I had my second round of simulated instrument flying today. I might not have explained that well enough last time for my non-pilot readers, so here goes. We fly VFR, that means good weather, but to practice instrument flight, I put on a hood that limits my vision to the instrument panel of the airplane. The instructor gives directions on which way to turn, climb or descent, and keeps a look out for other airplanes.Rob threw me a few curves today, literally. After a few minutes of basic instrument flight, we got into unusual attitude recovery. For this fun event, I close my eyes while Rob flies the plane and tries to get me disorientated. He then puts the plane in an unusual attitude (hence the name) and has me recover. The plane may be climbing, diving and most likely banked at the same time. I have to quickly, by looking at the airspeed and turn coordinator, access the situation and take steps to return to straight and level flight. It went pretty well. Rob never was able to get me thoroughly disorientated, and I recovered quickly. I over controlled on the recoveries, but I got things back to straight and level pretty quick. If the GPS track looks like we were drinking, its because Rob played this game for a good while.
I can't tell you that I saw anything interesting, because I didn't see much of anything at all. I had the hood on all the way back to Whitted, where we did a few short field landings and called it a day. Don't worry, I took the hood off for the landings. Next week I'm going to try to finish my cross country requirement with a flight to Lake Wales (X07), Leesburg (LEE) and Brooksville (BVK) before returning to Whitted. Rob endorsed my logbook for solo flights within Tampa's class B, so I'll be able to request flight following. I may file a VFR flight plan for one leg of the trip, just to have done it. I will try to get some good photos on that flight.
You will need google earth to view the lesson 25 file.
Statistics:
Dual Instruction Time: 23.3 Hours
Solo/PIC Time: 13.0 Hours
Landings: 126
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3 comments:
Unusual attitudes are a lot of fun, sounds like you did a good job with it. Dave really loves screwing around with students on them, so that was delightful.
I hope that picture wasn't representative of the attitudes you found yourself in :)
Paul,
The pic was for dramatic effect. For the non-pilot community, so to speak. I would wet my drawers if we got a 172 inverted.
Be fun in an Extra or Giles, maybe.
Tony
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