In short, I’m currently into the last phase of my flying training and I have been posted for helicopters flying. I guess it should be fun since it’s totally different from fixed wings flying. For the past week, I’ve been occupied with ground school - studying rotary aerodynamics and aircraft systems. This only translates to less personal time, more notes to read and preparing for exams! Not to mention that I am trying to get back in shape after gaining that extra pound back in Australia!

I hope to get back in action as soon as I’ve sorted out the other priorities. For now, things will be a little quiet here with occasional post whenever possible!

• Horse riding – one of the most common and popular activity here in Australia that you don’t usually see it back home
• Go Kart – For the thrill of the speed
• Paint ball shootout – Bet it’ll be fun to experience life of a ‘SWAT’ team and scoring hits on opponents.

Can’t wait for weekends to come!

Not to mention that things hasn’t been smooth sailing, with people committing offences and still not feeling bothered. These unnecessary spotlights have resulted in harsher measures as well as confinement. I wonder if one actually thinks of the consequences before executing certain actions. I have personally witness such situations and I felt disturbed because I can’t accept the fact that this will be the group of unprofessional people I’ll be working with in years to come.

I never realized how beautiful the cockpit presentation is until I’ve started up the engines and adjusted all the interior lighting. The dim red console lights aids in calibrating the eyes to the night environment pretty quickly. With lightings around the airfield demarcating the various taxiways and runways, the only difficulty I encountered was to judge the separation distance from other aircraft taxiing ahead.

After obtaining clearance for take-off from the tower, I proceeded to line up on the runway for the take-off roll. Upon rotation and getting airborne, I was amazed by the night view and it wasn’t difficult to spot the brightly lighted skyscrapers in Perth City. My instructor demoed one circuit and landing before I was given the opportunity to try it. I must say that landing in the night (with landing lights) is challenging as misjudging or late in flaring the aircraft would be disastrous.

Sad to say, at our current stage of training, night flying is only an introduction and it consists of only 4 sorties. However, it is definitely a great experience and confidence booster, knowing that I am able to pilot an aircraft safely in the night.

I dipped one of the test stripe covered with perfume deep into the coffee beans for a few seconds. Upon retrieving it, I smelled it and to my surprise, the stripe is now covered by rich coffee aroma. A search on the internet confirmed my little experiment.

Findings: Coffee beans enables on to reset the sense of smell after sampling a perfume, thus allowing you to continue sampling other fragrances without the previous smell lingering around.

Interesting indeed.

For one, as the most senior course, we should set good example at all times and not behave like the juniors. I remembered when I was the most junior course, duties were being passed down to us one after another and the most senior course will always find excuses to avoid them. Perhaps, many would say this is the culture of the organization but I thought that it was otherwise. It is more of the human mind being unequal and trying to exercise authoritative as the most senior course.

Certainly, I agree that duties will eventually need to be handed down as advance flying requires more preparation. However, one should not go away with the idea of ‘I’m the senior…pass it down to the juniors’ or ‘when we were juniors, this is how the seniors treated us’. This is the wrong mentality towards being professional and ethically wrong. We must be fair, tactful and earn one’s respect in handling responsibilities instead of just pushing it down the line.

I always tell myself that they may be your juniors in this phrase of training but some may eventually be your superior in the near future.

The weather here has been predictable but erratic, with passing showers and sun shining brightly thereafter, and more showers and chilly winds. This has pretty much disrupted flying operations and slowed down flying progress for the courses, which means either our graduation date will be delayed or we can expect to fly more when the weather is good.

Long weekends like this are hard to come by (this will be the last for many months to come) and it seems that this particular one would be fulfilling. The course has been invited to a few instructors’ house and I guess it would be fun to hang out and relax after a rough week at work.

I believe that when one commits mistakes, one must have the courage to stand and answer for his actions. One must feel remorseful and guilty of the actions and more so if it involves innocent parties.

The question: Do you think majority of the teenagers out there have the correct attitude and moral courage to admit mistakes? More importantly, do they feel remorseful for what they have done?

I remembered counting the days when I first arrived and found it hard to accept the fact that it will be a long course with uncertainties ahead. Looking back, reality came and went at the blink of the eye. I’ve experienced my first solo on a jet plane, flew in the challenging parallel runway operations as well as piloted the plane alone to the training area to perform aerobatics sequence. Never did it occur to me that I would come this far, with another half of the battle to fight before I complete the course.

Needless to say, I’ve had my high and lows throughout my stay thus far. I’ve fallen a couple of times but I’ve been taught what’s important is being able to cushion the fall and pick myself up. My instructor once used the analogy of ¹’new jet, new day’ and taught me how to relate it with my progress in flying. I realized that had I not been able to pick myself up, I would have continued to fall hard and eventually fail the course.

With instrument flying and a couple of formation and navigation sorties coming up for the next 3 months, life is only going to get harder but it should be quite interesting to learn new things. Hopefully, the seventeen of us would graduate as a course in time to come.

¹ new jet, new day means starting afresh with a new day, new mission and different aircraft. In aviator’s world, every mission and flight is never the same as before as we are bound with uncertainties (weather, emergencies etc.).

I don’t usually celebrate with candles and cakes because it’s just like another normal day. Nonetheless, thanks for the greetings from my family and friends who remember this day.

Turns out that I barely qualify for recruitment into the Swedish Armed Forces for officership training but there’s still some potential and hope.

For those who wants to challenge your abilities, feel free to take the test.

Today marks the start of long weekends and first day of the Lunar New Year celebrations. According to the zodiac calendar, it is the year of rat and this has nothing significant except that I’m getting old! I remembered when I was a kid, I look forward to every Chinese new year celebrations. Now that I’ve grown, every of such festival seems just like another normal day. This would be my second time spending Lunar New Year away from home. For many of my colleague, it is one of their first to spend new year away from home.

To my friends and family back home, may I wish that you’ll have a happy and prosperous new year.