Pete and I moved on to another new skillset today. We did both unusual attitude recovery and simulated instrument (IFR, or hood time) flying. We started with some soft and short field work as a recap of the previous flight. I did OK, but still need some work there, the last couple being pretty good, but the first couple were just OK. Then we worked our way out to the practice area and, after some discussion of what we were going to do, Pete had me close my eyes while he put the airplane into and unusual attitude. I think the UA and simulated instrument work that followed are more my game. Being an engineer, I have a thing about precision that isn’t conducive with just looking out the window and flying the airplane. I’m always scanning the instruments to see what’s going on anyway, so it’s not a big leap for me to depend on them.
So, I donned the foggles and started flying around. After some basics, track this heading, turn to that heading, climb me to 3,500′, do a standard rate 180 turn; he started to mess with me. Tune in this VOR and find your bearing, then find that bearing on the map, turn another VOR… trying to distract me from my scan while seeing if I could place myself. Again, I think I did OK, and soon it was time to head back, with another failed engine thrown in for good measure.
Posted By: Brett FerrellSaturday August 18th, 2012 at 8:49 PM