IMC Lesson #3
Weather today was gorgeous, sunshine and few clouds around and fairly warm... damn. I was hoping for a nice low overcast to get more actual instrument time.
Today we did more maneouver's under the hood, James said he was happy with full panel so on to partial panel, placing post-it notes over the artificial horizon and the directional indicator. We did all the usual maneovers such as climbing, descending, rate one turns which is taught on the PPL course (an angle of bank which allows the aircraft to turn at a rate of 3 degrees per second, therefore taking 60 seconds to turn 180 degrees), all without the use of the vacuum instruments. We also covered turning to headings using the compass and timed turns. All in all I was fairly happy with these, although the concentration level required when the turn co-ordinator is bouncing around in the bumpy air was immense. It is really satisfying to look at the compass take a reading, work out the time needed to turn onto a given heading and then roll out after that time to nail the heading.
We also practiced unusual attitude recovery using instruments, also tried flying the aircraft with my eyes closed just by feel. Every time I opened my eyes we had got into an unusual attitude, highlighting how easy it is in IMC to get into strange attitudes due to distractions etc.
All in all I was happy with the lesson although I need to stop being lazy with adjusting trim, what I tend to do is rush through the basic Power - Attitude -Trim for straight and level etc without then re-trimming after the aircraft has settled at it's airspeed. This sloppiness is making the workload higher on myself later when I deviate off an assigned altitude.
Next lesson will be more unusual attitude recovery using partial panel and some other stuff which I now forget.
Today we did more maneouver's under the hood, James said he was happy with full panel so on to partial panel, placing post-it notes over the artificial horizon and the directional indicator. We did all the usual maneovers such as climbing, descending, rate one turns which is taught on the PPL course (an angle of bank which allows the aircraft to turn at a rate of 3 degrees per second, therefore taking 60 seconds to turn 180 degrees), all without the use of the vacuum instruments. We also covered turning to headings using the compass and timed turns. All in all I was fairly happy with these, although the concentration level required when the turn co-ordinator is bouncing around in the bumpy air was immense. It is really satisfying to look at the compass take a reading, work out the time needed to turn onto a given heading and then roll out after that time to nail the heading.
We also practiced unusual attitude recovery using instruments, also tried flying the aircraft with my eyes closed just by feel. Every time I opened my eyes we had got into an unusual attitude, highlighting how easy it is in IMC to get into strange attitudes due to distractions etc.
All in all I was happy with the lesson although I need to stop being lazy with adjusting trim, what I tend to do is rush through the basic Power - Attitude -Trim for straight and level etc without then re-trimming after the aircraft has settled at it's airspeed. This sloppiness is making the workload higher on myself later when I deviate off an assigned altitude.
Next lesson will be more unusual attitude recovery using partial panel and some other stuff which I now forget.
posted by Chris @ Friday, May 05, 2006
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