An early morning flight, we decided to do some more airwork, with an approach into Camarillo (CMA) and then the ILS back into Van Nuys. The VOR into CMA was educational, because the step-down fixes come pretty quick, so the workload is high. I flew it fast as well, which made things even tougher. I handled it OK, flew the missed approach and headed home. Flew a pretty good ILS there, just momentarily losing the glideslope about 150 feet above DH.

The airwork was very good today. I was very focused on all the maneuvers, and am gaining confidence in my ability to control the plane. This week I’ll try to NAIL Kent’s brutal exercise at least once. That will be the clue that I’m ready for more approach work and cross country planning.

I’d been unable to train for almost two weeks, so we decided to just go out and work on maneuvers and perhaps shoot a VOR approach or two. We did Kent’s “brutal” exercise once – he says if you can master that, instrument flying is a no-brainer. You basically fly a big square, with climbs and descents both while flying straight and in the turns. The whole thing is timed, so you have to be very aware of rates of climbs, descents and turns at the same time. In addition, you have to read the “chart” that tells you what to do next. Very tough. I did OK, considering how long it had been since I was under the hood.

We shot the VOR approach at Whiteman, which was pretty easy except for the fact that the lighting in the 172 is abysmal (it was dark by then) and Kent had to hold a flashlight on things for me. Most surprising was where we ended up relative to the runway. Every approach I’d done to this point kept me basically aligned with the landing runway. This one had you flying directly at it midfield. Strange