are, with acknowledgment to Darren Smith who did the research.

4 down, 4 to go!

Just passed the half-way mark with 4 exams passed and 4 to go! Do hate these multiple choice questions though as they try and trick you changing a word here or there. Two more exams this week as I step up the pace so by Friday mid-day will hopefully only have the last two.