Kaye
Line Up and Wait
I decided a few weeks ago that I wasn't getting enough "hands on" attitude flying under the hood. Toys that fly the plane are GREAT!!!, and you need to totally understand your toys. But the degradation to hand-flying skills is enormous, as I know y'all know. Since I have the week off, I scheduled some quality time with my CFI.
Today was a great flight....a nice big old High sitting on us with bumpy conditions to challenge any attitude flying. I was dreading this flight as I hated to let my CFI know how crappy my skills were. And I didn't disappoint for the first 15 min or so. Finally, the neurons engaged, and I started to act like an instrument pilot again. What a relief it was that I did know how to hand fly on the gauges, and the rest of the flight was a lot of fun, tho a touch tiring.
My goal is to be check-ride qualified again without the toys, so there's more flying to do. But now I'm really looking forward to the flights as it's so much fun watching those hard-earned skills quickly come back. And one of my permanent New Year's resolutions is to keep that skill set sharp!
As a side note, the trim test on the autopilot failed at start up. And what did I do...stare at it....it's not suppose to do that, right? Well, I didn't stare at it that long. After attempts to reset, checking the POH, we had to pull the CB for the flight....wasn't going to use it anyway. But talk about a timely reminder as to why I was doing this in the first place.
Kaye
Today was a great flight....a nice big old High sitting on us with bumpy conditions to challenge any attitude flying. I was dreading this flight as I hated to let my CFI know how crappy my skills were. And I didn't disappoint for the first 15 min or so. Finally, the neurons engaged, and I started to act like an instrument pilot again. What a relief it was that I did know how to hand fly on the gauges, and the rest of the flight was a lot of fun, tho a touch tiring.
My goal is to be check-ride qualified again without the toys, so there's more flying to do. But now I'm really looking forward to the flights as it's so much fun watching those hard-earned skills quickly come back. And one of my permanent New Year's resolutions is to keep that skill set sharp!
As a side note, the trim test on the autopilot failed at start up. And what did I do...stare at it....it's not suppose to do that, right? Well, I didn't stare at it that long. After attempts to reset, checking the POH, we had to pull the CB for the flight....wasn't going to use it anyway. But talk about a timely reminder as to why I was doing this in the first place.
Kaye
Last edited: