Today I had Paul as an instructor for the first time. Paul is pretty relaxed and let me do my instrument preflighting of the aircraft how I liked to do it which was good. He did have some good tips along the way. The plan was to fly to Flint for 3 approaches - the ILS, a VOR circle to land, and the RNAV 9 then back to Pontiac for the RNAV 27L.
Runway 27R is now closed and 27L, the big runway is now open and nicely redone. No more circling to land form the RNAV 27L. Taxi'ing however is now an enormous pain in the nether regions to get back to the northside of the field.
Run ups are now done on the DCT ramp.
Good preflight and run-up and did my request call for flight following and approaches at Flint.
27L is darn nice to take off from right now, smooth as silk and freshly painted.
Talked to Detroit Approach, then great Lakes Approach and got the ILS 9 approach and did it like I was on rails - everything just clicked and Paul said I did a great job. Then off to the published hold after going missed and we setup for the VOR 36 circle to 9.
I did the VOR approach - my nemesis up to this point - perfectly. I was perfectly on altitudes and ahead of the plane the whole time. Evena great circle to 9. Much rejoicing ensued.
Then missed and vectored to the RNAV 9 and requested by Tower to abandon the approach early for traffic, which in did.
Then back to Pontiac and Detroit Approach began vectoring us to the final approach fix rather than any initial fix due to traffic and also had us keep our best speed up for traffic. So I'm hitting the final approach fix at 3,000 feet, 2,500 RPM and about 110 knots+. This is a tad too high and fast for what it should be at that point, but that's following Detroit's controller's vectors and altitude requirements to avoid the gaggle of traffic. As result, things happened all sorts of fast, but I was on top of it and chopped power and caught the glideslope and got in a nice landing that was smooth as silk.
Then a heckuva convoluted taxi to get back to the northside, taking Runway 18/36 to get there, and done.
Paul said my radio work is excellent, I was multi-tasking and keeping on top of some complicated instructions, and ahead of the airplane configuring it for all approaches and handled everything great.
About time it all clicked. Feeling very good about my performance on this hop.
Now to get the feshtunkinah written test done, do the long cross-country, study up for the orals and finish this sometime.
That's 2.0, 4 approaches, 1.8 simulated instrument, 1 hold, and 1 very nice landing and one happy pilot.
4 comments:
That's a confidence builder. It was nice that Detroit wanted you to keep your speed up. So you don't get too cocky, doncha know. Haha
Anyway, that's a nice flight.
I do not recall if you had done any DME arcs.
VEry nice!
Rick: That it was, a bit sporty but fine. No, there are no nearby DME arcs around here to practice on, probably will do some in the simulator.
Old NFO: Thanks, it went really well.
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