Happiness~!

I guess I missed the Christmas and the New Year celebrations.

It has been almost a month since my last post. Or was it already more than a month? LOL. I just know that it has been so long that I have almost forgotten the joy of typing and blogging. ^^,

Life has been busy for me. But albeit all that, I finally managed to find some time to blog again. ^^,

Anyway, I will be graduating soon. One more week to go and I will be home bound for good. ^^, After 18 months of training, I have to admit, I do learn a lot of new things and it has indeed made me wiser and made me a better person. I feel more grown up and felt that I am ready to take on the world. Although of course there are still many things for me to learn and experience. ^^,

Looking back 18 months ago, when I first step my foot into HMA, it does brings back a lot of memory. ~>.<~ I still remember I used to calculate the number of sorties I have to fly before I can graduate – a total of 179 sorties, clocking 200 hours and an infinite number of landings and take-offs. Now I have 7 more sorties to go – 2 simulator sorties and 5 actual flying. I use to dream of sitting in the cockpit. I use to dream of flying high in the sky. I dreamed of doing the ILS approaches. Looking at what I am doing now, it does feel like I am realizing my dream one by one. And it made me think back of those times where my family and all my friends were supporting me. ^^, They still do now, and I really appreciate it.

One more week to go….. I actually feel happy and sad at the same time. Happy for being finally graduating. Sad for leaving this place where I have reside for 18 months and leaving behind all those great instructors and friends….

Anyway, I guess I will stop here. I have to go see an instructor and get his signature for my paper work. ^^, Till I blog again, may god bless you. ^^, Be happy always. SMILE~! ^^,

Inactive

Today I am here to do a little update for you.

If you have noticed, I have not been posting anything on this blog for like almost 3 weeks already.

Well, if you wondered where have I disappeared to, don’t worry. I am still very much alive and kicking. ^^, Its just that life have been keeping my very very occupied these few weeks and I will only get more occupied until January of next year. No Christmas or New Year celebrations for me this year. I will just be focusing on my job.

It is indeed very sad for me. T.T But what to do. Currently, I don’t even have time for my meals, what more going online. LOL. Albeit all that, this inactivity will only be temporary. >.< When things start to clear up, post will be pouring in. ^^, I have so many backlogged post that I haven’t posted yet. >.< LOL.

Anyway, have a nice day and Merry Chiristmas and Happy New Year~! Just in case I couldn’t make it in time. ^^, Cheers~~!

 

Navex 5 – TGG -> Kerteh -> TGG

I guess the title says it all. ^^, Its the navigation ‘season’ again. ^^,

Well, I did my 5th Navigation sortie a.k.a Navex 5 yesterday. What a great way to start my October. ^^, I remembered I did my first solo on the first day of the month also – the 1st of December.

Anyway, it has been quite some time since I last did navigation sorties and from my past experiences, navigation is really fun. You get to enjoy the great view from above and practically it is quite simple in terms of flying because most of the time you will just be flying straight and level. ^^,

What makes navigation sorties complicated are the various preparations required. To put it simply, its like cooking a dish. You need all the ingredients, then you have to clean them, rinse them, cut them up, slice and finally mixing it all together to make a mouth-watering dish~! ^^,

I will not go into detail on how to prepare for the sortie. But if you need any info, feel free to ask. ^^,

Anyway, let’s get into the main dish for the day! As always, navigation sorties = tonnes of pictures + videos. I would first of all like to offer a huge thank you to my batch mate, Mohd. Afiq, for taking all those pictures and videos and the best of all compiling all of them into a single video. ^^,

Without further delay, I present to you, a 2 hours 10 minutes navigation sortie reduced into a 14-minute video. And just to help you to get your bearings right, please look at the picture of the map above at the beginning of the post. We will start from the Kuala Terengganu airfield (circled green) and would proceed in the clockwise direction (green arrow) with each tiny red circle on my map indicating a waypoint which you will see in the video.

Note : Since I am unable to upload this video to YouTube due to its length, I uploaded it to Facebook instead. Here’s the link to the video. I hope it works.

Navex 5 video here

Kuala Terengganu – Our Home

Again procrastination got the better of me. This should have been uploaded weeks ago.

But I guess this time procrastination does have it own advantages. The previous batch just left yesterday, so this morning, my room mate woke up early and he started cleaning the house. I woke up a little later to help him out (actually its a couple of hours later. Sorry~). >.< So because of procrastination, what you are going to see here today is a better, cleaner and a more organized house. ^^, Wahahahahaha.

This is what you see the moment you enter the house. ^^, Huge area to hang about and relax. ^^,

And this is what you see when I turn around to face the entrance. ^^,

Lets move forward in the hall and look at what’s out there beyond the sliding window.

Its a golf course. ^^, The view is really nice. All the greenery. Really good for relaxation.

This is the view from the sliding window looking back into the house towards the entrance. ^^,

Looking slightly to the left. We got couches to laze around also. And we also have Astro. ^^,

Going back to the entrance, if you turn left, this is what you see. Rooms are those with red doors while washroom are the light brown coloured door at the end of the hallway.

This is the master bedroom. It has a bathroom in it also.

Looking left, this is another room.

And this is our room. Next to the toilet. >.< Opposite the kitchen. I am not going to show you our room today, because it is really messy inside. >.<

This is the kitchen

With the washing machine inside. ^^,

Yup that’s basically our house. ^^, Quite comfortable actually. ^^, Till next time. Cheers~!

Kuala Terengganu – The Morning Sunrise

Kuala Terengganu is really an amazing place. Well, although there is not much entertainment here but the view is definitely gorgeous.

Have always wanted to share with you, but procrastination seems to take the better part of me. >.<

This is the view that greets me every morning when I come out of the house.

Probably you have already seen a ton of sunset photos, but I guess sunrise shots are a rare sight here in this site.

I love this picture below because of the really calm and gentle blue-purplish colour in the sky. Its really amazing.

This picture below is taken in the van on the way to the airport. The sun today looks a little different though. Looks more yellowish then orangey. >.<

But nevertheless, it is still an awesome sight to see. ^^,

I hope this post made your day shine even brighter! Enjoy your day and live life to its fullest! Cheers

Kuala Terrenganu

For those of you who don’t know, I am not at Kuala Terrenganu, not for holiday though but for my flight training. Will be staying here for about 2 months to clock about 80 more hours of flight time before heading back to Langkawi to complete my remaining flight training. ^^,

The journey here is not an easy one. We departed from HMA, Langkawi on the 6th of August at 1500 hours. The HMA van fetched us to the jetty which is about 30 minutes away. And this is what I am carrying with me :

A total of 3 bags. But weighs about 50kg I think. Need to carry my flight equipment, license and charts too. Which adds up to the weight of my uniform and other necessities and not forgetting 2 pairs of shoes. >.<

After we reach the jetty, we had an early dinner before boarding the ferry to Kuala Perlis, which took another hour.

Arrival at Kuala Perlis. This is my first time here and I can’t help it but took some pictures.

The ferry that we are on. And the ironic part, the ferry is called Kenangan 6 and there are actually 6 of us on this trip. How nice. ^^,

After the ferry, we have to walk about 500m to the bus station. 500m might seem like a short distance. But lugging 50kg of cargo makes this 500m feels like 500 miles. Took us a good 10 – 15 minutes to get to the bus station. T.T

After that things are fairly straight forward here. Board the bus, sit for 10 hours and viola – Kuala Terrenganu! Though the bus ride is a little bumpy and I hit my head countless times on the window. An exciting trip nevertheless minus the cargo. ^^,

So we departed HMA, Langkawi at 1500 on the 6th and arrived at HMA, Kuala Terrenganu at 0530 on the 7th. A total of 14 hours and 30 minutes of travelling. And that did not even include the cleaning time yet. Had to take another 3 hours to clean our rooms. And they did not even give us clean bed sheet. We have to wash the ones found at the house which is like its haven’t been washed for years! Take a whiff and you will pass out immediately. >.<

After that, we had a briefing on the operating procedures and areas and immediately after that, we went shopping for some essential stuffs at the town. Come back at 11pm, and we have to wake up at 6am the next day because we have familiarisation flight. It was hectic and tiring.

I am still feeling the effects now but nevertheless I am happy because I get to see some really nice places from the air during my flight – Pulau Redang, Pulau Kapas and the Kuala Terrenganu town.

Probably I will post pictures of my house soon. We live right next to a golf resort and the house is pretty nice and comfortable. ^^, Looking out the window and you will see the golf course. If you want to find it on Google Earth, just find the Kuala Terrenganu airport, look up north a lil and you will see the golf course with some houses there. That’s me there. ^^,

CA2 Debriefing

Forgot that I still have not seen this photos after transferring them into my com >.<

This was taken on the day after our CA2 examination – during the debriefing. ^^,

Of course there are lots more pictures but they are too obscene to be shared. >.< LOL. What do you expect!? LOL.

Spot me in this picture. ^^,

All these pictures were not taken by me but by Afiq. The man on the front row, left most (your left).

Our Loading instructor. ^^, Capt. Tharani.

This is our instructor for Performance A. Capt. Gautam “See figure 18 now and find the gross gradient at 400ft.” LOL.

And the last but not the least. Definitely not the least! Capt. Rana who teaches us both Air Law and Human Performance Limit. It was so much fun. ^^,

CA2 definitely is the greatest phase of ground school. Everyday was filled with so much fun and 9 weeks felt so fast. Definitely not enough.

And with the Danial a.k.a Mr. Bean we all know, he is always up to something. ^^,

The day is ending. Tomorrow shall be another new one. Cherish everyday and live everyday like there is no tomorrow. Cheers~!

My Road to The Skies Part II – The Flying School

This is the second part of my road to the skies. The first part was written 13 months ago and can be found here

The reason why I chose today to publish this post is because it marks a very significant point of my life.

This time, today and exactly 365 days ago, 16 of us departed from Kuala Lumpur coming over to Langkawi to begin our 18 months long flight training.

Everything was really alien to us. Everything was new to us. I think none of us would have ever dreamt that this day will be possible. Everybody looked really fantastic and everyone is clearly excited. At least that’s what I felt.

The 16 of us posing for pictures with our ride behind us – 9M-MMB.

This is the beginning of a new journey…..

We started our training with the Private Pilot’s License (PPL) Phase which consist of 4 weeks of ground school and we study all the basic stuffs. Stuffs like airframe, engines, theory of flight, basic navigation, meteorology, radio telephony and air law.

I think everyone in the batch would remember this picture.

For the first 2 weeks we are here, we need to attend Physical Training(PT) sessions. Twice per day actually. 0530 hours and 1700 hours. Waking up at 530 in the morning? Not easy at all! But after all, a pilot needs to be fit and healthy all the time. We still have PT now but only during the evening. >.<

After the 4 weeks of PPL, we proceeded to this stage called the DCA Technical (DCAT) Phase which consists of 9 weeks of ground school.

During this phase we go more into details of what we have learnt in the PPL phase and also the subject are a lot more technical. There are also more subjects to learn.

The books that we use in DCAT….

And Captain Swaminathan. One of the best Captain I have met so far. Too bad he has already left the school. ToT

After a total of 13 weeks in ground school, we proceeded to the PPL Flying Phase. This phase is suppose to take about 2 months but due to certain complications, we took more time than planned.

My first ever flight license, the Student Pilot’s License.

You know, I remember during my interview, I asked the Captain who was interviewing me, what was his most memorable moment in flying up to now.

His answer was simple : “The only thing that you can really remember for the rest of your life is when you do your first solo”

For me, there are a few really memorable moments for me.

The first one was during my familiarisation flight. It was a short one. Less than 10 minutes. But it was enough. The very moment the Captain taxies the aircraft onto the runway, the feeling that I felt is just amazing. Its like your inner self is shouting at you “Hey look, we are on the runway! And its extremely wiiiide” >.<

The second thing that I really remember and perhaps the most precious one for me is when I first start up the aircraft.

The moment when you insert the keys and turning it from the Left Magneto position to the Right Magneto and then onto the On position was really priceless. And when you finally depress the starter and it engages, the rumbling of the dashboard and everything coming up to life is just WOW!

And my third most memorable moments is like the Captain said, during my first solo. Did my first solo on the 1st of December 2008

Going for a solo flight means that you have met the minimum requirements and have at least the most basic knowledge of how to handle the aircraft. There will not be an instructor sitting next to you anymore to monitor your mistakes. You have to realise and monitor yourself. You have to be able to understand what the controller is telling you. There will no be anyone there to help you. You have to decide for yourself what you are going to do. What actions you are going to take in case things doesn’t go as planned. You are the pilot in command. You decide where to go and when to go. It might seem as if it is something simple. But trust me, it can get pretty intense up there.

My solo flight was quite adventurous. I flew in the morning so there were lots of commercial traffic coming in and departing. I was ordered to hold in the circuit for about 10 minutes to allow for an arrival and a departure I think. And when I was just cleared to make the approach, an Air Asia Airbus was just taxiing out bound for Kuala Lumpur. My feeling? “Oh shit! An Airbus is going to have to wait for me.”

I landed and the Airbus was cleared to line-up while I was taxiing to clear the runway. Can you imagine a huge Airbus sitting in front of you with its landing lights on ready to go waiting for you to clear the runway? Its like going chicken race against an airbus and we all know who will be the winner here. >.<

After that, the tower controller congratulated me and then somebody came on the radio and said “Congratulations on your first solo”. I think its from the Air Asia aircraft. ^^, First Solo flight’s call sign is a little different (it has a Sierra added behind the call sign) so they know we are flying our first solo.

And the best part of it all? My instructor was inside the Airbus. >.< Greaaat~!

Before every flight, we have to make sure everything is functioning as it should have.

Which consists of both internal and external checks.

 

And pushing our aircraft out onto the apron. ^^,

 

Even had time to pose for a picture before flight. TB-10 if I am not wrong first flew in the 1970’s. A very old airplane but a very reliable one to my mind. The component is for it is quite difficult to purchase already as some of the parts are no longer manufactured as far as I understand.

But nevertheless, its a great aircraft to fly. My first ever aircraft that I flew. My first ever cockpit. My first ‘love’. ^^,

Seen here, I am changing frequency and tuning onto ATIS to get weather information. Before I came here, like all pilots wannabe, I played the flight simulator. Tons and tons of hours in front of my computer.

But no matter how well a simulator is made, no matter stunning the graphics is…

….or no matter how many add-ons you install….

Nothing will beat the real thing!

And I really mean nothing! The feeling of flying in the air, the G-force…

 

…..the cotton-candy-white-fluffy clouds. They are all really magnificent!

But all in all, at the end of the day, PPL Flying Phase has to come to an end. And after about 3 months of flying in the PPL stage, its time for the phase that everyone feared…. The CA6!

The CA6 is the longest phase in the ground school. Consuming over 4 months of your life and in the process, tries to shorten your life span by giving you so much stress, you felt like you have turned into a zombie.

CA6 is a critical stage and this is the stage where you have to really study really really hard. And I mean really really hard. On an average, I study about 11 hours per day. And honestly, Form 6 felt easier. And even with that amount of time spent, at times I am still struggling. There is no time to play or relax. Its all about the books.

This is the amount of books you have to study in 4 months time. Each page, each picture and each word has to go into that tiny little brain of yours. And at the end of the stage, you will be so thorough that you can remember exactly where each sentences comes from.

After the CA6, there will be another 9 weeks of CA2 before you finally say Bye Bye to the ground school.

The 9 weeks in CA2 will be like heaven. The subjects are less taxing and it is more interesting in my opinion. ^^,

I have just finished my CA2 last Thursday.

And now am in the middle of my conversion to the Diamond DA40, which will be the aircraft I will be flying for the next 100 plus hours.

I am sorry my dear TB-10. You are very pretty and charming….but times have changed…I have to move on….You have to let me go…. The thing is that, the Diamond has more curves that you…. >.<

Till the day I see myself sitting in the cockpit of a commercial airliner, I will continue to work hard and continue to climb and pave my own road to the skies…

After all, the sky is where my heart belongs.

BBQ Party Part II

As the title implies, this is the second time we are having a BBQ party. The first one can be found here

This party’s objective?  – Celebrating both the end of the torturing CA6 phase and also our batch’s outstanding CA6 results! Yay!

The party was actually held last weekend but because of my erm..procrastination, it was posted this weekend.

Anyway, here we are again preparing for the party ^^,

*Note: The watermark used = cameraman’s blog

And here we are cleaning up the chickens ^^, and whatever that needs cleaning…. >.<

 

While some are trying to ‘kill’ one another. ~>.<~

And some trying to ‘feed’ one another…. That guy in the yellow shirt is our batch leader by the way.

HMA Batch #22! This taste yummy!!

As for the location, we picked the same place as last time again – Pantai Tengah ^^, A very beautiful beach.

And this is the view that greeted me upon arrival

Beautiful isn’t it.

I always love the view of the beach with foot prints and the setting sun. So peaceful and quiet.

Foot prints….. Hahaha..

And its time…….to light up the fire~!!!! By staring at the charcoal….

Or striking a cool look. >.<

Or we can opt for the easy way – with a fire starter.

Everyone out and about setting up.

Then we are just waiting for the fire starters to do its wonders.

And as usual, there is always something funny going on in the background.

When the charcoal is finally burning, the sun is on its way to ‘sleep’.

Sun : *Yawn*

The weird thing here is suddenly it looks as if Langkawi is covered in fog. Must be the haze but it really looked like patches of fog.

 

Fire is on, chicken smells good, its time to burn! Err. I mean BBQ. >.<

The chicken tasted really great! Hmmmm…. maybe we can start our own chain outlets.

Took some group pictures…..with Danny making a funny face…

…And then more came over…and more people making funny faces

….and then people started getting ‘creative’…..

….and at the end it was just chaos!!

After exercising our face muscles, we got bored and experimented with shutter speeds.

Aaron making his mark. ^^, I regretted I did not write my name. T.T

Because I was too busy trying to take pictures of the stars. Used the 60 seconds exposure but the result wasn’t as I expected. Maybe too much background light thus ‘blanketing’ the stars

And then when I am bored to the stars, I tried it on people. LOL.

And unlike in Penang where some beach were lighted up at night, this beach here wasn’t. So cleaning up in the dark is a pain in the a**. >.<

I guess that’s all for today. ^^, Stay tuned for more interesting ‘adventures’ >.<

Cheers people! ^^,

And something I bought on my way back to the hostel to be enjoyed in the room. ^^, Refreshing! And you can see my highlighters in the background and my books to the right edge of the picture. LOL.

Another Great Week

Its Sunday again!! Yay!! Nothing much for me to report this week except that it has been raining constantly here in Langkawi; compared to the extremely dry weather for the past 4 months or so. The weather is very weird these days. And because of these weird weathers(I think), we have been attacked by lots of bugs recently. Really huge bugs can be found everywhere in the campus and if you come out of your room at night, it is like a Star Wars battleground. They are flying everywhere! One has to be careful or you might end up in a bug-strike situation!

Anyway I was browsing through the pictures in my phone and I found some interesting pictures I would like to share with you guys.

Here is a Jeppesen High Altitude Enroute Chart which covers the Europe. It is extremely long. Roughly 1.6m long. ^^, This charts shows all the airways, nav aids(with its name, frequency, identifier – in characters and morse and finally its coordinates), reporting points, airspaces, communication frequencies, distances and etc. It is practically a chart of the ‘highways’ in the air.

Here’s a closer look of the chart. Pretty ‘crowded’ right. >.<

These charts plays an important role in Flight Planning. Whatever information you might need for flight planning purposes, you can find it in the chart.

And when we are too free during our lunch break this is what we do – arrange shoes. Heart-shaped-arranged shoes courtesy of Danny.

Oh, I have an interesting story to share here. Yesterday my roommate and I went to the KFC near Telaga Harbour to buy a mouth-watering KFC lunch. Upon reaching, I noticed that the place is super crowded. I kind of expected it since it is a Saturday. So we went to line up.

As usual, most of the time, as cadets, we talked about aviation. It so happened that my roommate and I was talking about cabin crews. The topic came up because I was telling my roommate that one of my friend wanted to apply to be a cabin crew. So we were talking and then suddenly the man in front of us turned and asked me – “Are you from Langkawi?”

Me : Erm no. I am from Penang actually.

Man : Ohhh. I see. Are you interested in joining the airlines?

Me : Oh I am actually studying here.

Man : The flying academy here?

Me : Yes ^^,

Man : Oh, I worked for MAS. *shows us an ID*

Me : Ooooooo. Cool.

Man : Are you studying here through sponsors or are you paying yourself?

Me : Oh, I am sponsored by MAS. ^^,

Man : *chuckles* * Gave us his name card*

Me : *takes a look* CAPTAIN –  A330’s fleet. CAPTAIN?!

My expression? – SHOCKED!!!!!!! I did not expect to meet a Captain when I am buying KFC. What more a A330 Captain. SHOCKEDDDDDDD!!!

My roommate and I chatted with him for awhile and then we left. We were shocked! ^^, But I am quite happy also to be able to speak to a Captain. I have not met any airlines Captains before in my life. He is the first and what a way to meet a Captain. ^^,

It was great being able to speak to a man who flew such a big aircraft. Looking at myself, I only flew a Tobago 10. I still have a long way to go….. ^^,

All in all, it was a great day and a great week!

I have about 6 more weeks to go before I finish my CA6 phase. The storm is coming…..