Kilkenny Flying Club
Dave Robertson, PPL Member
Aviate, Navigate, Communicate Fly the Aeroplane If all else
fails, Aviate some more 
Contents
Training Weight and Balance Calculator
General information
Kilkenny flying club
is based just outside the city on the road towards Tullaroan. This is a picture of the tower and main
building. Its quite small but we have
quite a large Membership. For more
information about JAR PPL/CPL licence requirements, click here.
The club currently has
four aircraft, all Rallye. The club
also does gliding, mainly at the weekends.
This site is intended to be a point, mainly for flight planning and student
help. I gained my PPL in California
and I was keen to bring some of that experience back to the club and help other
members if possible.
The main training
aircraft is an MS880b Rallye 100. Its
callsign, EI-AUE is well known to all members.
Its basically a 4 seater simple aircraft. Most student pilots are trained in it. Since its quite old, the flight manual is a photocopy. I scanned this and it available here .Click here I also scanned the empty weight and COG
page to help in the planning for weights and balance. The way its been scanned makes it useful if you have the Adobe
PDF reader, well I think so anyway.
Please note you should always refer to the POH, which is located in the
club.
Flight Planning
Flight planning is one
of the most important aspects of aviation.
These document templates are designed to help you plan your trip. I found them useful and use them on any trip
that I plan and fly. They are:
The navigation
log. This allows you to put all of the
information about the trip on one page.
The nice thing is, you can do your own version to suit your own style
and requirements. You can use more than
one and don’t forget to take enough to plan the return trip. Check it out here
TRPACER – This is the
one thing I have difficulty with. My
FE, Pete Pemberton in California was a real stickler for this and he suggested
that you practice it in the car, in the shops etc. You know the sort of thing. “Ford
Focus, Home to SuperQuinn, Outside the Butchers, 2 feet, VFR, Estimated Arrival
10 minutes, Require traffic lights to green.”
I did try it and it helps.
It also helps to write out the TRPACER call, so I did a simple
template. Click here
to get it and print it off. Simple but
effective.
The weather log. Keep clear of cloud is the main rule, but
this document helps you to put the weather information together. I also found that the met office F214 forms
are brilliant, so sign up as a member its well worth getting the
information. The site is http://www.meto.gov.uk
The weather log
template is here. It just allows you to
gather weather info when you call your local briefer. Pretty handy I thought. Click
here to get it in PDF format.
Safety Brief
I did this brief for
passengers. Its what you need to use
before takeoff and part of the standard passenger briefing. It’s a good idea to memorise this, although
I use it in a plastic folder and keep it handy during pre-flight activity for
passengers. Click here
to get it in PDF format.
Conditions of Flight for Rallye 100 and Pre-flight Checklist
The CoF apply to
EI-AUE only. Please refer to the POH
of the aircraft you are flying. These
are meant to be pointers and no substitute for knowing them. Click here to get the
PDF version. If you end up renting an
aircraft, the chances are you will have to know the CoF for that aircraft and
sign a document stating that you do know them.
I put together this checklist for external checks –
Internal checks still to be done. Click here to
get the PDF version
Circuit Pattern
This is a simplified
diagram of the circuit pattern for the airfield. This is useful for visitors and for students to remember the
sequence when you have to do lots of them.
I did and I hope that
I learned something on each one. As a
student you have a lot to remember especially when going solo, so I hope this
helps. The one thing that I learned
from circuits and my FI Steve, will back me on this is – Power for Altitude,
Pitch for Airspeed. Translate that into your reptile brain and you wont get
a slap on the fingers when you pull the throttle to slow down. Also Power Change then Trim is a good
tip for the reptile brain.
I also read that you
should be able to take your hands of the controls on finals for at least 5
seconds. If you cant, your not getting
it set up properly.
The circuit pattern is
actually a Power Point, so you can have that if you want. Here it is.
Click it for a bigger version.
Practice Force Landings
This is something that
was drummed into me. Although I have to
say that during the flight test, I muffed it.
I did it again at was ok. Since you
only have one engine, failure is uncommon but not an insignificant risk. Doing this and being good at it, may just
save your life. I put this together,
but each CFI has his/her own idea of what to do. So have a look. Click here for the PDF version.
When I was doing this
in California, we were at 2000 AMSL at Ramona airport. To be able to practice, I set the altimeter
to 0 at ground level. This helped a lot
for knowing where you should be at 3000, 2000, 1000, 500 and so on. Don’t forget to set it back from ATIS or
Shannon.
Weights and Balance
I am a real stickler
for this. I read a lot about people not
bothering with W&B and going off into aeroplanes and then finding they cant
be flown, wont take off or wont land without stalling. Since I studied as an engineer, this was of
great interest to me. So much so that I
wrote a VB application to help with the W&B calcs for a Rallye. You can download and install it if you want,
but – refer to the POH as this is for training only and to give you all the
info at a glance. Just install it as a
normal windows application. You will
have to unzip it first. Go to www.winzip.com for more information. Click here to download.
It only works with a
Rallye 100 ST or a Rallye 150 ST. You
could use it for other aircraft, just make sure you know the various weights
and arms. But the graph won’t make sense
This is a 2Mb Visual Basic application. Click here to download it.
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