Today was a historical day. I flew again, after a looooong gap of 70 days. THAT IS LONG. It had taken me only 30 days to do a solo flight. I have plenty of excuses of why it took me so much time to do my written exam, and why I didn't fly and study simultaneously, but that's now the past. I now have a new instructor, Alistair Beaton. He got me brushed up on the procedures, and we were up for more than an hour. Overall I still know how to fly, but I've somehow forgotten how to land! Yup. So my solo priviledges have been revoked for the time being, or at least until I can re-learn and demostrate that I can land safely. The precautionary landing and emergency landing procedures need some work. I need to go through all the procedures and the maps because I was slow at responding to the situations, but most part of the flight, including airwork was smooth and well done.

For the uninformed, here's a primer of my training, with some minimalistic details.

The training will broadly comprise of the following:

1. PPL - Private Pilot License - I'm half way through this.


2. CPL - Commercial Pilot License - This is license that I need.


3. Multi-IFR Rating

Multi-IFR means:

• Multi-Engine Rating - You learn to and get a license to fly multi-engine airplane. Remember that most of the PPL and CPL training is done on a single-engine airplane. Multi-engine means 2 or more engines - the types you'll see on the bigger planes - mostly 1 on each wing or 2 on each wing.


• IFR - or Instrument Rating. This license allows one to fly in below visual conditions and through clouds. Without this, you cannot fly if the clouds are too low or the visibility is too less. The PPL is done completely in VFR conditions - Visual Flight Rules - means that the clouds are at least a certain height and visibility is at least a certain distance.

Most students combine the Multi-Engine Rating and IFR into a single exercise, doing the IFR on a Multi-Engine airplane. This is exactly what the airlines look for. Also, the corporate planes are of the similar kind, so IFR experience on a Multi-Engine definitely gets you a notch up.

There are separate bunch of instructors for VFR and IFR. Since my first instructor moved from VFR to IFR instructions, I had to find a new VFR instructor, and I'm glad to be under Alistair.

The PPL is 45 hours of flying, but most students complete in 60 hours. The CPL+Multi+IFR has some minimums, but the idea is to pull up the total flying hours to 200. This would of course be flight time, and not air time. Air-time is the time between lift-off and landing, and flight-time is the time from engine-start to engine-stop. There is some time lost between the engine-start and lift-off, and between the touch-down and engine-off - remember that you have to do some checks before takeoff and "taxi" the plane to the runway before you can takeoff, and the similar procedures when you land.

Note: If you liked this article, or want more details, or you find some mistakes above, please do email me.

Cheers
Mayur Poddar

I was telling somebody how stressed I was because of the exam, and how I couldn't sleep for many days, and I got a rather bloody remark in return - maybe I should remain a student pilot all my life. Maybe this person had vaulted up some negative thoughts about me, and I can't blame them. Sometimes we just don't know what we say. Fortunately for this person, I'm a different person today, and I forgive this person for having said such a belittling thing. A few years earlier, and I would have walked away with 2 teeth and a lock of hair. Anyways, for those who think I'm a sissy, you know not what I'm made of. I'm up here to kick ass, and like they say, the life of a sword starts as a block of steel.

I passed the exam. Relatively, I did well, 84%, it's one of the highest any Indian student got in the Private Pilot written exam here !!! YAAAAAAAA. I'm so happy. But I know I could have done better. The stress and anxiety of writing an exam after 7 years got to me. Ok, so other students prepare 2-3 weeks, while it took me 2 months. But there were other things happening in my head. It makes me crazy sometimes. Anyways, I managed to study, and I managed to pass.

I often pressure myself, the fact that I'm the grand daddy here, oldest Indian student, I should be able to do at least as well as the new breed. I don't know if this self pressuring is good or bad, but it keeps me energised, and I just like it that way. Oh, the new breed - that's how I like to call them - the 18 year olds who have a different walk, different talk, different thought, than what I would expect from a prospective professional pilot. Can you picture 18 year old Mumbai dikras, walking like hero, ogling at girls, talking like zero, every 3rd word obscene profanity, every 3rd sentence a curse, abusing their radio priviledges in air, and last but not the least, smoking endlessly? I just don't understand how these boys, only 10 years younger than me, could be so off-track, taking so much for granted! Has my Country changed so much in just 10 years? Anyways, the fact is that, these boys will be flying the airplanes you'll be travelling in, only a few months from today.

So it's back to flying for me. Unfortunately my cool instructor Ben Webster is moving to another section (IFR) of the training, and I'll have to chose a new instructor. He humours me, says we'll meet again in a few months, when I get to the IFR stage. So lets see what happens now. I'm just revising the flight manual, so that I can start flying quickly, I'm sure I'll have to go on a flight with an instructor, just to show that I haven't forgotten how to fly, because I've not flown in 2 months.

While Canada has treated me well so far, I'm getting concerned about my getting used to the overly comfortable lifestyle that my landlord Mr.Singh allows me to live, and being in close proximity to all the Indian room mates. So I'm considering moving. I don't know if this would be wise, but then I'm not here to enjoy life, I'm here to study, so it shouldn't matter where I live, provided I have the requisite environment. After 4 months, I've even come to the conclusion that the distance to my school doesn't make so much of a difference either - if I have the will to go to school, I'll make it there, irrespective of how far it is.

Cheers
Mayur Poddar

This is a little bit about me. Being the lazy bas***d that I am, I couldn't have written this. So I got Maddy to write it for me. It's a birthday gift from her. She's the one who should have a blog, I mean she knows how to write, you'll know when you read this. Thank you Maddy, it's lovely. And that word cherubic - I had to look it up in dictionary. Wow! A representation of a small angel, portrayed as a child with a chubby rosy face. WOW! I think you got carried away on this one.

A cherubic, bonny baby was born on the 5th of July, 1977. Although adorable as a kid, all these growing years have taken their toll on Mayur Poddar, who proudly displays his typical Cancerian traits. Compassionate, sensitive and sympathetic, he has a powerful imagination. I would say, moody, temperamental, over-protective and untidy. This, coming from a very biased younger sister. But will she let go of this opportunity, where she is being requested to write a “few lines” about her dear old brother? You need to have a sibling, to understand this feeling.

Jokes apart, I am here to write about my brother, Mayur, so let's get on with it. There's not much I can say about his childhood. All I ever noticed about him was his prosperous growth, explained by his immortal love for food. As a brother he was a big bully, and as a son, a brat. Even so, always loved by family and friends. Mind you, when I say ‘friends', I mean the very few special friends that he had and still has.

He tells me he believed strongly in love at first smell. Ask Coffee, his first love, or any love after that. Together forever, they were meant for each other. But this love story, like the other, had the same tragic end, a divorce. Now he can't recognise the dusky beauty even from an inch. I suppose it was too much to handle, he took to philosophy. I would attribute this sudden interest to the upheavals in his personal and professional life, which put him through the hoop, emotionally and mentally. I quote: “once in a while you'll get to hear some very deep rooted unsolicited philosophical advice from me”. Something I will always appreciate - advice from a big brother: this comes from the heart.

Something to talk about is his passionate interest in technology and everything related to it. Right from the age when he was knee-high to a toad, probably ever since he could hold a screwdriver in his podgy little hands, his fingers have itched to open up some appliance at home. He has looked into every single electrical appliance, be it the television or the mixer. I would think his biggest moment in his school years was the Sports Day function at National Public School in 1995, when the public address system went blink and Poddu saved the day by using a mike he had made at home. Well, several other things like that, but technology is what drove him. He was never academically oriented, but the brains were all there. So who says exams decide how smart a person is?

Somewhere along the way, he turned into an atheist, much to our mother's dismay. He stands fast by the scientific rationale behind everything, every creation, every action, every form. Science can explain it all. So be it.

His love for computers landed him in the Bangalore Institute of Technology, where he toiled for 4 years and emerged a software engineer … with a neat job at Wipro Technologies tucked in his pocket. Right out of college and into the country's biggest IT company. We have it all served on a silver platter, don't we? The 6 long years at Wipro gave him a lot to remember. Loads of coding, baskets full of colleagues and truckloads of office politics besides trips to Canada, US and Japan.

Apparently, the coding and the politics got to him. Or as the young generation likes to put it - he got sick of the corporate world, the rut, the routine, the usual run for the next day. So, coding kicks the bucket, and flying takes off! Mayur is now in Vancouver, as a student of the Professional Flight Centre, studying for his Commercial Pilot License. After 4 months, he is very happy about the decision, although the studying is getting to him, as usual. He loves Canada and he loves flying, one would say it gives him a ‘high'. Once he becomes a pilot, I am hoping to get some freebies, at least in return for this if nothing else. Good luck, big brother!

His passions don't start and end with technology though. Sometimes I wonder if he would have made a good soldier, fighting for his country, with the kind of patriotism he displays. Ever thought about it, Poddu? How about the Indian Air Force?

Well, after all that I have said about Mayur Poddar, here's a little bit about me. I am Madhavi Agarwal, his sister, a Chartered Accountant by profession. Let me take this opportunity to enlighten you all further. His spelling is atrocious, and remains so because I have not dedicated enough time to my duties as his official blog editor. When you see a marked improvement in his blogs, you can give me the credit, thank you.

I've been studying for the Private Pilot written exam for a month and a half. On Thursday I attempted the official sample papers, passed with 80%, attempted other sample papers, and did well. The official exam pass marks is 60%. I landed up at school on Friday, wrote their sample paper, and got 74%. Now that's not good enough for them. They want their students to get a 80% in their sample paper before they will give a recommendation letter (this letter is needed to write the official exam). What a disappointment. I studied all the questions I got wrong in the school paper. There were so many questions for which I had known the right answer, even thought that I had marked the right answer, but had actually marked the wrong one! Blame that on lack of sleep. Anyways, I'm now required to have a briefing with some very intellectual being, and they will check my ability to perform, before I will be given a recommendation letter. That's on Tuesday. Blah!

Friday night, after a rather disappointing day, and 2 days without sleep, my room-mates took me downtown. Bless them. We had a lot of fun. Spent 4 hours in Tonic, a very popular night club. I was completely sloshed, on coke and hip-hop music. We were back home at 5 in the morning. Throughly enjoyed the night out, after a long long long time.

At 8.30, Raj called me and said that he's going to Port Hardy, and I should come along. A bunch of people are going. So I said Ok, pulled up some pants, and went to the airport. We took off in 2 planes, 6 of us, at about 1pm, and landed back at 9.30pm. What a day. On the flight back, I was dozing off all the time, I had little will power left to keep my eyes open. After we reached school, we went to Abishek's place, lazed around, the cab came after an hour, and we missed the connecting bus, finally reaching home at 1 in the morning. This was a fantastic trip, we had so much fun. And I have become master of aerial photography. Maybe I should buy a newer camera. Click here to see the pictures of the trip. Here's a sample:

Aerial shot of Vancouver Airport

Cheers
Mayur Poddar