Day 6 - Saturday 15 November
Today, my instructor was off sick. That wasn't a big surprise - both he and I have had some kind of bug for a few days, but while mine started off manageable and gradually got better, his started off manageable and gradually got worse. Fortunately, though, it was possible to reschedule both of today's flights with different instructors.
This morning, I flew with one of the school's managers. The lesson was full-panel IMC general handling, and shouldn't cause problems for anyone with a current IMC rating. As I predicted yesterday, the weather was beautiful, but I had to put some foggles on and we started off with straight+level flight. Then we did climbing and descending at specified airspeeds, before doing a couple of rate one turns. No problems there, so we moved on to steeper turns, first at 30 degrees of bank, then at 45. The turn at 45 degrees of bank isn't actually required, but it's good practice just the same. It turned out to be the only difficult task of the morning - the trick, just as with visual steep turns, is to maintain the correct attitude, whilst also scanning the other instruments to check your progress, but I let the nose drop very slightly towards the end of the turn, and lost about 150'.
Now that we'd done all the necessary manoevres, the next step was to combine them. I was asked to climb to a specified altitude. Then, shortly before arriving at the designated altitude, I'd have to turn onto a given heading. We did several of these, both climbing and descending, and the instructor timed the turns so that, gradually, I needed to roll out of the turn closer and closer towards the altitude at which I was to level off. It's vital to keep the scan going - to maintain the correct attitude, and also to watch the DI and the altimeter so that both the turn and the climb/descent can be stopped at exactly the right point. But as long as your eyes can be everywhere at once, it's no problem. The task was made a little more difficult by the weather. It started off beautifully smooth, but gradually got more and more bumpy as the sun heated everything up, so I had to work quite hard by the end just to maintain the attitude - which just added to the fun, of course!
That was all for the morning lesson. The debrief was fairly short, since the instructor was happy that I could fly on a full panel pretty well. The things which I need to improve on centre more on checklists (again!) than flying. I missed the landing light on the approach checks, and he wanted to see more frequent FREDA checks too. But I can feel myself becoming more and more confident with the use of the checklists, to the point that whenever the aircraft is settled down I'm started to ask myself which checklist I should be doing. Not always - but sometimes, and that's a good sign.
The second lesson was with a different instructor, and quite late in the afternoon. We started up, and taxied out (and I forgot my taxy checks - damn!), and then did the power checks. Set 1700rpm, check the brakes are holding. Carb heat on - why has the carb heat lever come off in my hand??? We taxied back in.
Luckilly, because it was already quite late, there was a nice selection of other aircraft for us to choose between. By the time we'd fuelled and pre-flighted another aeroplane, it was getting dark - and I was about to log my first night hours of the season.
The lesson was an IMC lesson, but I was allowed to take the foggles off a couple of times to admire the night sky. We climbed above a scattered layer of cumulous clouds, and the view with the clouds and the city lights below us, and stars above us, was amazing. My instructor also took the opportunity to point out a couple of points about visual night-flying. I've never done any night-flying over the sea before, and I was amazed at how hard it is to see the horizon. It's very easy to confuse ships with stars and get a false impression of where the horizon is. Using all the instruments available when flying at night is always a good idea, but even more so over the ocean.
Back to the planned lesson, though. Some more advanced full-panel work, such as unusual attitude recovery, and slow flight (the slow flight caught me out until I figured out that we were on the back of the drag curve at 65kts - once I realised that it was easy). Then we simulated a vacuum failure, and it was time to practice climbs, descents and turns on a partial panel. All of this is stuff that is covered on the IMC course, but although I try to practice my IMC flying reasonably regularly, I haven't done any partial panel work since I passed the test, so the refresher was welcome and needed. It didn't take too long to get back into it, but I will have to try to find a way to work some partial panel practice into my regular flying when I finish the CPL course.
I was pretty pleased with my first night landing since last winter - not perfect, but acceptable - although I didn't make enough use of the instruments in the circuit and rather carelessly let the airspeed get a little low.
Hopefully I'll have my regular instructor back tomorrow.
FFF
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