Wow, I've definitely fallen a little behind here. I guess I haven't posted in nearly a couple weeks which is unfortunate. But, I'll try to get you up to speed right now, since the last few lessons have been building a foundation for my instrument skills. As I am working on my instrument rating, as a reminder, everything I am doing is "under the hood." This means that as soon as I take off I am wearing my view-limiting glasses which only allow me to see the instruments and nothing outside the plane. The last couple lessons have been spent refining my control of the plane while in flight. Everything is about small corrections. Small corrections to headings, small corrections to altitude, small corrections to bank angles and power settings. With all of these small corrections it really has allowed to have greater control and fly with finesse. The foundation is built upon tuning, IDing, tracking and intercepting VOR radials (which are later used in Instrument Flight planning for navigation). And since I was doing well with that each time so far coming back in my instructor has had me following the ILS (instrument landing system) into the airport, as it lines you up with the centerline of the Instrument Approach runway, which I do while wearing my foggles until I am about 300 feet above the ground. It's crazy to see how well this system really works!
Today we went up and did some repeat and refresher on VORs and did another VOR/DME arc using the Putnam VOR. I tracked into Putnam on the 080 radial from the station then performed a DME Arc 10 miles out from the VOR station to the Southeast to simulate intercepting the approach path radial to the station. It was great practice because I was able to hold the plane around the 60 degrees of the arc within 2 tenths of a mile of the 10 mile mark. We then flew out on the 095 radial from the station and practiced my precision and non-precision descents. We then tracked the localizer into Norwood and entered the left base for runway 28 and landed. Another 1 hour even of simulated instrument time! I am up for my stage 1 exam tomorrow and my stage 1 instrument check ride next week. This rating is going to come quickly! I just need to find some time to start scheduling some time in to start my commercial cross country flights in. AND....hopefully they will be bringing the Diamond up from Providence so I can get checked out in it and get some G1000 glass time to put on my resume!
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