Stage Check #1 - Pass

So I have officially made it one third of the way through my instrument program. The basic instrument work is done, and now it's time to move on to holds, DME arcs, weather and approaches. Now is when things get interesting and more challenging.

I took my part one stage check with Ed Keins, the chief flight instructor at EFA and somehow managed to weasel my way into passing. Ed is an Air Force Vet who flew in B-52 Stratofortresses and now runs all flight operations at Executive Flyers. He is very much by the book, and wants to have you talk yourself through each maneuver so that he can tell what you are thinking.

After a brief discussion on the ground, we took off and flew out to the practice area. Once there, he had me go through some basic clearing turns then set up to do stalls. I did 3 or 4 stalls under the hood, followed by a couple steeply banked turns to the left and right. Next he put a cover over my attitude indicator and directional gyro, and had me do some unusual attitude recoveries and a couple more stalls.

The last thing that we worked on where the wonderful compass turns. First I did 3 or 4 turns, calculating the headings that I needed to roll out on to reach the desired heading. Then he had me do several timed turns, all of which I nailed.

After flying back, Ed let me know that I was exactly where I should be in my training, and even a little bit further a long. But he again let me know that from here on out, things would get more difficult not only in the air, but academically as well... Great...

Stalls - The Tallest Rollercoaster Around

Imagine this: you are flying along, climbing up higher and high, then all of a sudden the plane starts to shake, a warning horn blares, the nose drops, and your left wing falls sharply. Now imagine doing this without being able to see the outside world through your windows. Welcome to the wonderful world of stalls under the hood.

For our flight, we went out west from Bedford towards the Mt. Wachusett Reservoir, climbing up to 4,000 feet to give us plenty of recovery room below us. After doing our basic instrument work to warm up, I set the plane up to do some departure stalls. First you bring the speed way down, and try to hold 4,000 feet, with the idea being that 4,000 feet is your "runway" and you want your speed to be the same as the speed you would normally lift off the runway at. As soon as you hit that speed, you jam in full throttle, and yank back on the yoke, pointing your nose up near 30 degrees.

What makes this a little more exciting, is when you do pull back hard, and the nose comes up, it never wants to just fall back down forward. Because of some complicated turning tendencies, one of the wings is going to drop and the nose will want to fall sharply to the side. The idea is just to step on the rudder pedal opposite the turn and your plane should straighten out as your push the nose back forward. All the while, you have to be back to straight and level before you reach that imaginary runway at 4,000 feet.


(Sample Departure Stall with very little wing drop)


Now, as if all of this wasn't exciting enough, after doing about 5 of these, we started doing them with a 20 degree bank angle in, and with my attitude indicator covered up. Trust me when I say that doing about 15 of these will not only make you sweat a bit, but since I had the hood on, it took me about 2 hours after my flight to get my stomach to settle back down!

While stalls can look intimidating, they are a lot of fun, and at the same time teach you a lot about aircraft control. To prevent the aircraft from entering a spin, you need to be very precise in your control inputs, and be quick to react to the stall itself. While it was a blast doing stalls under the hood, its still much more fun to do them when you can watch the windshield go from blue skies to filled with the earth instantaneously!

The Drunk Compass

The trusty compass. That tool that is so important to hikers and aviators alike. Simply check it to determine north from south, and away you go. Right? WRONG!

It turns out this simple looking, helpful little instrument is actually the most complicated damn piece of equipment in the aircraft. Presumably, the stupid little floating ball should point towards the direction you are pointed, since the earth magically (and magnetically) pulls the north end...you guess it, north. However, it turns out that there are quite a few ways that the compass actually is out to fool you. And most of this is due to the fact that the earth’s magnetic poles are not actually located at the north and South Pole, but actually a couple hundred miles below them in the earths crust.

To give you an idea of how the compass really does hate pilots, take this example: You are flying along with no electrical power and your vacuum pumps have failed. Unlikely, but it would in fact require you to rely solely on your magnetic compass. You are in the clouds and on a easterly heading, but ATC wants you to turn to your left 270 degrees until you reach a southerly heading so they can get you around a nasty thunderstorm. You start your left turn, and the compass start turning...but the wrong way!! It is showing you turning towards your right. Quickly you access that it must be a mistake, so you continue along and sure enough it starts back the other way, and slowly catches up with your rate of turn. As you pass by the West heading on your compass, still in your turn, the compass seems to slow to a stop for a good few seconds. Then it leaps forward and almost faster than you can react, and it passes the southerly heading that you were aiming for. You level out thinking you have overshot your goal, and watch for the compass to settle out. Then it starts to turn on its own back past south and towards west. It turns out you are almost 30 degrees short of making it all the way to south! Stupid compass.

There are actually three ways that the compass tries to screw you up when you are flying:
-First, it is only accurate in straight and level, unaccelerated flight with no turbulence.

-Second. it often indicates turns in the incorrect directions for the first few seconds of the turn.

-And third, in order to stop directly on a northerly (271 degrees to 89 degrees) or a southerly (91 degrees to 269 degrees) heading, you need to compensate for the "turning error of the compass" at your particular latitude.

Now mind you all of this is going on during a time when you have lost all the major equipment on board and you are in a very nervous state of mind. Hence, this being a situation that I never want to be in, and am already tired of practicing for!!

The Hood

I know everyone who reads this, the list is long but distinguished, is wondering how I practice flying with no outside references without cheating. And the answer is, in my opinion, the next big worldly fashion statement, the instrument hood! Like blinders on a horse, I am stuck under this gray, plastic visor for almost the entirety of each flight, looking back and forth between gauges and charts.

During my primary training last year, I came to enjoy flying under the hood. I would put it on for about half an hour every once and a while and would do some basic maneuvers before taking it back off and continuing the flight. But those days are gone, and now I find the hood goes on as soon as I am safely away from the airport and stays on almost as long as the flight lasts. On a day like today, 50 degrees, bright sunshine, the occasional wispy cloud hovering high above, I find it is easy to become bitter that you can't look outside and enjoy the scenery. Especially since you are paying so much to be up there! However, I guess there is something to this hood since the other option would be to fly by the seat of my pants, and we saw how well that worked for the early airmail pilots (90% not making past 3 years of service).

The other problem that I have discovered with the hood is it gives you the same sensation of reading in a moving automobile. Without being able to look outside at the world slowly moving by, it becomes very easy for motion sickness to set in. After about an hour under the hood, I find my head starting to throb and my forehead and neck perspiring. Not a good sign. But so far so good, and if worst comes to worst I just take off the hood and do a little sight seeing until my nausea settles back down.

Now that you know how to simulate instrument flight, and have seen that great picture of me flying high above Framingham with a pounding head ache, you might be back to picture all of my little activities a little better.

My New Wings

So with my new training comes a new aircraft. After learning to fly and bumming around the skies of New England in early seventies era Cessna 172M's, I have upgraded to the new, and much nicer 172SP's for my training. Even though the old M-models were beat up, and constantly were going in for some kind of maintenance, I still love to fly them and only move on because it is practical to do so. Since instrument training is about learning to fly the instruments, it would do no good to me to fly in an aircraft that is constantly giving me incorrect readings. Also the older model Cessna's are no longer kept in IFR condition. So it is with a little remorse, and a much more strained wallet that I move on to the newer Skyhawk.

I can't even start to pretend that I am not extremely excited about this though. The SP's have about 30 more horse's under the cowling, and are fuel injected. So no more fooling around with the carb heat all the time! The interior is also like sitting in a Ferrari after getting used to a 1985 Pinto. With mock leather seats, all new avionics and working heat and air, its a beautiful thing. It seems like a very easy transition to make, and the only thing that I know I will have to work hard to learn about now is the autopilot. Although where is the fun in flying a small plane if you aren't doing it by hand???(says the guy who is yet to try an instrument approach in piss poor weather....)

The Start of Instrument Training

Well after taking almost exactly a year off from flight training to just bum around and take friends and family flying, I have decided to jump back into the game. I started my instrument training finally, and again I am using EFA based at Bedford for my training. The part 141 school and all of its instructors gave me the best option to get this training done in the best time frame possible in this area. (although cost-wise I wish I was flying in the midwest....)

As for my first flight....I can at least say I took of and made it back without any big issues! The flight was 1.2 on the Hobbs and I spent 1.0 of it under the hood doing BAI work. My instructor, Jake, had me go through all the basics, straight and level flight, turns, climbs, descents, and constant speed maneuvers. I quickly realized how important it is to develop a good instrument scan, since I found that I would fixate on one and lose track of another. Wicked Frustrating! I can also see how easy it is going to be to get motion sickness while I'm under the hood and reading charts, writing clearances, and keeping my scan going in the turbulent summer air.

Either way I am really looking forward to this and know that it is going to not only make me a safer, better pilot, but it will take me a step closer to somehow making flying a bigger part of my life.