Instrument Day 3

September 16, 2011

Today Eric and I worked on my third instrument lesson. But leading up to this lesson, we first did a lesson a few days ago with the PCATD (simulator). This was an incredibly useful device. Eric had the ability to control many different things ranging from the environment, to the plane and the instruments, etc. Most of the lesson was learning how to fly (by instruments only) when particular instrument(s) had failed. I didn't realize it until later, just how much I learned from that lesson.

Today we took what I learned from the PCATD, and applied it in the air. We took off from Runway 9 and headed north. While wearing the foggles, we did some review including straight and level flight, turns, climbs, descents, airspeed changes and stalls. We then jumped ahead of schedule a bit and applied what I learned from the PCATD. He began covering up certain instruments to indicate a failure. At first it was a little uncomfortable, but I used my correctly working instruments to guide me in flying the plane. In some cases, the failed instrument(s) can be fixed by turning on certain controls in the cockpit. Flying with a partial instrument panel really wasn't all that bad. You just have to learn how to correctly interpret the other instruments, keep calm, and fly the plane. Today we ended up simulating a failure of the airspeed indicator, turn coordinator, heading indicator and the attitude indicator (a.k.a. the artificial horizon).

Eric then thought it would be beneficial to start navigating by using the VOR. In order to get on the right track, we would have to intercept the radial that we needed to take us to the airport. This was a first for me, so naturally it was slightly confusing. We made it back to the airport and Eric had me take off the foggles.

We entered the pattern for Runway 9. Once on final, we noticed there was a tractor right in our way. We couldn't land and was forced to do a go-around. We flew back around and tried again. Runway 9 is the hardest of the four runways to land on because it's short, and there's wires that you need to clear on final approach. The landing was bad. Thank goodness I had Eric. After taxiing off the runway I asked him if we could try it again; I never like to end on a bad note. We flew the pattern around and configured the plane for landing. I still came in too high, but we quickly got it on track. Everything was looking better, and sure enough the landing itself was much better as well.

On another note, I hit my 80th flight hour today!

Next up will be another PCATD lesson early next week.