After some scheduling difficulties due to weather, as well as my catching a nasty cold, we finally got back together to finish the practical. Same drill \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I picked him up at his office. We talked about last weeks bust, what a good learning experience it was, etc. Then off to finish what we couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get to before.<\/p>\n
He told me to depart VFR, and gave me a clearance to fly (since I hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t passed that part of the test last time), which consisted of some radar vectors, and the interception of a radial. The vector he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d given me was taking me through the radial, so I kept flying it. He then turned me back to the radial (this was a test to be sure I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t going to do what I did last time \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I passed), and then issued intersection holding instructions. I was flying straight in on the opposite side of the holding course, so a parallel entry was called for. I told him that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be doing, and mentioned that I could technically do a teardrop from there as well. He said \u00e2\u20ac\u0153your choice\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. I did the parallel, and as I almost got established on the inbound course, he said \u00e2\u20ac\u0153OK \u00e2\u20ac\u201c fly heading 150, and let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s see a steep turn to the right\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. No flying the hold? OK by me. Steep turns went fine.<\/p>\n
Next he asked me to put the plane into a climbing right turn. I did, and he said \u00e2\u20ac\u0153OK \u00e2\u20ac\u201c now put your head down, close your eyes, and maintain the turn\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. I tried, and after about 30 seconds, he said \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Look up and recover\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. I was in almost a 90 degree descending right turn. I recovered fine, and he said \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Good job \u00e2\u20ac\u201c now take us home via the Van Nuys LDA-C approach\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.<\/p>\n
Called up SoCal approach, got a clearance, and aside from not descending soon enough after passing the FAF (I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d have got down there eventually) he had me go visual and land. All done!<\/p>\n
So now I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m instrument rated. Truly another license to learn. I recommend it highly. It was challenging, exciting and really fun. It has also made me a MUCH better pilot. More accurate, more in tune with the airplane and my surroundings, and more aware in general. I had planned to get my commercial now, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve decided to wait a while \u00e2\u20ac\u201c maybe a year or so, to just enjoy this, work on the house, and spend more time with my gorgeous wife and fabulous daughter.<\/p>\n
So there you go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After some scheduling difficulties due to weather, as well as my catching a nasty cold, we finally got back together to finish the practical. Same drill \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I picked him up at his office. We talked about last weeks bust, what a good learning experience it was, etc. Then off to finish what we couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-instrument-training"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kellybakst.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kellybakst.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kellybakst.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kellybakst.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kellybakst.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=74"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kellybakst.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kellybakst.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kellybakst.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=74"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kellybakst.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=74"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}