I See The Light At The End of the Tunnel

sheldon957

sheldon957

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Oct 10, 2007
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Sheldon957
I See The Light At The End of the Tunnel, and it's not a train.

After what seems forever, I have finished my final stage check with the chief CFII, passed my written with an 85, and scheduled my checkride in a little less than 2 weeks.

I set up with my CFI to fly 3 more times between now and the checkride just to revisit everything again. Mon, Fri, Mon and review paperwork etc.. the night before, Tues, and checkride early AM on Wed.

I still tend to bust the 100' altitude when I get too busy, so I want to work on that. CFI says trim is everything. Unusual attitudes are easy, Most of the approaches are OK. I usually always enter the holds right, but holds sometimes leave me scratching my head, making sure I drew it the right way. For instance, a north hold that you are drawing upside down. I did that one wrong after doing 2 others correctly.

I must say that I am tired of study, test, drill, the hood etc...

Last Sunday the wives were gone, so my son & I flew off to breakfast. I wanted to fly just for fun. As I recall, that was the reason I started all of this in the first place.

I wanted my IA ticket just to try and eliminate the most prevalant cause of pilot induced death.

So light, shine on, shine on!
 
It could be a gorilla with a flashlight ... :rofl:

Seriously, getting the IR is a very satisfying accomplishment.

Let us know when it's official!
 
Ignore the 100 foot and 10 degree tolerances in the PTS. Set your own tolerances at 50 feet and 5 degrees. Stay in those and your accuracy will further improve.

Good luck with the ride!
 
KennyFlys said:
Ignore the 100 foot and 10 degree tolerances in the PTS. Set your own tolerances at 50 feet and 5 degrees. Stay in those and your accuracy will further improve.

Good luck with the ride!
Click to expand...

I wrote this up last year for my CFII it may be of benefit.

Oral

Pretty straight forward and simple. Basics on the flight planning, weather, etc no surprises She said she had been told to ask more questions on the enroute chart and symbols but it was still simple and not a lot of questions. I had to go the legend once. She questioned Visual approaches and contact approaches as to what they were which I got right and what their minimums were which I did not get right.

Check ride:

Mary acted as clearance delivery and changed the routing. I had "filed" via LAYNE to V320 MBS .... the clearance was radar vectors (Mary) to FNT radial 118, FNT MBS ... She says some students have flown the filed not the clearance.

We departed to the East and turned to the North. She had to stop me from actually transmitting and said everyone does that. We did two unusual attitudes with a little twist in that she had me return to a specified heading and altitude. It was a little bumpy and I think that helped during the entire flight since she was probably a little more forgiving.

Mary will not take the controls or handle any radio calls at all during the test. That included the VFR traffic calls in which she relayed to me what to tell ATC. Mary would allow me to use the auto pilot as I saw fit except for after the FAF on the actual approaches. She also will not assist in selecting approach plates, etc. You have to treat the flight as single pilot IFR which is probably good. She did let me know in advance what her plans were.

The autopilot in 16 was a real pain but I think I know what was happening. The VSI was showing a 100 FPM descent at rest which I noted as my zero setting. When I engaged the autopilot I expected it to level the wings only. Researching the KAP140 when engaged default operations is to level the wings and sets a 0 VS. I think the 0 VS function was putting me into an unwanted 100 FPM climb based on the VSI. I was able to set an altitude and use altitude hold as well as Heading and NAV tracking but eventually except to hold the aircraft while selecting my approach plates quit using the autopilot.

Because of the winds out of the East she wasn't happy with any of the approaches published misses so we headed to Flint and started with a Hold on the 10 radial over the VOR. After the Hold we were vectored to the RNAV (GPS) 36 IAF FISKU followed by vectors to the VOR 9 circle to land on 18. We had to break off the approach early and make a wide circle because of traffic.

After the fly over to the North we headed towards the PSI VOR for the 9R ILS approach. Once again for traffic we had to fly across the localizer and when they vectored us back I questioned the 060 heading to intercept the localizer. After thinking about my location and direction I realized that was good and intercepted and followed the ILS in without much trouble. Sure glad it wasn't the BC on 27. She asked if I had been sent across a localizer before and I said no . She said I handled well.

Good Luck
 
KennyFlys said:
Ignore the 100 foot and 10 degree tolerances in the PTS. Set your own tolerances at 50 feet and 5 degrees. Stay in those and your accuracy will further improve.
Click to expand...

Heck, make it even better than that. I was rather sloppy until reading a section of the Dogan book that basically said "If plus or minus 100 feet is all you ever try for, plus or minus 100 feet is all you're ever going to get." Then, shortly thereafter, I had the chance to watch my CFII fly IFR from the back seat. He had that altimeter nailed. 5 feet off, he'd start correcting. After seeing that, I had something to aspire to.
 
Had a good day with my CFI today, hit most of my approaches and 1 DME arc well. Worked on getting RPM's and trim for approaches. Getting back to the home base, came out from under the hood crossing mid field to the downwind. No one else in the pattern.

Now I must admit, since starting my IFR, my landings have pretty much sucked. Partly because I have done so few landings comparatively, and it is much harder to refocus outside the cockpit after all inside work.

Felt so good about everything (dare I say cocky) I surprised the instructor abeam the numbers, put in 10 flaps, and announced we just had an engine failure and needed to land. Now I had only done one before during my PP training, and that was about 6 months ago.

I put us into a turn, and came up pretty nicely aligned, knew I had the field, added in 20, then 30 flaps as I got close. Came across the numbers a little hot (73) but hey, that's what I would have liked if it was for real. Floated a little bit but still landed in the first 3rd of the runway.

All in all a good day. And to top it all off, I talked to a F33 Bonanza pilot, who is going to take me up on wednesday for my first Bonanza flight,
yes.gif
weather permitting of course.

Life is good.
 
Last edited:
sheldon957 said:
Now I must admit, since starting my IFR, my landings have pretty much sucked. Partly because I have done so few landings comparatively, and it is much harder to refocus outside the cockpit after all inside work.
Click to expand...


Don't worry, that's supposed to happen. You can learn to land again when you start the commercial.
 
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