Day 11 - Thursday 20 November
The first flight today was dedicated to working on position fixing in IMC. I put the foggles on, steered headings my instructor gave me, and gave him position fixes. Sometimes he'd ask for a VOR/VOR fix, sometimes I'd give him a VOR/DME fix. A couple of times he specified the beacons I was to use, other times I chose appropriate beacons myself. We did this for nearly an hour. I don't know how many position fixes I made in that hour, but gradually I was getting more and more comfortable with them. It still doesn't feel natural to be plotting and measuring in between instrument scans, but it's getting better. The biggest problem now is that my scan is suffering while I'm plotting - not enough to send us spiralling into the ground, but enough that there's a chance I may loose my heading. One technique which my instructor wants me to use to fix this is to steer with my feet while I'm busy plotting, leaving my hands free, and this helps. It all needs a little more practice, but at least I believe it's possible now!
After we'd had enough of that, we did some unusual attitude recoveries on instruments, just to keep me sharp, and then I took the foggles off. As soon as the foggles came off, my instructor gave me an engine failure. I was totally disoriented, not knowing where I was and having just recovered from a spiral dive which my instructor put me in. But I was fairly quick to establish Vg and check that there was no engine fire, and then began looking for a field. I found one, positioned myself for it, and began running through the checklists. So far, so good, but then my instructor asked me about the wind, and I realised that I was going to be landing downwind. Or was I? No - I had actually planned it correctly, but the instructor's question put that bit of doubt into my mind. Even with the doubt there, I decided it was too late to fix it, and continued to position for the (downwind? upwind?) landing - but all this confusion had taken my mind off the flying, and I overshot the field. Lesson 1 - think about the wind. But there was a second lesson, too, regarding choice of field. The overshoot for my field was some trees, leaving me with very few options, but my instructor pointed out some perfect fields nearby, where if I'd picked one near the middle I'd have had alternatives in both the overshoot and the undershoot if necessary. So, as well as not forgetting the wind, I have to remember to look not just at the field I'm planning on landing in, but also those around it, and incorporate that into my field selection. An improvement on previous unscheduled PFLs - at least I responded quickly this time - but still lots of room for improvement.
And then it was on to a navigation exercise for the afternoon - to a private airstrip called Gamebird Groves. It would also be my first time going any distance to the north of the airfield, so I would be in territory I didn't know at all. I planned it all, and then checked the weather, and found the crosswind component was outside our limits. This is getting very frustrating now!
Still, the wind had been veering around all day, and I hoped that if we left it a while it would continue to veer until it was within limits for runway 09. We had some lunch, and checked the weather again later in the afternoon. The wind hadn't continued to veer.... instead, it had decided to back around so that it was now within limits for runway 32, so we were good to go!
The VFR leg of this trip was better and more confident than the previous nav trip that I did, except that I missed my destination by several miles. At the quarter-way point, I was on track and on time. At the half-way point, I fixed my position about two degrees to the left of the planned track, so I corrected for that. The three-quarter-way point was in the middle of nowhere, I had no way of fixing my position. But when the appropriate time came around on my stopwatch, I took out a portion of the correction that I'd applied earlier, and told the instructor what I was doing. But that's where it went wrong, because I hadn't taken out enough of the correction, so I continued to drift to the right. This isn't a major problem in itself, as long as you notice what is happening and fix it. But when I found three very distinctive lakes, and a radar head, just off to my right, I didn't realise their significance. I continued flying my heading, and when it was time to look at the chart, I eventually established that I was right of track, and found my way to the destination. But it was too late - the record will show that I was 7 miles away from my destination, which is significantly more than the 3 miles which is allowed. So how do I fix this? Well, the biggest problem was not correcting the problem as soon as I saw the lakes, and that comes down to the fact that my plog only highlighted features which I expected to see in front of me, or right next to my track - it didn't identify features several miles off my track. But when you are several miles off track, for whatever reason, the easiest way of picking up on that error is to be aware of what features you might encounter off-track. So, for my next navigation exercise I will make sure my plog contains details of as many features as I can find, both on and off track.
And then it was onto the IMC diversion. Did the morning's exercise help? Yes it did - there's no doubt. I set my heading, put the foggles on, and ran through all the necessary checks. Then I got my first fix, and found myself a mile or two off track. I corrected for that, got another fix, found myself back on track again. A couple more fixes along the way went very well, too. At around the half-way point I realised I was ahead of schedule, so I revised my ETA. And when both my stopwatch and my latest position fix said that we would shortly be arriving at the mast that I'd been diverted to, I took the foggles off and the mast was just off to my left, but only by a mile or so.
The IMC diversion was not perfect, and there's still a lot more work to do before it is up to CPL standards. The main area that needs working on is keeping the scan going while I'm getting my fixes. My instructor thinks that I'm taking my eyes away from the instruments for as much as 20 seconds at a time - I haven't timed myself, but I'm sure he's right. I also need to remember to do FREDAI checks between fixes. But, compared to earlier in the week, there is a big improvement.
So I'm pretty pleased with today. Neither the VFR nor the IFR navigation are up to scratch yet, but the improvement in both is encouraging. The VFR navigation is simply a case of making all the mistakes that I can make so that I can learn from them - today's mistake was a new one to learn from which I won't make again. The IMC work is more a case of needing practice rather than learning from mistakes - but we still have about five more navigation exercises planned for me to practice on, which I hope will be enough. And if it's not enough, we'll just have to do more until I've got it right.
I have three flights planned for tomorrow, because we need to start making up for time which we've lost due to the weather. The first of these will be stalling, but I suspect there may be some navigation later in the day...
FFF
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