wsuffa
Touchdown! Greaser!
2.5 today, most of it under the hood 0.8 of actual on the approaches and missed. All hand-flown, save for about 5 minutes where I put the AP on to manage charts.
Forecast was for clearing at 9 AM local here, but the 8 AM observations at New Braunfels and San Marcos were low. San Antonio and Stinson were clear.
We were up at 9:15, flew up to San Marcos, entered the cloud deck (for real - there was a good cloud layer, actual IMC) at 3500' (Initial Approach Attitude). Shot the ILS twice, did a turn in hold on the missed to allow a twin Cessna get in, then went down to New Braunfels for a couple of GPS-13 approaches, full procedure. The handoff between Austin and San Antonio approach control was not very smooth (or SAT was just busy with a bunch of AF-types doing practice approaches into Randolph).
Then back home to Stinson for 2 VOR/GPS approaches partial panel into the airport. We "failed" the GPS sequencing on the turn to final on one of the VOR/GPS approach... the approach is an "overlay", and I had preset the VOR into NAV 2, and started the timer as appropriate. Very smooth transition to VOR only.
A couple of minor nits, slow scan at first but that got much better and very good by the end, relied on ATC for the altimiter on the first approach into BAZ, but picked up the AWOS on the second run at it (altimeter setting was pretty constant across the area today - but that could be a killer in real life if it were not), and was kinda rough on the controls for the first 1/2 hour or so. I always seem to be rougher at first under the hood, but I'm much more stable in real IMC. Go figure.
I'm good for another 6 months. And yeah, I know, if I'd waited until tomorrow I could have gotten another month out of it... more training is good, though...
Forecast was for clearing at 9 AM local here, but the 8 AM observations at New Braunfels and San Marcos were low. San Antonio and Stinson were clear.
We were up at 9:15, flew up to San Marcos, entered the cloud deck (for real - there was a good cloud layer, actual IMC) at 3500' (Initial Approach Attitude). Shot the ILS twice, did a turn in hold on the missed to allow a twin Cessna get in, then went down to New Braunfels for a couple of GPS-13 approaches, full procedure. The handoff between Austin and San Antonio approach control was not very smooth (or SAT was just busy with a bunch of AF-types doing practice approaches into Randolph).
Then back home to Stinson for 2 VOR/GPS approaches partial panel into the airport. We "failed" the GPS sequencing on the turn to final on one of the VOR/GPS approach... the approach is an "overlay", and I had preset the VOR into NAV 2, and started the timer as appropriate. Very smooth transition to VOR only.
A couple of minor nits, slow scan at first but that got much better and very good by the end, relied on ATC for the altimiter on the first approach into BAZ, but picked up the AWOS on the second run at it (altimeter setting was pretty constant across the area today - but that could be a killer in real life if it were not), and was kinda rough on the controls for the first 1/2 hour or so. I always seem to be rougher at first under the hood, but I'm much more stable in real IMC. Go figure.
I'm good for another 6 months. And yeah, I know, if I'd waited until tomorrow I could have gotten another month out of it... more training is good, though...
