Back to it... phase 2 in progress.

So AP360 (my course) where treated to a week off after our EASA's- I spent much of it seeing friends, family and relaxing, the weather was great and good to catch up with everyone- but I think rightly I was looking forward to getting back to OAA and continuing with the course.

Time away from OAA with Pip

The old man and I going for a beer and fish and chips when I was home

We arrived back last Sunday and hit the ground running with lectures on Monday. Phase 2 is different from phase 1, it would seem it is slightly harder, 3 weeks shorter and much more maths and physics, which is great because we are learning about skills that we will be using everyday such as the mass and balance of an aircraft- correction, aeroplane, there is a difference, pernickety...! I also took part in the open day at OAA which was enjoyable speaking to potential OAA students and showing them around OAA- I wish them the very best of luck in their assessments.

Like a doctor has their trusty stethoscope we have our Flight Computer; a CRP-5 to be precises. We have been learning recently how to use its- its a marvelously bit of kit, no power required, never updates its self or crashes... it tells us everything we need to know on a daily basis such as true air speeds, wind velocities, units conversions etc- its ingenious.

Other noticeable things we have done is started our visa process for the USA- this obviously means plentiful form filling and then a trip to the US embassy in London in a few weeks for a interview- but our flight details have been sorted, so only an interview and 14 exams now stand in my way.

However;

The course that OAA provide is essentially for our Airline Transport Pilots License (ATPL) but we also do a foundation degree in Airline Transport studies on top of our ATPL (just in case our 66,000 pages of theory wasn't enough!)- so we are effectively doing two courses together, luckily the degree doesn't take up nearly as much time as our ATPL and the majority of it is done in the USA when we have a bit more free time between flying- we do the degree because OAA carried out some market research about 5 years previously and reported that airlines want new pilots to have a better understanding of current aviation, hence we now do the degree which gives us a good advantage on what to expect.

So it its now Saturday and I am working all day and will be tomorrow also, but its only another 7 weeks of tuition so as advised by previous courses time management is going to be very important in the next few weeks to keep up to date with everything- with the nights drawing in, I expect my desk light to be on for a lot longer.

Thanks for reading as ever.

Do we really need to go this far back in our studies!?