No Flying Today...

Today was my first "official" instrument lesson. After acquiring all of the stuff I needed for my Private, I had to do a little additional shopping today. My CFI uses the ASA Syllabus and Book.

To date, as I embark on my IFR training, I have invested:

The Pilot's Manual: Instrument Rating Syllabus: $12.95

The Pilot's Manual: Instrument Flying: $41.95

Low Altitude IFR Chart: $4.90

JeppShades: $24.95

Gleim Instrument Test Prep Audio: $60.00

FAA Instrument Flying Handbook: $21.95

Compared to the initial purchase of nearly $1000.00, this was a little easier to stomach!

The airplane that we were going to fly today had an alternator failure and is in maintenance so it looks like today we will only do some ground work. We are working our of the ASA syllabus and it is nicely planned and will work well for our training. The first section - or stage - is mostly review of some of the principles that were learned in the private pilot lessons. A little more in-depth but still a lot of review.

We began with a review of the instruments (the six pack + engine instruments) and had some discussion about how they work. We did a quick review of the pitot-static system. He described various types of instrument scans and then we moved right into VOR, DME, NDB, GPS, and Loran discussions/training.

For next week, he has given me a boat-load of reading in the text and AIM. It is exciting and interesting reading at least (that's the engineer in me coming out). I am looking forward to getting back up in the air though!

By the way, I am still waiting for the Arrow to come out of maintenance so that I can wrap up my complex aircraft endorsement.

Night Cross Country

I have been excited about this flight for a couple of weeks. The thought of flying at night is intriguing to me and I was incredibly awestruck by how different everything looks! We went down to Tucson International (KTUS).

This was also my first time requesting flight following. This was useful since KTUS is located in Class C airspace. When the approach controller handed us off to the tower, it was very difficult to see the runway. The tower then informed us that they were having problems with the runway lights. They had been out and after some work, they were able to get them to the dim setting. Anyhow, this was not the end of the world...

We landed in Tucson; however, since the runway lights had been out prior to our arrival, there were about 5 heavies in a hold southeast of the airport. We had to wait for all of these planes to come in. This took a bit more time that we had hoped. Part of the night qualification is to perform 10 takeoffs and landings to a full stop. This was still on the agenda for tonight and we really wanted to get back to Falcon Field to do this.

After they brought in all of the heavies, we were cleared to takeoff back to Mesa. It seemed like a long time but that is likely due to the fact that I was the one paying for all of the gas while we were sitting there waiting to go home. The landings and takeoffs back at Falcon Field went well. The depth perception is a little off at night and on the first couple of landings it seemed like we were higher than we actually were. Made for some "firm" landings. Still a lot of fun and the Phoenix and Tucson skylines are beautiful at night.

Flight time: 3.0

Total time: 60.7

Unusual Attitudes

Unusual attitude is not the way I react to tomatoes - though I hate them. Unusual attitudes are attitudes other than straight and level flight. To practice these maneuvers, you have to recover from the unusual attitude.

It should have been a warning sign when my instructor asked me if I had ever had motion sickness. The other part of unusual attitude training that I should mention is that it is a simulated instrument maneuver. Simulated instrument means under the hood.

These actually turned out to be quite fun. I think the RC was having fun putting the plane in the unusual attitude and I was having fun recovering. When we were finished he had me fly back to the airport under the hood. I got to remove the hood at 700 feet AGL on short final for landing. Today was a lot of fun.

No, I do not suffer from motion sickness...

Flight time: 1.1

Total time: 56.1