I decided to work towards the European rating first. I had no European commercial license and couldn't get one due to the medical restriction. I could add the instructor rating onto my PPL as long as I met the minimum hours requirement and I took the commercial written exams.
After a few months of being out on the road, I decided to enrol in the JAA commercial ground school. This was at Coventry with Atlantic Flight Training. It was close enough to home for me to be able to commute daily.
It was a 7 month course and a really tough set of exams. Most of it wasn't relevant to the everyday flying you would do even as an airline pilot. These exams were written to filter out those who weren't dedicated. The advantage of doing it in a classroom environment was making new friends that are all doing the same thing, so my study was more regimented.
I wasn't flying very much during this period of time, as I didn't really have the time. I had to keep driving trucks on weekends to earn any money at all, as my week days were taken up in the classroom. I took on a regular Sunday run to Bournemouth airport with the mail that would be flown to the channel islands. So I used to enjoy driving down on a Sunday afternoon, then taking a tacho break in the museum.
It was around this time was when the RB group fell apart. Politics at Sywell meant that their rates increased. As a result, the members hourly rates had to be increased proportionately. All the members dis-banded and the aircraft were sold. It was a great shame when that happened, but at least it happened at a time when I had built up the hours I needed. I had such a good run with that Auster, that I had satisfied my vintage aircraft fix for a while without suffering withdrawal symptoms.
What happened then a bit later in the summer, was a Taylorcraft. It was one which had been on the airfield for a number of years, but it changed hands. The new owner was a really nice guy and he knew how much I enjoyed flying slow, classic planes with some character. So he put me on the insurance and let me take it out whenever I felt like having a fix. Below is some video footage that I took when I was flying it in formation with a friend in his Auster Aiglet.
Eventually, I got through those exams. After a few months back on the trucks full time to save up some more money, I returned to Florida again to one of those JAA schools for the European instructor rating. I went to European Flight Training (EFT) in Fort Pierce. They appeared to be the only school in the US at the time who could teach the JAR instructor rating. They had an entire wing of the Pines apartment complex in Vero beach for housing all their students who were there from all over the world.
There were folks doing their initial PPLs right the way through to their multi-engine commercial instrument and every JAA course in between. I made a few friends there. We had a great social scene in the evenings which sometimes involved a bbq by the swimming pool.
There were 4 of us on the instructor course. An Englishman, Irishman, Flying Dutchman and an American sounding Norwegian. On the first morning of the course, we were handed gold bars to wear on our shoulders. They had a ranking system. 2 bars if you had a PPL, 3 for CPL, 4 for CPL IR. So I had 4 bars, and felt a bit silly putting them on my shirt then getting into a Cessna 172.
Next, we were introduced to our instructor instructors, and then were introduced to Bloggs. Bloggs is who our instructors turn into from time to time. Bloggs is a make believe student who is rather unpredictable.
So with 4 of us on the course and 2 instructor instructors / Bloggs's, we had 2 C172s between us and we would back-seat each others lessons. This back seat time was very valuable, as well as being free. It meant we had the chance to observe the lesson again, without having to fly. This gave us the chance to take down notes, and make up a lesson plan in the back seat for when it was our turn to teach this lesson back to Bloggs.
The course consisted of 30 hours flying and several hours of classroom briefings that we were learning to conduct. The airport at Fort Pierce had a nice restaurant which we all frequented everyday at lunchtime.
At the end of the course, I drew the short straw and was the first to be tested. The examiner had given me the subject I had to prepare a technical briefing on. It was altimetry. I started preparing for it on the night of one of the shuttle launches. I hadn't seen one before, so I had to go and see that from the nearby beach. Then I came back to prepare the briefing but when I set foot in the apartment, the water tank burst and flooded the place out. So that night was gone while having to get housing to sort out the plumber.
Fortunately, I had the weekend to prepare for my test which was going to be on the Monday. So that weekend, most people were in around the apartment complex or in the pool. I wanted to gather some students together so that I could practise giving this briefing to them before I had to give it to the examiner the following day. The first apartment I went to, the guy said he would be along shortly and handed my saucepan to me. I carried on knocking peoples doors with my saucepan, telling them that they will come and sit in on my briefing or else the saucepan will hurt.
One of the guys was a genuine PPL student who would have been learning altimetry at the time. So I was using him to teach it to. Once I was satisfied that he had grasped it, and the other guys voiced their objective opinions. I got to the point where I felt like I was ready.
The day of the test was very long. I met the examiner at 8am. I finished with him at 5pm. The test started with the lesson brief. Next we got in the plane and did the flight portion. I had to teach him straight and level. I was pleased with the way I conducted that lesson and I actually started enjoying it, which he picked up on. After a break for lunch, it was my technical briefing on altimetry. I taught it back to the examiner with confidence and was quite pleased with. Finally, general questions and answers. This is where he accidentally picked up on my weak point. Lift vector diagrams, graphs and maths formula's. I'm not terribly good with things like that, I'm more of a hands on pilot. I hung in there and I did my best. I was mentally and physically drained, but I managed to pull it off. When he told me I had passed, the weight of the world just got up off my shoulders, and all of a sudden I felt full of energy again. It’s one of the best feelings. Earlier in the blog, I've mentioned that passing a test gives me an ear to ear grin. Its because of the moment when you hear those words, that is the moment when you have achieved the thing that you have worked so hard for, and it is combined with relief that the hard work is over and it has all paid off.
I was the first out of the 4 of us to get through. So when I got back to the apartment complex that night, the other 3 wanted to know everything about the test and about the examiner.
I was still there for a little while after having passed. What I decided to do with the rest of my time there, was add the FAA multi-engine rating onto my existing FAA commercial instrument. It was only a short course, and made sense to do it then at this school which happened to have a fleet of Beech Duchess pictured below on the left hand side.
The first couple of hours in a twin, I felt like I wasn't on top of it. It didn't take long though once I got the feel for how two engines either side of me makes the plane behave. A lot of the multi engine rating is to shut an engine down and fly on one in case one failed. Since the FAA multi is an addon to my CPL IR, I was required on test to fly an ILS approach where the examiner at some point would simulate an engine failure on one of the engines by bringing the power back. I would have to continue the approach single engine on the ILS and land.
That was the one thing that caused me to partial in the test. Rote procedure when the examiner failed one engine. I checked mixtures rich, props full forward, throttles full forward. I indentified which engine had failed, but when I increased the power on the live engine, I wasn't quick enough on the rudder to catch the swing. Being so close in on the ILS, I got a full scale deflection quite quickly. So that was a partial pass.
Within half an hour of landing, I was back in the air with an instructor to go and do that again. Within half an hour of landing with the instructor, I was back in the air with the examiner to go and complete the test. Cracked it this time.
So with an FAA multi engine commercial obtained a couple of hours ago at a European JAR approved school meant that one flight in the twin with a JAR examiner allowed me to get the JAR multi engine added to my JAR PPL. It was a relatively easy flight, I completed this the same night, and dis-enrolled myself from the school.
With one day and one penny left to spare, I finished just in time to make the flight back on Christmas Eve, to be home for Christmas Day.
