Bored_Z

Today is my off day. Cadets are to take one day off out of a week due to legal reasons. I like flying and the thought of a forced day off wasn't something that I liked. It's not as if flying takes the whole day. That was my opinion until I started navigation. Two days ago I went on a three hour nav flight. Three hours doesn't seem like a long time until you're stuck in a small cockpit with a rather hefty instructor, five thousand feet above the ground, being rocked about by thermals and sea breazes, at thirty three degree temperatures, and without a water bottle.

Halfway through the flight I was starting to feel light headed. Since this is my first flight with this instructor. I struck up a conversation to get to know him better. This alleviated my lightheadedness somewhat. By the time we were on our final leg of the flight, I started having strong urges to just open the window and let cooler air into the plane. Through some miracle I managed to get through the sortie "excellently" as my instructor told me, except for my last landing where I let the nose drop and had a rather shaky landing. After a quick debriefing, I went to the cooler and drank several cups of water. Got into my air conditioned room, set it on high and dropped dead for a few hours. Good thing for off days, managed to get over the dehydration. Unfortunately, I'm not put up for a flight tomorrow.

Lesson learned is to bring water on nav flights.

I never knew that level busting could bring so many problems. Level busting is when you fly higher than the specified height. Airspace has many layers to it. For example the training area nearby is only from the surface to six thousand feet, six to eighteen thousand is generally for military, and eighteen to twenty four is mostly commercial.

Today a small cessna went into control airspace, flew too high and entered the Perth Airport control airspace. Apparently two commercial flights from Perth International had to be delayed as the control tower was trying to contact the person to ask the person's intentions and to turn back. A one thousand kilogramme plane holding back a 777! Imagine that.