Instrument - Day 1

September 7, 2011

I'm not sure how I managed to sleep last night because I have been quite nervous about today. I have been reading my Instrument Pilot textbook so that I was somewhat prepared for the first lesson. Skimming through future chapters was probably not the best idea; overwhelming to say the least.

I met with my Instrument instructor, Eric at 9 a.m. and filled out the required paperwork for Part 141 Instrument enrollment. Part 141 requires that a certified flight school provide an approved, structured course of training. In return, the course allows graduation with less hours. This will save me time and money in the long run. Eric and I talked for a while about how this course works and what to expect. After discussing the syllabus and our lesson plan for the day, I was feeling more nervous. "I can't believe I am doing this! What was I thinking?!" This is a professional rating, I will be sharing the skies with professional pilots, and talking to the same people and follow the same ATC instructions as airline Captain's. "Oh my goodness, am I ready for this?? Breathe Sara, you'll do great." After a successful preflight inspection of the plane, we were ready to go. Taxiing out to Runway 36, Eric showed me how to check the instruments to make sure they were operating properly for instrument flight. We then lined up on the runway, stopped, checked the instruments one last time, then took off.

I was maybe 600ft above the ground when Eric told me I needed to put the foggles on. Alright, so now I can't see outside and must solely rely on my instruments to tell me what the plane is doing. We did basic maneuvers such as climbs, descents, straight and level flight and turns, climbing turns, and descending turns. He started getting me in the habit of speaking to ATC by pretending he was the controller, and I had to repeat back all instructions. It was good practice. Now on to more challenging maneuvers. First up was slow flight. I really didn't have any issues there; the only difference was that since I'm now flying in a Cessna 172, there's an extra notch of flaps that I have to work with.

Next we moved on to stalls. Leading up to today, I had worked myself up to completely fearing these while being "under the hood" (wearing the foggles). I don't like these under regular visual conditions, how on earth am I going to do these blind? We set up for a power-off stall, then Eric tells me that we will take it to the point where we break the stall. Well, that to me meant to wait until the airplane nose drops. He tells me to keep pulling back, keep the nose up, wait for our speed to drop, "keep pulling, keep pulling." Alright, any day now this thing will stall. Finally the nose drops and I recover. Eric quickly tells me that I had already broke the stall three times. I was definitely unaware of this.  He took the controls and had me watch a different instrument each time he stalled. Now I see what he meant. We then did a power-on stall; much better.

Lastly, it was time to do unusual attitudes. I've already done these under the hood, so I knew what to expect. However, Eric really likes to get into it a lot more than some of the other instructors. He took the controls and while I had my head down and eyes shut he flew up, down, right, left, over and under (ok not really, but it sure felt like it). I had to peek quickly once just to ease the nausea. I recovered great the first time, then the second time.

We're now on our way back to the airport. We listen to the weather, it states that the winds are from the north at around 10 knots, gusting to 21 knots. I'm still wearing the foggles, so he gives me headings to fly and puts me in the pattern to land on Runway 36. He makes a radio call so that other pilots in the area know our position; we're on downwind. By now if I were under regular visual flying, I'd be slowing the airplane down and lowering some flaps to start making my descent. But I'm not, he now tells me to turn to a heading of 090°, then 060°, 030° and lastly 360°. I'm now on final approach, still at 1100ft and wearing the foggles. He takes the controls, lets me take off the foggles (pretending as if I just broke out of the clouds), then gave me the controls again to land. Again, the extra notch of flaps threw me off a little bit, plus the strong headwinds made it a difficult approach. Eric helped me get the airplane down. The main wheels touched the ground, and  as we're rolling down the runway we kept the nose up to help slow down. The problem was that since there was so much wind, it kept the nose wheel from touching down (I guess it was still providing lift?). Eventually we got slow enough and it touched down. We couldn't help but laugh.

Once inside we debriefed. One thing they do for Part 141 training is grade each lesson. 1-Excellent, 2-Above average, 3-Average, 4-Below average, 5-Below acceptable standards. The total lesson grade he gave me was a 2.8. I'm happy with that. The next lesson we will be using the PCATD, a Personal Computer–Based Aviation Training Device (simulator), not actual flying. This should be interesting!


Flight Log to Date
Hours flown: 78.7