Approaches on my own

Today we had planned to do more airwork to get everything tightened up, but it was SO nice out, we decided to shoot approaches instead. Just the VOR-A into SMO and the VOR-A into VNY. Did it all myself – no help of any real substance from Kent, which made me feel good about my capabilities. We did some chart review over dinner at Typhoon (recommended), and learned a few things that I thought I already knew pretty well. The flight home was pretty straightforward, with a descent night landing to top it off. Even with a flight as short as this one, there was so much to do. It reminded me that you can’t ever let your guard down. Always be thinking of what is next, no matter how far ahead you think you are.

Finished the King Instrument CD’s, and am now preparing to take the written. I’d like to have that out of the way within a couple of weeks, so I’ll be doing some serious studying. Starting to get closer now!

A little frustrated, a little better

There were a couple of other lessons in there that focused mainly on aircraft control, but I didn’t want to bore you with the details. Today the plan was to do a hold, some airwork, and an approach. After departure, he told me to “proceed direct Fillmore, hold north on the 360 radial”. Easy enough. […]

More by myself

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 […]

Too much time off

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 […]

A little break

After a particularly tough few days at work, Kent gave me a break. We just went up, shot the ILS at Oxnard to the missed approach, and then back to Van Nuys for the ILS there. I flew it all pretty well I think, with Kent pointing out things here and there. The lesson learned […]

Partially there

After watching Tiger win yet another major (ho hum), I talked Kent into going up before he rushed home to watch the replays. Got to the plane and asked him what we would do today. He said “Let’s try this with a few less instruments” – meaning partial panel simulation. This is where your evil […]

Pulling it all together

Haven’t posted in a while, mainly because I’ve been too busy to train seriously. That changed a couple of weeks ago, when I committed to getting my rating before the end of the year. Shouldn’t be a problem – I’ve got about 13 hours of hood time now, and am going to train twice 3 […]

Hold on!

Ironically, lousy weather kept me from doing instrument training lately. Finally got a nice clear day, and a clear (albeit somewhat bumpy) night. I mentioned to Kent that I wanted to work on more accurate trimming, so we did. The trick is to pitch the plane by hand until it is stable, then trim off […]

Getting control

I really want to get into training more frequently (to gear up for a big trip in June), but this was the first chance I had. My work schedule coupled with some bad weather kept me out of the sky. Today we worked more on trimming, flying constant airspeed climbs (vertical S’s) and just general […]

The “easy” stuff

Had a bit of spare time before I needed to get home, so I called Kent, and the plane was available. Set up my new HoodLamb (a device that hooks on to your headset that goes over your face to limit your view to only the instrument panel), and got right into it with a […]