Pre-exposure to flying = Pure fun!

There is this one of my future buddy (his name is Ted) going for the same training batch with me for the coming 1st October. He's a really realy nice guy and to my surprise, turned out to be a PPL(Private Pilot's License) holder for about 5 years already at the JFC(Johore Flying Club) and he has been flying through and flow mainly from Singapore to Malaysia ever since, ferrying countless of people accross, some for official purposes and some of it were simply for leisure or you may call joyrides. Keep in mind though, these rides were not normally free because the fuel cost could be as high as RM 300 per hour on any trips and hence, the passengers will usually fork out their shares as well depending on situation.

Overview of the Airstrip used by JFC, shared by Senai Airport Cargo Terminal

Not-so-organized Senai's hangar, but it does its job :)

However, I was one of the luckier passenger earlier today as he allowed me not only join the ride at no cost, but also teached me a lot about the handling of the particular aircraft he's handling, even though i could only understand 10% of what he's saying, but... well, thanks a lot of the explanation, really. That made me realize that there were really a lot of stuff to be learned in the future and it seems to be very exciting. If fact, i was allowed to actually feel how does piloting a light aircraft feels like by letting me handle the control yoke for a while on air since i was in the co-pilot (right) seats and the plane is operatable by 2 persons at any time. The feelings is, well...unstable..due of the size and weight of the aircraft, it really wobbles a lot and the challenge is to keep the aircraft level and stable at all time, or in another word, keep it flying straight because a wind gush will easily throw your airplane off the stability scale even though you are flying on a fine day. At least, that's how i felt. The lucky plane chosen today was a TB-9 with the registration number of 9M-BIG (just like any car plate's number).

Walking to the aircraft and part of pre-flight inspection (done by Pilot :))


Hmm.. It says BIG!! Nah..it's not that big, really! :P

Keep in mind that, to keep the plane flying is one thing, but the procedure to take off is completely another. This little baby has to be checked thorougly for her health before every flight, namely to check that all parts of the plane are functioning properly, for example the rudder, flaps, brakes, fuel level, etc. There's a complete checklist on board in which you have to refer to during the inspection and it's rather long. And of course, you need to declare yourself and the passenger of whom you are travelling with in the passenger manifest with the local authority as well as submitting your flight plans to them before taking off. It's quite a lot of paperworks i assure you, for such a short distance flight. So much hassle eh? So for those who thought that you can fly any plane you want, carrying anyone you want, and fly to wherever you want without any pre-flight planning is wrong :P

Overall cockpit view and the captain(left) seat

Our flight route is from Senai Airport, Johore to Seletar Airport, Singapore, yes the place in which i will be having my training next month onward. So it's a good thing to have a look around beforehand isn't it? Hehe. The whole flight took only about 15mins and the bad thing is that, there is no air-condition in the plane, and we have to get our air from the natural environment instead. If you want cooler, fly higher. That's it. However, in our case, our altitude is limited to 2000 feets (650 metres) according to the control tower and therefore, the temperature drop is hardly felt at all, maybe 1 or 2 degree celcius. So it's still very warm inside around 11.30am. So off we went! On air, we were cruising at about 80knots (about 160km/h). Not very fast i know, but it's fast enough considering we are taking direct route to destination instead of going through winding roads and traffic on the ground. Together with me were the pilot Ted of course, and his friend Cooper (is that how it's spelled?) from JFC as well. Oh, the communication with the control tower was a mess by the way, at least that's how i interpreted it because i can hardly understand what are they talking about during the entire flight permission clearance. It was just too fast for me catch any phrase out of it. Haha! I guess i will grow accustomed to it eventually with training :).

Random picture taken on the way to Seletar and Dancin' Cooper (right)

Reached Seletar Airport after about 15 minutes and after immigration procedure, the sun was directly over my head already. Took a cab hastily to Serangoon Road because Ted was supposed to have a lunch appointment with his friends at 12pm and he was late for it. (Sorry, i hijacked your lunch appointment :/) After we had our lunch, it's time for us to go back to Senai at about 2.30pm because he has to pickup a friend of his on the way back as well. So it was quite a short trip but i found it really enlightening and fun, and i definitely could not wait to learn more about it.

Seletar 'mini' Airport.....

....and its 'mini' Departure cum Immigration hall

While waiting for clearance to take off at 2.30pm, i have taken the opportunity to snap pictures from the surrounding including some aircraft i could not identify and a AirAsia plane that seems to lost its way back to somewhere :P As usual, there were more inspection done (again) before the plane engine is started and the usual checklist has to be scrutinized carefully again whether you like it or not. That's the entire story for now!

Random aircraft pictures in Seletar!

Looking on one of the AirAsia's 'sesat-ed' cargo plane

More inspection before flight home!

Communication with control tower to obtain clearance to fly

Before i conclude, here are some pictures i snapped wildly on the way home simply because i could not resist it, and at the end a short video of the pilot doing pre-flight inspection. Enjoy! :D

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Medical and Final Call-up

2 Days after the interview, i found myself again being awoken by the odd morning call that nobody has requested for. At 8am, i was waiting at the hotel entrance again(along with my buddies), like i did during the first day, expecting a shuttle van arriving anytime soon. However this time round, 2 cabs was hired instead of a shuttle van. I did not know what is the reason though. We were told that we had to go earlier due to the possible heavy traffic during peak hour. To my surprise, the traffic was not actually that horrible in the sense that the flow was moving even though at a slow pace due to a number of traffic lights here and there. Eventually, i arrived at the medical centre at around 9am and get our document checked and processed. Everything else afterward was pretty much straight forward, test test test....The first thing they did to me is to 'rob' some of my precious blood away to see if i have a HIV positive, then there was this usual eyesight test to ensure that i do not possess a pair of eyes capable of x-ray power and the like, ECG to check that my heart is actually beating and that i was not a zombie, x-ray scan to make sure that i do not have any osteoporosis problem, hearing test to ensure that i could not possibly hear any sound in a supersonic frequency range, and anything else that you can think of. In another word, the medical test were really really thorough and you can't escape from anything. Oh, and i was joking about the purposes of those test.

These tests alone took about 2-3 hours to complete and just when i thought everything was over, we were told that we had to go to another 2 specialist recommended by the Aeromedical Centre just to double confirm that the results produced were consistent with each other. Therefore, we were require to repeat the eyesight test and hearing test again but at another venue, and by another person. I guess these 2 criteria were extremely important if compared to the others huh? So much trouble :P

Everything went smoothly afterwards and we were told that it will take about 2 weeks to clear our medical status. Clear as in, i am certified to be medically fit and is ready for any upcoming plan. Around 1 week later, i was notified that my medical was cleared and that i was to wait for final call up from SIA to commence training.

From here, it's another waiting game since i had to first, get an employment pass to be able to legally work in Singapore. My application was currently being processed and is expected to be ready in 3 weeks time.

And guess what? It was only 2 weeks ago when i was finally called up for a training course commencing on 1st October. Hmm, how many weeks of waiting was that? 9 weeks? 10? Oh, it doesnt matter anymore now because i was too excited to even think about the training now :) The training will kick off with a 3 weeks of OBS camp in Singapore where we will be exposed to the basic survival skills and it will be really challengin.... or so i heard. Hmm, i should have started to prepare myself mentally and physically for the course by now but i was just too lazy...zzZzZzzzzZ. Anyway, i should go shop around to get myself necessary stuffs for the upcoming camp. Weeeeee.... will keep you guys posted!

P/S - Everything that i have written up until now was mostly quick flashback about my career application with severely shortened passage of time it took until today. Therefore, they do not have any photos attached. It has been a little boring i know, and i'm sorry about that :P. The good news is that however, i have finally get back on track of what i am doing currently and will be putting more details into activities that i will be going through along with a lot of interesting photos. So stay tuned!

The Grand Finale! (Part II)

I was awoken rather abruptly by the sound of the closing door in about an hour or 2 later. There i found my other mate who just entered the room, apparently he just had his dinner with his fellow friends. Envious of him, i got nothing to eat and no one to go out eating with :( He's really nice though and he asked me if i would like his company to go out eat (I never liked the idea of eating alone, really :P it's just not my style). Of course i was really happy and i agreed right away :) (thinking that i'd probably treat him to some drinks in return). It was around 10.30pm then, and to my horror, i cant find a single place to eat at that hour, and i was expecting some mamak stall scattering around in that area. I guess, Singapore isn't all exactly like Malaysia afterall, or maybe i landed in the wrong area. Sigh, anyway we have (or rather I) has not given up yet and walked further down the street and saw..eh! Is that a McDonalds?! And fuh..i saw a sign showing the something like digit "2" and "4". Does that means it's a 24-hours McDonalds? Woohoo! I shouted. But hey, how come the restaurant seems so dark already as if they were closing down soon. I thought they were operating 24 hours a day...?! No, wait, upon closer inspection on the 24-hours sign, i saw another sentence, but it's a lot smaller, it read :

"Only on Friday"

Chhh, there goes my final hope for dinner. Dissapointed and finally given up, i walked back to the hotel room with an empty stomach. In the end i called the room service instead and got a nice curry chicken rice for myself. A little expensive but heck, who cares now? No photo sorry :P I was just too hungry and before i could snap any picture, i have already swallowed everything in the plate.

The next day, i woke up early, automated morning call at 7am. I do not know who requested for that. Anyway, i got up quickly and got ready in no time. By 8am, a shuttle service has arrived on time and fetched all the final candidates(oh, didnt i mention that i was not the only one there? There were another 6 finalist placed in different rooms) to the SIA Training Centre. When i got there, we were first lead directly into a meeting room, fillings out some documents and stuff and a very short briefing about what are we going to go through for the rest of the day.
Next, we headed into a room full of computers, each equipped with a pair of pedals you can find at Daytona USA in arcade centre, well not exactly..but something close. Besides that, there's also joysticks! So what's the deal? It turned out that we have to go through some sort of computerized personality test, IQ test and some reflextology (does this word exist?) based game. Well, it wasn't exactly hard, but it's rather tiring and at the end of the day, the test will make you feel stupid when you step out of the test room. That's how i felt. The whole test took about 2 hours but time really flies and you felt like it's only half n hour when you are done.
Next is the final interview at 2pm which consists of a panel of 6 interviewers 2 HR staffs, and 3 senior captain, and a physcologist. Why physcologist? Well, he remained silent all the time and all he did was to monitor your body language and how you react to question thrown at you. That's all. Cool eh? Again, the question was moderately tough, ranging from some technical question to personal question. As usual, there were few questions that i was not able to answer. The whole ordeal lasted for about 15 minutes.

The final event of the day was the 'tea-party' where we were served some drinks and booze and some kuih-muih. There, we were joined by the interviewers where we had our casual conversation as to make ourselves more relax after being stressed up for the whole day. These people were really, i mean really amazing and i can't express enough respect for them. :) After that, we are sent back to the hotel room by the same shuttle serviced which dump us here earlier this morning. We were told that the interview result would be released in the morning the next day and were expected to call them up for the news. Only those who made it through would have to proceed to the medical.

Fortunately, i made it through when i got a green light the next morning to go for the medical. Otherwise, this blog would not have exist at all, would it? Haha! So there, my final hurdle : the medical test but i kind of....you know..dislike it. So BooOOooo for medical! Alas, i had no choice but to go :(