Long workout last night

[Bill]

It had been a while since flying with my instructor, I had been doing some practices with safety pilots, and did a little recreational VFRflying over my vacation. He said we'd have a fun night:

• On the way to the runup area, he had me start at the upper left corner of the panel, and verbally describe the situation of each gauge, row by row. "airspeed should indicate zero, airspeed indicates zero" "attitude indicator erect and stable" "altimeter kolsman window set to atmospheric pressure, indicated altitude is within +/- 70ft of field elevation" etc etc for all gauges, including engine and nav indicators. He wants me to do this from now on for all flights.
• I do my first under the hood takeoff, this is just insane. I do a credible job on the runway, but get fairly disoriented once the plane lifts off (I think I had some rudder in, and it yawed pretty good on rotation) After about 5 seconds or so, I get a handle on it. I don't think I'd ever do this in real life...insane.
• We then proceed to the local VOR, and we practice a hold, no sweat.
• Then we head outbound on the 090 radial, and proceed to an intersection to practice a hold. Once established on the outbound, he spins the OBS 180 degrees, "Track using reverse sensing, good back course practice, and oh, by the way, your vacuum pump just failed." The covers go on the AI and DG. He turns off the DME, "ID the intersection with cross radials."
• Close to the intersection, he says I can set the OBS any way I like, but the vacuum pump remains failed, do the hold entry and hold PP.
• After that, off to the practice area, where we do steep turns and unusual attitude recovery under the hood, full panel.
• After that, good old FAA pattern B comes out(http://www.avweb.com/newspics/faa_maneuver_pattern-b.pdf), hadn't done that since maybe the 2nd or 3rd lesson, and as I clip it to the kneeboard, that flakey vac pump fails again. "You'll do the entire pattern, including all speed and altitude changes PP." I make all the turns using both stopwatch and trying to guestimate compass lead/lag with varying degrees of success. Some were right on, some were 30 degrees off...more practice needed. PP is not easy.
• Then to top it off, he said we'll do NDB 20 to a full stop, and I'll be your approach control. He got on the radio and told "real" approach what we were going to do, and then started vectoring me.
• We fly different headings, and then he "vectors" me on to the inbound heading, but something doesn't look right, looks like we were at least 40 degrees off. I quickly determined our relative location using DME off the vortac, and we were very close to station passage, so I tell him I'll fly inbound heading until station passage, and I hear a chuckle from the right seat. Sure enough, the needle swings aft. Fly a little further to let the needle settle, and we're showing 30 degrees off. I turn 60 degrees, fly for 30 seconds, and note 60 degrees and turn back to inbound heading. The needle ends up nicely on the tail, RB180. "Nice job, I deliberately put you in fairly far off to see if you would catch it."
• Of course, my moment of glory only lasted moments. I had started the timer at station passage, and was waiting to pick up the OM so we could take the stepdown. Well, we did ID the outer marker, but I then screwed up and stopped/started (thus resetting) the timer. Big lesson, busted approach. Had this been a real approach, I would have gone missed at that point and started over. As it was, he let me continue and would call out runway in sight.
• "Runway in sight", and sure enough it was, I did a pretty decent job on the NDB approach, I was maybe 3 runway widths right.

Tough night, 1.7hrs, I was pretty wiped out...lots yet to go...

 

[spiderweb]

Your getting there!

 

[gismo]

I do my first under the hood takeoff, this is just insane. I do a credible job on the runway, but get fairly disoriented once the plane lifts off (I think I had some rudder in, and it yawed pretty good on rotation) After about 5 seconds or so, I get a handle on it. I don't think I'd ever do this in real life...insane.

While there are those who might disagree, I also think the idea of a true 0/0 takeoff is sheer madness. The margin for error is just about nil and the consequences could be quite severe. I even question the idea of having students "practice" this under simulated conditions as it seems to imply that it's something that belongs in the complete instrument pilot's trick bag. At the very least I'd think that CFII's should accompany this demo with a strong admonition against doing it for real, ever.

From the rest of your post it sure sounds like you are well on your way. Your instructor is obviously having to pile it on pretty heavy to push the limits of your skills. I'm not sure I could handle a PP intersection hold today.