It's here!

Oh yes, it really is here!  Took the bastards nearly six weeks to print out this tiny piece of paper, but after a few rather heated debates on the phone they finally managed to finish it and now I'm holding it in my hands. I actually picked the licence up last Friday already but completely forgot to post about it here.

Friday the 17th was quite a day. I was so anxious to go and grab the licence that I simply couldn't get almost any sleep the night before. I woke up at about 3:00am (if I recall correctly) and, despite an hour of attempting, couldn't fall back into sleep for some reason. I then said to myself: "Screw this! I ain't gonna let the evil sandman and his mischiefs wind me down like this.", got up and made a full pan of strong black coffee. On Thursday we had planned with my buddy, Olli (who is btw also on PPL course, link to his blog will be at the end of this post), that after picking up my licence we would head straight to EFHF (Malmi Airport), grab a plane and head to the skies. As I obviously had a lot of time on my hands at the moment, I started plotting and planning our upcoming flight. When the clock ticked at 7:00am I begun packing my stuff and then headed to the bus stop. My goal was to find the Finnish CAA which is located somewhere in Itä-Pasila and of which's accurate location I hadn't got the slightest idea back then. With the help of my beloved HTC I managed to locate this office after some time wandering around, and got my logbook back from a guard at the reception desk. Inside the logbook I found....TADAA....the licence of course!

I immediately catched another bus and rode it all the way to EFHF. Olli was already waiting me there at the Malmi Aviation Club and, since we had ourselves over an hour of time to spare (and since we both were starving due to the lack of breakfast), we paid a visit to the Hello! -café inside the old "terminal building" and bought us some snacks.

It was finally time to perform my first departure as a licenced private pilot. It felt different than the course solo flights, for some reason. I was way more nervous than before. Self-confidence just wasn't there. Possibly it was due to the rather long break between my checkride and that moment, or just the fact that I had stayed awake merely with the help of caffeine and adrenaline in my veins. Regardless we carried on our preparations and walked to our plane. We would be flying the aviation club's good ol' Cessna 172M, OH-CTL. I had only been flying Diamonds and not Cessnas for a while so it initially took me a moment to get used to everything on that plane again (though I had naturally revised myself on the POH beforehand). Everything went smoothly and soon we were up in the blue skies. We made five touch-and-gos in the beginning and then left EFHF CTR via point DEGER. The rest of the route was strictly old-style navigation exercise: without the help of GPS (even though there is one installed it's too crappy to be any actual use of lol) we navigated ourselves around the EFHK (Helsinki-Vantaa aiport) CTR and then came back to EFHF via point NOKKA. Despite a few clouds here and there it was most certainly a beautiful day and I quickly gained back my usual self-confidence. During the flight Olli videoed small clips using his iPhone and uploaded them to youtube. You can watch the video below.

This is what happened after the flight

All in all it was a fun day, and I'm already planning ahead my next trips around Finland. Hopefully now that I've got the licence I'll get some more inspiration for these blog posts also.
Feel free to contact me should you have any questions.

Here are the links to Olli's blog:
http://tietaivaalle.blogspot.com/ (in Finnish)
http://headingtothesky.blogspot.com/ (in English)

-Sami



 
p.s.  I almost forgot... got to be all geared up and have the right kind of equipment for all the upcoming flying challenges.. =D

Waiting...waiting...waiting...

It's been nineteen long days since the completion of my PPL-checkride. And boy HOW long these days have been! To be honest, I never really knew waiting could be this stressful. Or would painful be the more appropriate term to describe my feelings at the moment?

My hands are itching
My legs are cramping
My stomach is aching

 ..well, maybe not quite that painful, but it still has surely been a loooong journey. As I was writing this post I decided to take a look at my logbook and for a while I was struggling to believe my own eyes. Imagine this: between my first logbook entry and today there are a total of 438 days! That's an eternity, downright a lifetime!

Patience certainly is not one of my best attributes. I guess I just have to cope with it and hope that they'll send me the licence soon enough! :)

“Patience is the companion of wisdom.” - Saint Augustine

By the way, welcome to my new blog! Hope you'll find something interesting to read on your stay here (although I'm still not so sure about everything to write here, so it will probably take a while until this blog gets a successful take-off).