Tuesday, May 24, 2022

Flying IFR - Lesson 51 - Approaching Acceptable Approaches

Overall I'd say the practice on my own has paid off.

Approaches today were considered to be very good by Rocky, now I just need to fix altitude and heading while cruising as I was constantly up and down and couldn't get the trim on N5337F to trim the plane out level, nor would the bugger stay straight as it had a pronounced right turning tendency for me.  

As to staying level, it would not do it, either slightly up and or slightly down was the best I could manage, and often got both at the same time, which really shouldn't occur.

Since winds were out of 9 we went to Flint and I did the ILS 9 and the VOR 36 circle to 9 which was a fun change from the typical VOR 18 circle 9.

Did not bust minimums on any of them, did a good circle kept it in tight and would have had the landing made no problem so good there.

The back to Pontiac and did the Localizer 9 partial panel and did it just fine, had the minimums and held them and all was good.

Then back around for the RNAV 9R with one heckuva vectoring detour due to traffic and then rode the RNAV down like rails and then landed long as instructed by Tower, went all the was to the end, crossed 27R and parked the plane.

Overall, much improvement.

Unfortunately the examiner is apparently getting tricky and now adding the possibility of an RNAV at 9G2 followed by a circle to the other end of the runway.

Problem 1 - there are no circling minimums at 9G2, its an RNAV at either end so this is technically questionable but since you're doing the test under VFR conditions apparently you can do it.  That add some extra complexity to the test and now we need to have another lesson to practice that approach, yay, not.

So another lesson has to be flown, and if it goes well, then it will be time for the pre-checkride checkride.

 That's 1.7, with 1.3 simulated instrument, 4 approaches and a decent landing.

2 comments:

juvat said...

Aaron,
Man! From your descriptions of that airplane's handling characteristics I'd think it's out of true. Bent in some subtle way. Given that it's a trainer, students (other than you of course) can land it badly and over time it gets difficult to fly well.
There were several USAF tails I flew that had that characteristic. I once flew a Vietnam era Phantom that the yaw ball was one width right of the marking lines. Made strafing VERY difficult, unless the wind was coming from that direction of course.

Aaron said...

juvat: Yep, I suspect 5337F is somewhat out of rig. Combined with my ham-fisted flying, it makes it a tad more difficult.

On the upside, I think I;ve now got the altitudes on approach under control, which is nice.