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.