One more for the road

Tonight we decided to head out to Santa Barbara (SBA) for one last cross country, and do it to checkride standards. Departed Van Nuys around 5:30pm, and climbed on top of a pretty nasty haze layer. Smooth and clear (from what I hear) the whole way from there. That is until we got to SBA – clouds over the coast meant we’d get some actual on the VOR 26 approach.

Not quite. I started my descent, and Kent had me lift the hood just before we hit the clouds. Problem was, that was right when I got to the MDA! We were AT the minimum altitude for the approach, and still on TOP of the overcast! I thought about continuing to the missed, but we figured we had better just ask for the ILS instead. Turns out if we had just continued the approach, we’d have been able to land anyway – the overcast stopped right at the coastline. Good lesson there.

So we got vectored around for the ILS. I was cleared for the approach and told to maintain 2000 until established. This was where I made my first disqualifying mistake, had it been a checkride. The localizer started coming in, and for some reason I didn’t start to descend – I waited until the needle was centered. By that time, the glideslope needle was pegged. I flew the rest of the approach fine, but didn’t really give any thought to what happened.

From there, we headed back to Van Nuys, via a very strange clearance: runway heading, vectors CMA, then the Lima-1 routing. Not at ALL sure what that routing was, and can’t find it anywhere. We got vectored for the ILS once we got to CMA, but had to ask for it. I’ll have to look that one up. The approach SHOULD have been a snap, but instead I did the SAME thing I did at SBA! By the time I noticed the problem, the glideslope needle was pegged. Good experience all the way around.

When I said we decided to fly one more cross country, that was because I scheduled my checkride today! Next Saturday, October 28 will be the big day. This leaves only a few days for tuning and other practice. Written is tomorrow, phase check is Monday, after a VFR flight to Vegas for my sister’s wedding.

Polishing

Now we come to the most painful phase of the training – polishing the skills to get ready for the checkride. Not that flying of any kind is boring, mind you, but being under the hood tightening up things that you already know about doesn’t exactly rank as “exciting”. So we went up for some […]

Instrument Cross Country

Friday the 13th. Perfect day for 300+ miles of flying, all under the hood. To meet the requirements of the rating, the trip needs to be 250NM total, three legs, one leg over 100NM, and three different approaches. I planned a trip from Van Nuys (VNY) to San Diego-Montgomery Field (MYF) to Camarillo (CMA) back […]

Tightening things up

As the checkride approaches, it’s time to start getting things tight. Tolerances are now lower – 50 feet on altitude, 5 knots on airspeed, 2 degrees on heading. We thought we’d head to Camarillo, then to grab a bite at Santa Monica (SMO). We departed VFR, with the plan being that Kent would give me […]

So much for Big Sky theory

Today we decided to just go a quick one out to Camarillo (CMA) and back to Van Nuys (VNY) – I had to pick up the daughter at preschool, and had only 90 minutes or so. Should be plenty of time. Only it wasn’t. By the time we got our clearance and got released, 20 […]

More actual!

Anytime an instrument student gets a chance to fly in IMC in southern California – he takes it. And that’s exactly what I did this morning. Weather was great for IFR training – ceilings high enough to be comfortable, but still plenty of actual. We flew out to Brackett (POC) for the VOR there. This […]

Approaches, Partial Panel, and some IMC

Today the plan was going to be to do some steep turns under the hood, some more unusual attitude recovery, and a bit more airwork, but the weather didn’t cooperate. The visibility was really bad, so we decided to get Tower Enroute to Oxnard (OXR). Tower Enroute is like a mini-clearance, with published routes to […]

Far and away

This was the most fun I’ve had since the training started. Just like with the private pilot license, getting to solo is the most frustrating part – and the cross countries make it all worth it. Tonight we did a short cross country from Van Nuys (VNY) to Lancaster – Fox Field (WJF). Even though […]

It’s all about the workload

Today was lesson in more ways than one. I’ve been frustrated in the past because I felt like things weren’t moving fast enough. Today I learned that the faster they move, the worse it gets. We started out doing an intersection hold – something I’d only done on the simulator – and took quite a […]

Coming together!

Once again, there were a few lessons between this and the last one, but there was nothing exciting enough to report. I’ll do that more no doubt, but this is the last time I’ll mention it. Tonight we went out to do more maneuvering work, and ended up doing holds instead. I’m at the point […]