Not Flying - Sim Flight

As I predicted, it was a simulator flight and glad I insisted on it.  

They did offer a flight in 88J, as they thought it wouldn't be too bad, but I could already see the wind picking up. Sure enough it went to 19-35 knots at 230 making for a 22.5 crosswind factor plus rain and low clouds.  No thank you.

So simulator it was.

Controlling the simulator sucks.  Made even harder as I got to simulate an iPad failure as I had left it plugged in at home.  Ooops.

So I used my phone for the charts.  Good fail-over practice anyways.

Did the Troy RNAV 9 circle to 28 and did it well enough for a simulator.  Could not trim it level at all, was bobbing around like a porpoise even not touching the yoke.

Then I did the Pontiac Backcourse 27L and that went ok.

Then on to the RNAV 27 and Rocky failed the Attitude Indicator and HSI without telling me.  In the sim they remain on the screen frozen and since he did it when I was straight and level and everything was going well, it rapidly started not going well.  Much hillarity ensued and I messed that up big time.

Then did it again and handled it much better, and he also failed the turn coordinator.  Quick tip if you lose your Attitude Indicator; HSI; and Turn Coordinator all at the same time in IMC, someone up there really doesn't like you.

Turns out you can do a standard rate turn by watching the GPS track change in degrees, and can know you're level when it stops changing, which was an interesting lesson to find out.  Did manage to make the runway on that one.

Overall I'm not exactly thrilled with my performance and just hope it will translate to more precise real aircraft control and better instrument scan.

That's 1.5 simulated instrument; 3 holds; 3 approaches; and feeling like this is going pretty much nowhere.  If the weather improves this weekend or next week, I think I'm just going up by myself to clear my head and just do some practice approaches and work on just having the plane completely under control.