Struggling with my synapses

This may sound a bit weird but I’m kind of enjoying making the mistakes up there and let’s face it I make enough of them.

Seriously though, every mistake I make now is something that I won’t do again and allowing me to make the mistake in the first place means that I don’t get tetchy with Bob for pointing them out.

It’s a drawn out process for sure but I see little glimmers of hope every now and again. I’ve moved beyond blindly accepting ATC instructions, this time I at least realised that making a left turn into some buildings wasn’t a great idea.  My mind is just that little bit slower than Bob’s though, at parsing the information and figuring out what I need to do. I thought it might be fun to compare the mental processes that we both go through when issued with the following ATC instruction:

ATC: change of plan – make a turn to the south to join the right downwind for 33

Me:  ok south is that way and the runway will be on my right*, hang on those buildings there are probably more than 2000ft, am I going to hit them if I turn? Hmm okaaay what did ATC actually say, they said turn south, I can turn the other way to face south, YAY let’s do a 270 degree turn instead

Bob: make a 270 degree turn

*Bob’s thought process kicked in around this point. My mind still has a way to go before I reach the conclusion that he gets to in about 30 microseconds! I’m not bothered though. The fact that my mind is actually thinking through this stuff now is an improvement. I’m getting to the right conclusions, eventually.

Same kind of thing on the way out, Bob’s constantly repeating “Aviate, Navigate, Communicate” to me. I’ve quickly come to learn that usually he’s saying this because I’m failing to do one of these things. For “aviate” usually I’m fixating on the chart and have inadvertently started us into a sure but steady dive for example.

Today’s flight, I had just cleared the control zone and had got myself sorted with a heading to the practice area. As an aside here Bob has gotten wise to my “alternative method” of navigating to the practice area. Basically you have two choices once you leave the zone. One, you get out your chart and fumble around trying to read off a direction and then correct for the wind to get your heading or two, you carry on following the shoreline until you get to the nuclear plant and then follow the road directly north. Method two is longer but easier. Guess which one Bob makes me do!

So where was I? Oh yeah, Bob was doing his usual “aviate etc.” I run through them one by one

Aviate – we are holding both our altitude and course, no problems there

Navigate - course looks good, no issues there.

Communicate - I’ve just been cleared en route, yeah probably should do a position call, Hmm something doesn’t feel right, OHHHH I’m still on tower frequency , that’s why it has gone quiet. Right let’s switch over then and make that call!

Now it’ll be an almost Pavlovian response, cleared en route = switch frequency. Much more effective than telling me to do it as part of the pre-flight brief.

Bit by bit I’m rearranging those synapses into something resembling a coherent thought process. Boy it’s slow sometimes though.