Flying IFR - Lesson 45 - Back In The Air and On The Approaches Again

Arrived at the airport today. First flight with the new hip.

Kevin has gone on to the charter side of the business, so I had Emily as my instructor today.

Did the preflight, and yes there were some aches involved in the steps up and down into and out of the cockpit for the preflight and kneeling to test the gas kinda sucked, and bending for the chocks sucked a real lot, but I got it done.

Lovely day today in the 50s, sky almost entirely clear below 4,000. Jacket came off immediately.

Good start up, and I called for flight following and did the long taxi to Runway 9R, and did the run up.

Take off was nice and easy and it was great to be back in the air again. 

Got handed off to Detroit Approach, and headed north to Flint.

There I did the RNAV 9 and the VOR 36 approaches, and did them very well.

Then back to Pontiac for the RNAV 9 and finishing with the  ILS 9 after a really far out of the way routing by Detroit Approach for traffic management.  I had almost thought they had forgot about us but they finally turned us back in.

Overall it went pretty well.  I did some very nice approaches if I say so myself and had the needles nice and lined up and had the glideslops captured for the RNAV and ILS approaches. Emily was impressed I was doing that well with the approaches and procedures after not flying for 3 months.

As usual, I still need to work on heading and altitude control.  Getting better, and I now trim like a fiend, but it slips a bit as I get task loaded so I need to watch it even more carefully.  

The landing was great for an aircraft carrier, nice and flat.  Not up to my usual standard. We'll blame that on not flying for the past 3 months, and enough said about that.

No issues with flying with the new hip, control was just fine and it actually feels better than before.  But I'm definitely not 100% yet.

Getting out of the plane was not bad,I felt  a little sore but it was ok.  Dropped the jacket and bag off first out of the plane to the ground rather than trying to carry them, and then lowered my self down stepping from the wing, to the step, to the ground and it worked just fine.

That's 1.9, 4 good approaches, and 1 meh landing.

I'm back at it.