Glass cockpit vs steam gauges for low time PPL (and getting into a fast aircraft early on)

Peter wrote:

Depends on who you are flying with. You must have a toilet provision – relying on your bladder capacity will work until it doesn’t… See e.g. here.

I learned a tough lesson on this earlier this summer.

Four of us were returning from Newquay to White Waltham after a weekend away. I did not have a last pee before walking out to the plane and as I strapped myself in I found myself in that state of ‘I don’t really need to go, but I probably would if there was a loo right here and I wasn’t busy doing something else’. I had drunk a fair amount of fluid because the weather was hot, and then we got delayed a bit because the weather was marginal with some low cloud and we waited for a shower to pass over the airport. As we took off I thought it might be the sort of flight where I dashed for the clubhouse upon landing, but didn’t think it’d get as serious as it did.

For the first hour things gradually got worse. We had some water bottles on board, but they were all small neck, and regardless of jokes about size of equipment it certainly made spillage more likely than not. Also we don’t have an autopilot, and whilst my friend in the right seat can hold straight and level fairly competently, we were at quite low level due to some convective build-ups and when I asked my right.seater to fly it made the back-seaters a bit nervous. Two of the passengers, the right-seater included, were female. The male rear-seater was married to the right-seater. The female rear-seater asked him how he felt about me getting my equipment out right next to his wife.

The eventual outcome was that instead of giving her the controls I gave her my old-ish copy of Pooleys VFR flight guide and had her look up runway lengths. By this time I was extremely uncomfortable. Old Sarum was the closest to our position, but with a high OAT I decided that short grass strips and a TB10 close to max weight would not be happy bedfellows. Thruxton was settled on, a diversion was made with a straight in approach. I told the guy on the radio exactly what the problem was and he said I could shut down at the end of the runway and hop out. Did the business on the grass, started back up and departed back to White Waltham. Paid them over the phone the next day.

Always have a pee before you go. Always carry a suitable bottle.

I was wondering how long it would take for that problem to resurface in this thread :)

There is “suitable equipment” available in pilots shops all over. Or plastic bags in any supermarket. Just make sure they are not the vegetable ones which have holes :)

http://www.sportys.com/pilotshop/little-john-pilot-urinal.html

will do the trick with

http://www.sportys.com/pilotshop/lady-j-adapter-for-little-john-pilot-urinal.html

for the ladies. And DO try it at home before flight, it will help avoiding embarassment and wet seats when it has to be used.

Yes I had already posted a link to the “wee thread” earlier

You did well, Graham. I had that once in the RHS of a Maule. The pilot’s wife was puking up in the back (it was a hot summer day so a Maule gets chucked around badly) and after about an hour’s torture we landed at Wellesbourne where I jumped out as soon as the plane stopped. That was about 10 years ago and today the outcome would be a lot more definitive…

Graham wrote:

As a final note, based on your location and stated mission profile it looks like you’ll spend a lot of time over water. You may wish to consider a retractable gear rather than fixed since the ditching characteristics are generally better.

That’s a very valid comment. Living on an island where pretty much any x-country trip is a long over-water run, I don’t think I would want to fly a fixed gear airplane.

There have been studies which show there is no higher injury/fatality incidence during the ditching event itself between fixed gear and retractable.

Peter wrote:

For Greece you want a DA42 Avgas is a problem.

I was also thinking of the DA42, especially given that nearly every flight will have a considerable leg over water.

It is easy at the PPL level. The SE to ME conversion, assuming reasonable pilot ability, is 5hrs.

If you have the SE IR then you have to do another IR test, but AFAIK it isn’t like the initial EASA IR test. In FAA-land it is a full checkride with a DPE, but you aren’t doing that.