Hello, many thanks in advance for your advice!
I feel like I am becoming a timid pilot t since starting IFR.
For instance, I obviously see my ground speed gets too faster or am about to burst the minimum, but I don't put the correction aggressively right away.
I try to fix, but more like, do tiny little control input as I always been told to do in IFR.
lol my hand doesnt do the job
I used to be pretty confident and even a bit over-controlling sometimes though.
And of course, about to mess up and eventually my instructor starts warning me not focusing enough.
I think I am focusing and scanning but why I can't immediately use the info for the flight control? like i have 2-3 sec delay in my system.
Or am I actually not focused? hmm
I feel dumb. Any tips please? Thanks!!
Try this: Correct sooner. See TINY changes in trends on the instruments and correct immediately.
If you wait, you have to correct more aggressively.
The less you LET a needle move, the less you have to do about it. If you see it move off of exactly where you want it, correct NOW. (At first you may over-control and chase it a little. It won't take long to mellow that out and in the meantime the result will be the needle still moves much less than when you're behind it and forcing it back.)
Many people feel like they're under-controlling when what they need to do is see the tiny change and correct sooner, not wait until it gets way out of whack and make a bigger correction.
Of course if a larger change than you're used to seeing happen is occurring, you have to correct it more aggressively, but often with things like turbulence you're just "riding the bumps" and it tends toward averaging out".
Don't fixate on one instrument but watch for TINY changes in smooth air and fix the movement immediately. It sounds like more work, and is at first, but it'll become second-nature pretty quickly.
You'll start to see the vibration of the aircraft moving the altimeter (airplane altimeters when they wear out can get stuck without the engine vibration and gliders use special altimeters that move more freely, to counteract this, but sometimes need a tap if it's a really smooth day!) if you're really paying attention. Haha. A little needle wiggle constantly.
Don't worry. The zen-like state of seeing these tiny movements and fixing them at the tiny movement level is what we all WISH we could do consistently -- but, it will get the correction started sooner and the needle movement to a minimum the harder you try to make them stay still. Look at an instrument, correct ANY movement you see, move to the next, whatever scan technique your instructor is teaching, follow it. (There's a few, so I won't try to guess.)
The hint that you're not correcting quick enough is that you said you're busting minimums on the approaches. It's impossible to know over the Internet, but that, plus your instructor's admonition to pay closer attention, is what I'm basing the advice on.
You should be seeing minimums coming up in plenty of time to be ready to go missed, before you get there.
Are you calling out "500 to go" and "100 to go", for example? (One of many techniques but a common one.)
If you're calling out "100 to go" there is no reason to blow through it, if you catch what I'm saying.
While we are here on the ground and lightly brain loaded... let's apply some math you can remember in the air.
At say, a 500 ft/min descent rate (something typical for trainers, adjust the example as needed for your typical groundspeed), if you're calling it at 100 ft to go, you've got 12 seconds before you need to be going back up and missed.
Count to six or maybe eight and with aircraft momentum, it's close to time to push the throttle up smoothly, change the pitch, and go back up. Remember a checkride bust is 0' below. Go up a few feet sooner than that. (And for homework go look up how high above you can be for the upper limit.)
Of course the altimeter is controlling when you go back up, not the clock, but knowing it's right to ten seconds gets you to think and widen your planning and think about where the airplane will be and plan ahead -- eight to ten seconds from the 100' call you have to go missed if you don't see anything.
See if those two things help. Correct ANY movement, immediately -- and plan ahead on "hard" altitudes like DA, and level off altitudes. Call out that you see you have 100' to go before reaching them.
Practice, practice, practice. Imagine a flight at home. Imagine the altimeter moving a needle width and the gentle push or pull it will take to move it the other direction and how long that will take. Then another even gentler push or pull to freeze it in place. Same on the heading/DG, AI, airspeed, anything that's trying to move imagine yourself stopping it, reversing it gently, and stoping it again where you wanted it to be.
And then do that a million times in one flight.
It's a game of precise movements of instruments and precise movements of controls to make them stop moving. Over and over and over.
Have fun! Go practice some more. Chair fly it, too!
