Friday, June 04, 2021

Flying IFR - Lesson #6 - Pattern A Pattern B - This Time With VORs

Got the preflight done on N8570F,  and we took off and headed to the practice area.

Then we started doing unusual attitudes and recoveries with both full and partial panel (No Attitude Indicator or Heading Indicator). This is fun and feels like a roller coaster ride at times when you have your head on your chest with your eyes closed - you get disoriented pretty fast and once Kevin says "recover" I had to open my eyes see what the insturments were telloing me and respond appropriately.  All good.

Thence on to tracking a VOR.  So I dialed up Flint's VOR and tracked a couple different radials.  

Then we flew Pattern A, using the radial as a reference point.

 

Then we did Pattern B, using the radial but only partial panel with again no Attitude Indicator or Heading Indicator.  This is harder than it sounds as the compass quite frankly sucks for determining your heading while turning.  Its also harder as figuring  out what is the proper course for a right turn 45 degrees from a  current heading of 135 degrees just makes my head hurt.  At least with the heading indicator you can eyeball a 45 degree angle on the heading indicator to figure out the heading number make it work. But, I got it handled. I'm starting to get the idea of doing the pattern based on VOR which is a good thing.  

Then back to Pontiac.  Tower got us a little too close to another plane also coming in just ahead of us and spacing was too tight. 

All this was while I was still under the hood and navigating by instruments, so Kevin let the Tower know we needed spacing and we did a 360 for spacing and then came in on Runway 27L as I got to take the foggles off on final.  Not a bad landing.

That's 2.0 with 1.6 simulated instrument time and one nice landing.

2 comments:

Well Seasoned Fool said...

Unusual attitudes. On my Instrument check ride, hood down, I heard the short ladder aboard the C-150 hit the rear bulkhead just before the examiner said, "You have it". Best unusual attitude recovery I ever made.

Gregory said...

Long ago training for me. 1973-74. Failed my IFR check-ride trying to enter a holding pattern with a parallel entry. Left turn, left turn, and damn. Did another left turn for right turns holding.