Sunday, October 29, 2006

Lesson #25 Intro to Instrument flying

In Canada a student private pilot must complete a minimum of five hours of instrument instruction. This requirement does not permit a VFR pilot to fly in IFR conditions obviously, but it will hopefully give a VFR pilot enough instrument training to safely navigate out of IMC (cloud) and back into VFR conditions.

The weather on the east coast of Canada has been terrible for flying the last two weeks. There was a large stationary low stuck a few hundred mile to the East North-East (over Newfoundland) that caused us to have off and on showers for nearly a week. One minute it's sunny and then the next a large cloud would float over and it would rain for a few minutes.

I had a lesson book for last weekend but it was cancelled due to rain, low overcast and wind.

Trying to schedule a lesson time that worked for me, work, Dave and my family is proving tough. Dave has been pretty booked up with other students, and a local PPL that's getting his multi rating (so he can fly his beautiful new to him twin which he just imported from the U.S.) As it turned out the only time that I'd be able to get out and fly this week was Friday morning. The previously mentioned low pressure area was still effecting us, but it finally started moving slowly East Friday morning. It was still sunny one minute with a patch of nice blue sky and then cloudy the next with showers/rain, though we had enough of a ceiling to do a lesson and the wind had come down somewhat.

I knocked off work mid-morning and headed out to the airport, which is only about five minutes away. Twenty minutes later we took off and headed North. Dave started unfolding a large map, I asked him if he was lost or something. He replied that someone had made off with the foggles and the laminated map that the school keeps in Fern. They haven't been stolen, but they've mistakenly made it into someone's flight bag. They'll eventually turn up again, given enough time.

He unfolded the map to the correct size and placed it over the windshield in front of me, I immediately went down to the instruments to keep us from plummeting to our deaths. Dave could still see out his slice of windshield, as the map did not extend all the way over to his side.

Dave started me off with some straight and level flight, then we did some rate 1 turns to this and that heading, and a couple of 180 degree turns. I did pretty good job when I remembered to do a complete scan, a couple of times I overlooked something or other and within what seemed like seconds I was drifting off course or from my assigned altitude. Ten degrees is not much, and it's surprising how quickly you can wander off course.

Next we did some 30 degrees of bank turns to a certain heading, both left and right. Dave then had me do some straight and level climbs and descents. Remember the acronym for a climb is APT (attitude, power and trim) and a descent is PAT (power, attitude and trim). Next we did some climbing turns and descending turns, all went well, but I was really working to keep an eye on everything.

Since today was my first lesson on instrument flying Dave showed me how to navigate back to the airport using the VOR. He had me come around to a heading of 90, which was in the general direction of the airport. Then he tuned in the 90 degree radial of the VOR and then pointed out that the "To" flag was on. Our VOR receiver indicated that we were left of the radial so we changed our heading to 120 degrees to intercept it, which we did after a few minutes. We then tracked on it at a heading of 90 degrees for a couple of minutes but we started getting blown off course to the right, so I had to alter my heading to the left (North) to compensate for the wind. We were blown off the radial a second time but I brought us back and I was able make a second slight heading correction that managed to keep us on it all the way back to the airport.

Dave called us entering the zone and then he turned on the NDB receiver, which simply points to the non directional beacon, which is a navigation aid that is used to setup for ILS approaches. He asked me to fly directly towards it and a few minutes later we actually flew over the beacon and the arrow on the receiver did a 180, Dave then had me turn 30 degrees to the left and after a minute or so he had me do a 180 degrees turn to the right. He then pointed to the ILS indicator. He said that when the vertical line (which was all the way to the left) starts swinging to the right that I should alter my course 30 degrees to the right and keep the line centered, with small heading corrections. A minute later the vertical line started to move and I altered my course to the right 30 degrees and did my best to keep the line centered.

Dave asked me to set us up for landing, which I did as he called tower to report that we were on long final. He then had me reduce power and keep it reduced until the horizontal line on the ILS receiver started to come up, which it did a minute or so later. All I had to do now was keep both lines centered and I found myself shooting my first virtual (map still in the front windshield) ILS approach!

Dave then called us short final and removed the map. Directly ahead was the runway, the view outside revealed that we were at the perfect height for the remaining distance. Tower replied back that the winds were from our left at 60 degrees, 7 kts gusting 21. We found ourselves crabbing pretty good, Dave requested a slip to compensate for the winds. My crosswind landing sucked, I forgot to turn the ailerons into the wind once we were down, and I released the rudder early.

All in all another great lesson with lots of new material to review and absorb. I finally know what pilots mean when they refer to the "hockey stick" during an ILS approach.

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