Let's fly... [ENG]

A week after the begining of the groundschool it's already over. We won't complain about it as it was quiet hard to focus on an another phase of grounschool while you see all the other cadets preparing their flights, on the apron doing the preflight inspections....

Why we needed to do another week of groundschool? 

Just because the ATPL theoretical we passed few weeks ago, was under the JAR rules, or should we say EASA, and New Zealand is not ruled by EASA. So, to be able to fly VFR solo later on we had to sit a NZ Air Law PPL exam.

Fortunetly, there are not too many differencies with the rules we learnt during the ATPL. The most significant ones are the Met minima and their airspaces. The Met minima are easier to remember than the european ones and more permissive specially in class G. 

Concerning their airspaces, there are few differencies. In fact they don't have B,F and E class. Also, they created specific zones within a controlled airspace, like the VFR transit lanes. This VFR lanes are basically uncontrolled zones, with lower and upper limits, within a controlled airspace ( CTR, CTA). We've been told that the kiwis don't really like to speak on radio, so this way they can get through a CTR without contact.

T251 & T252, 2 transit lanes North and South of Hamilton CTR

To be fair, compared to the 1/500 000 French navigation chart that I'm used to, the navigation chart of New Zealand is quiet empty, only a few CTR/CTA.

All of this to say that today was my air law PPL exam. This was the hardest exam I've ever taken, much more difficult than the ATPL one. I managed to get 80%, I really don't know how I did it as I was convinced I'd failed.

We had also another exam about ATPL differencies, merging various topics such as Met, AGK, HP&L and Navigation. This one was pretty straight forward so I'm not really concerned about my result which should be send to me by email.

Groundschool is now over til the IFR phase in few months, which means that the flights can start. My first flight is scheduled tomorrow evening at 7pm, this is going to be awesome!!

Let's all of this begin!!!