It was a weekend of pretty intense flight training. I've picked
up the pace of my instrument training because I did some math and
realized that I wouldn't have enough time to have my rating until
some time next fall, and I don't want it to take that long. I
think it took about 11 months for me to get my private, and I
don't really want a repeat performance.

Friday I went for a (relatively) long cross country up to maine
and back in a warrior because I needed to build up a little time
so I could get my rating to fly the arrow (more on that later.)
Not much to report here except that the maine coast is quite
beautiful. Also, airports with a little [R] next to the name of
the field on the sectional need to be examined closely in the
A/FD. For example, the airfield that I was looking at turned out
to be an airbase, and they don't let just anyone land
there. Namely me. I ended up landing at a cute little airport up
in Maine called Wiscasset. I'll
have to go back up there during the spring/summer. It looked like
it was a short walk from some nice ocean front parks. And the FBO
has the coolest name ever.

Saturday I had a couple of hours scheduled with my instructor and
the weather was quite nice, although a bit bumpy up there. I got
away with wearing only a sweatshirt on top of my usual compliment.
It almost felt like spring. We went up and did the LOC RWY 16
approach at Beverly. It went OK
except that I failed to time the approach so in reality I would
have had no idea where the missed approach point was. That
approach also has a missed that has an intersection hold which was
challenging. My entry was OK on the hold, although I missed a
twist once I was in the hold because approaching the hold you're
actually flying in the opposite direction on the same radial as
where the hold is located. In all honesty the thought of flipping
the OBS did cross my mind, but I failed to execute.

From there we flew back and did the ILS RWY 29
approach back into bedford. Full stop.

Sunday I also had another three hours set up to do my final chunk
of training in the Arrow. (At
the place that I've been flying you need at least 125 hours total
time before you can fly the Arrow solo.) We took off and went up
to high altitude just to see what it was like. Doing stalls at
ten thousand feed is a bit different than doing them at three
thousand. The plane handles a bit differently. The controls
aren't quite as responsive because there's less air. We did some
power off, power on and turning stalls as well as steep turns.
From there he showed me how you can convert altitude into speed in
the arrow and just for fun we did the ILS RWY 2
approach into Keene. Keene is a
neat little airport right near Mount Monadnock.
It's right in a valley and it gives you good perspective into why
departure procedures and staying on the glide slope and localizer
are so important. My instructor says that in the summer it's fun
to fly right around the top of the mountain because you can
usually see and wave to the hikers at the top. That sounds like
fun.

From there it was back to bedford and we did the ILS RWY 29
approach into there and stayed in the pattern and did cross-wind
landings. I have to say that I was not pleased with my
performance. I felt pretty clumsy at first – landing the Arrow is
a bit harder since it sinks much faster than the little warriors
that I'm used to. You have to carry power almost all the way
through the approach and make sure that the nose stays down or you
will bleed off speed pretty quickly. I was having a lot of
problems keeping the center line in the relatively strong cross
winds but I was doing better after a low approach and a few more
turns around the pattern. I'm still not completely confident,
though. I'll have to go out and do some practicing on one of
these days that we have some stronger winds.

However, I have my complex rating now. This means I can fly a
wider array of planes that are a bit faster than the trainers I've
been in during most of my training.

Next up on tuesday is the required long IFR cross-country. Has to
be at least 250 Nautical Miles. I'm not sure where I'm going to
go yet.