February 2004

Yet another instrument lesson today. The weather was questionable
because we had just had a huge ice and snow storm go through, and
its remnants are still in the area. There was a good bit of
reported icing in the area as well as a warning for some
turbulence. However, the ceilings were high enough so that we
could get a little bit of practice in and do a couple of
approaches.

During my VFR training we did some recovery from unusual
attitutes, including some with partial panel, and it was the only
time that I ever was uncomfortable in the plane. Well, we did
some more of it today and it was, yet again, uncomfortable. We
stopped because I wasn't feeling all that hot. Doing it partial
panel didn't help, either. Speaking of which, my first recovery
from a nose high attitude didn't go well, either. I
overcontrolled and essentially pointed the plane at the ground.
As my instructor pointed out, “You had the VSI pegged.” A first
for me. I didn't know you could get a Warrior to do -2000ft/min.
I don't think I've ever actually had the pitch at quite that low
attitude before. (“Look! It's a lake! And it's it's getting
much bigger!”)

In any case, we did some timed turns as well as some other partial
panel-related climbs and descents. From there we called up boston
approach and did some no-gyro vectoring – also a new one for me.
It's kind of neat. Since your gyro is broken instead of giving
you headings (“Turn right to zero-seven-zero”) they say things
like “start a turn to the left” and “stop your turn” when you're
supposed to be on the right heading. It's all quite civilized.

Boston vectored me around and I did the localizer 29 approach into
Bedford. Normally this would have been a full ILS approach, but
Bedford's glide slope was out of service, so I had to fly it as a
localizer-only approach. Doing this without a DG or AI is pretty
challenging, I have to say. But it's excellent practice. In the
end I ended up slightly left of the centerline, but it wasn't a
bad approach.

On the next pass around my instructor reached over and slapped a
cover on my airspeed indicator. What fun! So now all I have left
is a tach, an altimeter, a VSI and a compass. Oh, yeah. And a
turn coordinator. At least I had that. Anyway, other than having
some trouble maintaining the right altitude, it went pretty well.
And had a decent landing to finish the day.

Whew. I'm tired.

The evidence:

Sounds like Garrett had some fun.
Once nice thing about being in a plane instead of a car when
you're on ice is that you're still flying. So at least
there's a chance to recover. I've landed on a couple of patchy
runways, but nothing as serious as what it sounds like happened
there. Sounds like he got
off easy, though.

However, as to his severe weather comment, I suspect that wasn't
the issue at all. It sounds like the problem was the runway, not
the weather. It's unclear what the braking action
report looked like. Also, what seems to a layman like a
pretty scary landing can actually be a pretty good landing but
because of crosswinds it can seem very strange. When landing in a
crosswind a wing on my plane will regularly rise into the air.
It's just what happens.

We had an enormous amount of fried food at our house yesterday
along with Joe, Jacob and Phil. I think the mozzarella sticks
were pretty good, even if they did end up leaking all over Joe's
shirt.

Also an important safety tip for our viewers: Jacob is from here
on out not allowed to have access to the tivo controller while
there are many people trying to enjoy important sports activity on
television.

<boc> What?  It was just a two point conversion.

Before the game I had another instrument lesson out at Bedford. This time
I actually wrote up a flight plan, filed and picked up my
clearance at the airport and had to wait for release. It's kind
of fun to see the system working from the planning standpoint.
It's reasonably simple. I don't really like the idea that you
have to go back and forth and potentially negotiate for a specific
route to where you want to go, but I can understand why they do
it. It just makes it harder to plan fuel and time.

We flew up to Concord and did a
couple of practice approaches there (the ILS 35 and VOR
12 approach.) I did pretty well on the ILS approach. No big
problems there and would have probably landed fine. On the VOR
approach I missed timing at a couple of points, but I probably
would have been OK as well. I just need to remember to use my 5
Ts every time.

We flew down to Bedford and did the GPS 23 approach into there.
That was the very first GPS approach that I've done and
holycowisiteasy. The GPS gives you the azimuth information you
need as well as giving you plenty of warning on the turns you have
to make, the distance to the next waypoint and lots of other good
information. I can understand why this is the last approach that
we did together because everything else would have seemed
impossible by comparison. All in all, a pretty easy appraoch.

For my next lesson, John suggested that I start thinking about the
long cross-country that's required by the regulations. I'm not
sure I'm ready for that, but it's good to know that my training is
coming along as fast as it is. Scanning seems pretty solid now as
does aircraft control. Not perfect of course, but good enough so
I don't have to think about it all the time and can concentrate on
communicating and actually flying the route I'm supposed to be
flying.