IMC Lesson #4

Today was unusual attitude recovery on partial panel, also climbing, descending, timed turns etc. The weather was amazingly smooth and cloudless, which makes a change! It makes it one hell of a lot easier flying on instruments when you havn't got continual thermals and turbulence to throw all the needles around. The only downside was again the lesson was spent under the hood as no actual clouds to screw around with, over all the recoveries went well although I still need to be more gradual with pitch changes. We also looked at ADF tracking which so far worked out OK, next lesson we will be doing more of that with VOR/DME holds and NDB holds.

Afterwards, I took a back seat ride with another student on IMC lessons, he is further ahead than me and therefore is practicing ILS approaches and missed approaches. Was really cool to watch how it all came together, and I wondered if I would be able to cope with the huge workload of managing the instruments, radio and precise descents on the glideslope. During these practice approaches the student was asked to hold to allow other traffic to come in, therefore I got to see him perform a near perfect oval holding pattern over the Ockham VOR.