Yet another day of learning

Here I am once again, with a new blog. I've had some complaints about my last blogs being too long and I must admit, they are somewhat lengthier than the average "hello, how are you, goodbye"-conversations. This, unfortunately (?), is my writing style, but I'll do my absolute best in trying to keep it short...ish.

Today we started the morning with AGA, ACD and ACT. I'll be using the acronyms, as it's just quicker and easier for me, but I'll put a blog online to explain what every acronym means as well, so there's no reason to panic. ;-)

AGA was some basic information about the difference between airfields and airports, explanation on what (limited) customs are etc. Also the basic layout of and markings on an aerodrome were explained.
ACD was more about recognizing different kinds of aircraft (nose, wings, engines, gear and/or tail are the most important factors to distinguish one aircraft from another). Personally I had expected a bit more about climb rates, maximum speeds etc, but I guess we'll be seeing that in PER.
In ACT we were taught about the primary control surfaces of an aircraft and its axes. Not too complicated yet, if you have a bit of knowledge about aviation.

The afternoon was filled with ADY and RAD. 2 lessons, each taking approximately 2 hours.

ADY was the funniest course of today. Our instructor, Erik, had brought all kinds of items with him (almost anything you can find between a pingpong ball to a vacuum cleaner) in order to show us some special capabilities of air flows. Have you ever tried making a ping pong ball fly with a straw? We had to today, in order to understand the principle of how lift is generated. It actually made learning the stuff quite interesting. When I first read we would have lessons of ADY as well, I thought these would be SOOOO boring I'd fall asleep just by the thought of it. Now I'm actually looking forward to the next course. Kudos to Erik for that.

Radar however, was the most boring course this week. Could be that my judgement was impaired by the great class we had before, but all we had to do was sit down, watch and listen ourself through a sort of powerpoint (and solve a few questions along the way) and try to learn things. Almost no interactivity, hardly any interesting facts and this all at the end of the day. Self-study they call it... I think I'll watch, I'm sorry, learn it when I really can't sleep.

For the last few days, the skies over Dubendorf were very cloudy but today, we actually had clear skies !!
On my way home, I discovered something about our region which actually astonished me. While I believed there were only hills in this area, there are actually mountains further up ahead.

The view from our balcony on a sunny day, when looking in an easterly direction.

After taking some pictures, we all went to the Gemeindeverwaltung (I suppose the translation is City Hall) to register ourselves as students in Switzerland, at a costly price of CHF 20 just to have a paper filled out, but luckily all costs are reimbursed.

Tomorrow, I'll first have an entire day of school (08h15 - 16h45 again, luckily the last one this week) but then my girlfriend is coming over for the weekend, expected to arrive at Zurich-Kloten Airport at 21h10. Can't wait for the weekend to start. :-D

See you later.