Flying IFR - Lesson 8- More Approaches

Today the weather was nice and with the cloud layer at 4000 and lifting it was rather the opposite of yesterday.

So I went to DCT and began preflighting N5337F.

Turns out Kevin was not going to be my instructor today as they had assigned him for a King Air charter flight.  So, I had Robert as an instructor for the first time today.  Nice enough guy, and I explained what I had done in the last lesson and he then got things in motion for today's lesson.

He then filed an instrument flight plan and showed me how to do so in Foreflight.   Good to see how to do it.  We would do Pontiac to Flint, shoot a couple approaches at Flint, and then back to shoot an approach at Pontiac

Not the  approaches I had written up and studied for that Kevin had told me to study, of course, that would be too easy.  Instead, we did some I had not done before.

So I looked over the plates and started prepping for the VOR Runway 36 at Flint, followed by the Flint 27R ILS, and then finishing with the Pontiac 27R RNAV approach. Fun.  I got as much pre-loaded and ready as possible to ease the workload in the air.

So off we went and got assigned our clearance and we were off.  After takeoff I put the foggles on and they stayed on until practically the end of the lesson. After takeoff we flew runway heading and contacted Detroit approach, were given a vector to fly and to climb and remain at 3,000 and to contact Great Lakes Approach.

Busy day today, with everyone catching up from yesterday's weather cancels.  Flint Tower and Great Lakes Approach were getting a serious workout in as a result.  Pontiac also went to dual towers due to the volume.

So, we got vectored to the VOR 36 approach and I did it rather well if I say so myself.  Then we did a missed at the threshold, and I was immediately told to climb to 3,000 and turn right due to traffic taking off from 36. Next, we got vectored quite a bit due to traffic before getting the ILS 27 approach.  I then got that set and did it and then we had to do a quick missed right at the threshold for traffic.

Then back to Pontiac for the RNAV 27L.  We were vectored around for a bit before heading to the initial fix, and then given the option of holding for awhile to get the initial fix, or getting vectored right in to the final approach fix, and Robert had us get vectored in as time was ticking.  So I loaded up and activated the RNAV 27L approach, had the plate out on my iPad and did a very nice LPV approach and landed, and thus ended the lesson.  

I'm certainly enjoying the process.  Robert said I was doing good for someone starting out and was very good with my altitudes and headings.  Definitely a work in process and I need to work on the Garmin 430 settings a bit more for setting up the plan, procedures and approaches but I'm getting better at it and am understanding stuff a lot more. 

Still lots of task saturation but I'm getting an idea of the flow and what to look at and do next for each step and a better understanding of the process.

A very good lesson and excellent approach practice.

That's 1.6, with 1.4 Simulated Instrument, and 1 great landing.