I love my plane

Today's rainy and cloudy weather exposed me to more fantastic features of my plane.

I am a VFR pilot. This means I can only fly clear of cloud and in visual conditions where I can get a fix on a ground feature. VFR pilots are taught to be terrified of bad weather. This is genarally for their own safety. It is said that a VFR pilot in non visual conditions will live for less than 3 minutes. The reason is that humans rely on visual cues to get a sense of balance and if those visual cues are not present, your mind will convince you that you are in an unusual position. Once that happens, you will fly your plane into a position where it is incapable of staying aloft or, more often, fly it completely controlled into the side of a hill or some other object incompatible with flight.

Thunderstorms are another scary phenomenon for small planes. You can be sucked up or pushed down, hailed upon, iced or otherwise get yourself panicked enough to be unable to fly.

Today was a day spent in non-VFR conditions and skirting around thunderstorms. Satellite image is included of the weather prior to takeoff.

I hasten to add that Jan is an IFR pilot, meaning that he has been trained to ignore the visual cues and to focus on the instruments. And it is these instruments with which I have fallen in love. VH-SMY has a great GPS system which gives a display when there is lightning ahead so you can turn left or right to avoid the worst of storms before you are in them. And when you are in cloud you can set the autopilot and it will not even know about the visual cues much less be seduced by them.



Yellow Marks showing lightning

Jan flew today and I ran the radios and navigational instruments. I was not unhappy with my efforts which included using the pilots of QF10 as a relay to speak to Dakhar Radar control when we were out of range. Thanks to those pilots if they ever read the blog.

I was quite surprised about the fertility of central India. I don't know why but I always had the impression that India was a dryish country. From the bits I saw of it today (through the cloud), it seemed green and full of rivers.

Chittagong is an experience probably well enough missed by most tourists. It is one of those colourful but crowded developing towns. The 25km drive from airport to hotel took a full hour. The roads are chaotic, the beggars plentiful and the sewers and storm drains combined. I loved the experience of walking around for an hour or so. Everyone is in business, most of them on a tiny scale. 5 cucumbers to sell? Set them up on a plate on the side of the road and you're away. The artisanal trade culture is strongly evident. Our stroll passed the shoe maker, machinist, boilermaker, blacksmith, and numerous other craftsmen within a 1 km stretch.

The risk if getting completely lost was huge but our navigational skills managed to get us back to the hotel.


Approx Track Miles:   730NM  
Hobbs Hours:              6.2
Fuel Added Nagpur:     400
Price per Litre:             USD $3.20