Ones and Zeros

Here on in the Washington DC area we’ve been getting rather more than our fair share of storms this winter.  It and other issues have curtailed my flying since I got my instrument rating in November.  On Friday I found an opportunity to go flying again, I wanted to see if I could remember what all those controls did!

I took off from the home airport and headed to Winchester VA for a little landing practice.  This got me some flight time and I was able to watch the countryside roll by below which I always like.  Friday it was a countryside is muted black and white.  Mostly white.  There was an indistinct ceiling reported at 12,000 ft, but it could have been at 6000 ft and I would have believed it too.  Some haze, visibility was around 6-8 miles.

I decided to do the ILS32 to OKV (Wichester) in VFR conditions.  This is not loggable as an IFR flight - I was in VFR conditions and not wearing foggles.  Traffic at OKV was light - only one guy.  I would join the pattern as needed if it looked like I would interfere with his operations.

I was able to track the ILS and GS (glideslope) accurately and correct to the runway.  I did this by alternating looking inside and out.  I would not have done this on a busy day!  I touched down in the softest landing I’ve ever made - I knew I was down when I felt the wheels start rumbling on the pavement.

This is a touch and go, so I tracked the center line while the flaps came up, then I put in full throttle with 2500 feet of runway left.  Rotated at 60 mph and lifted off with plenty of runway left over.  I climbed at 85 mph (my plane is older and calibrated in mph, not knots) and did the missed approach.

Then, headed north to the MBR 231 radial for the hold at CWINE and the VOR-A approach back to OKV.  I over climbed to 3500 feet, my target was 3100.  I used the hold to decend to my target altitude and completed the one turn around the hold.

Then I began the VOR-A approach to OKV, but overflew the field at 1500 instead of the 1180 minimum altitude of the approach as the other guy was departing. Then I joined the downwind, 200 feet below the pattern altitude, and did another touch-and-go.  Also a very good landing, but not quite to the olympic standard of the first one.

Time to head home.  The air was so smooth that I pushed up the speed to the bottom edge of the yellow zone.  I don’t usually do this as low-level turbulence is always an issue.  But there’s no problem today.

Three of us were coming into the home airport at the same time.  It took a bit of collaboration, and trading of distances and landmarks, but we arrived in sequence instead of all at once.  Another nice landing, my third in a row, and back to the tiedown.

All in all, 1.1 hours, nine gallons of avgas, three very good landings and one excellent one, and two simulated approaches (non-loggable).  A good day and wonderful to get back in the air.

Back when I was a VFR only pilot, I couldn’t fly a lot because of clouds or weather.  Now that I’m an IFR pilot I can’t seem to get clouds when I’m available to fly.  This makes me think that the best way to get VFR weather is to become an IFR pilot.

Of course, it’s so cold here right now that the clouds are probably all sub-freezing.

This evening, shortly before sundown, the FAA’s desginated professional examiner turned to me as we taxied back after our last landing and said, “Congratulations, you’re an instrument pilot”.

More later, but that’s some of the news today.

Now that the directional gyro works it is time to get moving again with this IFR rating. It’s been over three weeks since my checkride (part I: the oral exam). So instructor M and I scheduled a ride and did some local approaches, probably some of the approaches that I’ll have on my checkride.

I was pleased that I tracked altitude, heading, and the ILS much better than I expected I would. Especially the glideslope and localizer tracking was good. My problems were, however, in procedures and planning ahead. In short the “doing” part of things is going well.

I seem to have problems with planning for the next thing or two that I will need to do. I messed up the entrance to the hold because of this, didn’t brief the approaches as well as I should have, and almost made a wrong turn on one approach. The “thinking” part of IFR flying is where I’m rusty. That turn would have been a checkride bust.

M said, “You’ll never to do that again.”. And he’s right. He also thinks I’m ready for the checkride, but I want one more flight with him first to ensure I’ve got the IFR thinking part going well. Some parts of flying are mostly mechanical skill in moving the controls correctly. But IFR has a large thinking component to it. I have to maintain a mental model of where I am in relation to the approach, airport, or course I’m holding, and more broadly, to the situation I’m in. Maintenance of that mental model is where I’m a bit rusty.

So next is some practice at home (in the home “sim”), and another flight with instructor M. Then, scheduling permitting, the actual checkride.