While the pace of collecting flight hours have slowed down after I completed my required solo navigation flights with my long cross-country on the 23rd of March (see details in the previous post), there was still plenty of things to be taken care of in order to complete my PPL training: I had to pass the final progress test, pass the theory exam, get an English Language Proficiency Certificate, and finally pass the check-ride (a.k.a. the skill test, or practical exam).

I typically set aside one day a week for studying (even when flying to Girona for a few days of cycling holidays, I was busy reading on the plane), but then I typically studied 8-12 hours continuously.

Three weeks after the last solo navigation, I decided that it was time to fly again, and just booked a simple training with the goal of doing more soft & short field practice (having had only one full stop landing and take-off from a grass field until then). We decided to fly to Grimbergen (EBGB), where I got my first introduction to general aviation back in 2019 in the right seat of a Cessna 172, which gave me the last necessary motivation to start with the PPL training. Now I could also put this aerodrome in my actual logbook ;)

The flight [#30, on the 16th of April] was a bit bumpy, the soft field landing and take-off went better than the first time (but I knew that I still needed a lot of experience in this field [haha, field, get it?]), while the instrumental flying exercises were easy but fun. It was also good to fly with an instructor again, not only for the exercises, but also for the chat along the way.

Unfortunately I had some issues with the GoPro setup for this flight (when I fly with an instructor I always feel bad about spending time with the setup, so I made some mistakes with the external power supply), meaning that on the first leg the wing view camera died already around take-off, and on the return leg my main camera died before landing. And even the audio gain level was set a bit incorrectly… :( Anyway, the video is still worth watching ;)

After another month of studying, I wanted go for a flight just to keep my flying skills in order, and maybe refine the soft field operations a bit further with the same instructor as on the last flight. Unfortunately or not, the administration of my flight school thought that I had made a mistake in booking, and so they changed my flight to a Final Progress Check with a different instructor. Even though that was really not my intention, the idea of doing the PT3 got into my head, and thus I went along with the changed plans. Continue reading →