Tuesday, December 07, 2021

Flying IFR - Lesson 40 - More Checkride Practice

Got to the airport at 0745 today for an 0800 flight.  Mornings, ugh.

Clouds were above 3,000 feet so no factor, light winds out of 300 so no issue, and thus off to do the KPTK-KVLL-KPTK tour yet again.

Got flight following and headed to KVLL and did the RNAV 9 full procedure and hold. Overall good and had it pretty locked in but was above the advisory glideslope a bit near the end.  For the circle to land on 27, did ok but need to lose altitude on base as I came in too high to land - decent landing but ate up a fair bit more of the runway than I should have which was not good.

Back to Pontiac for the RNAV 27L, did it rather well and then went missed.

Headed out to practice some unusual altitude recoveries and then back for the Localizer Back Course 27L partial panel.  First one went pretty well, ending in a decent miss.  Figured out finally to not purposely make any correction turn more than 5 degrees, and let the localizer come back in otherwise I'm s-turning my way to glory. Need to be quicker descending though.

Second one went through the localizer a bit before getting established, then overall got it sorted out and did a rather nice landing.  Had a fair bit of deflection while getting it all sorted out which is annoying. Still need to descend quicker and make sure to stop above MDA.  At least no full scale deflection on any so there's that.

Biggest problems now are the climbing tendency I have, which keeps happening even with a ton of trim in, then too much trim and I descend, and of course then the need to not overcompensate and dip below minimums as a result of correcting the climb.  In short, I'm flying good but not great and need to do better.  Frustrating as hell as it feels like I'm not improving nor getting good enough to pass and this will never end.

That's 1.9 with 4 approaches, 1 hold and 1.5 simulated instrument time and 2 decent landings.

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