Flying IFR Lesson #4 - That's Rather Unusual, But We Took The Backcourse After.

Lesson #4 was in N1689H.  Sure enough, the seat slipped both during the run-up and then it slipped during landing.  Methinks I'm going to ask not to have this plane assigned to me until that's fixed as that's just not happy making.

Anyways, we headed to the northeast and began the work.

First we did steep turns while I was under the hood.  Those feel very different than when you're flying them visually, but I actually ended up doing them better by instruments once I got the hang of it.

Next it was time for unusual attitudes.

While wearing foggles I had my eyes closed and my head on my chest and Kevin had me do what I thought were standard rate turns and recoveries with my eyes closed.  

Without your instruments, or vision, what you think is a standard rate turn or straight and level isn't.  You're going to end up going up or down at some point, which can be especially compounded if he surreptitiously adjusts the throttle sometimes, which he did.

I then got to recover each time by figuring out if we were descending or climbing and do the proper recovery for each.  Not bad but that sure feels weird.

Then we did it without the attitude indicator so I only had the turn and bank gyro to be the primary instrument for wings level.  More fun.

Then we got the attitude indicator back on and we did the Pattern A procedure which is a series of timed turns.  Then we did it with a failed attitude indicator and heading indicator so I had to rely on the compass and turn and bank to do it.  Much harder.

Next we tuned in the Flint VOR and identified it and tracked it and did an outbound radial for a bit and worked on getting on a particular radial.  I need a lot more work on the getting on a particular radial part.  

 I got a micro-break from the foggles when he told me to briefly take them off so we could watch a nearby formation of A-10s heading to Selfridge.  Cool.

Then, for the piece de resistance and last act of the lesson, we did the localizer backcourse to Runway 27L.  My first localizer approach.

Got it loaded on the Garmin 430, dialed the Salem VOR in the second NAV loaded,  got the ATIS for Pontiac, and then contacted Detroit Approach and requested the backcourse for Pontiac via vectors.

Flew the vectors, maintained 4,000 feet, and intercepted the localizer just as I should and began the approach. Then we contacted Pontiac Tower and were cleared to land.  I had the foggles on all the way to the Missed Approach Point and then got to take them off and land.  That was a ton of fun.

Kevin seems happy with my performance and am making good progress, but man do I feel that I need a whole lot more work on this stuff.

That's 2.1, 1.9 simulated instruments, and 1 excellent landing.