WEEK 4

WHEN     : Monday 12th April 1999
WHERE    : SPX - GLS - SPX in N1219F, a Cessna 172N
WHAT     : ILS approaches and holds
WHO      : Dual instruction with Lee Simmons
HOW LONG : 1.2 flight; 1.0 hood; 0.3 ground.

  I was introduced to holds today. To start off, we flew a couple of ILS's to try and perfect those. They went reasonably well despite the extremely strong wind (meaning we had to fly about 110KIAS to get 90 knots ground speed). At least I remembered to set the timer this time! We spoke to Approach, but the controller was in a bad mood. He was generally getting rather sharp with anyone wanting to do approaches and actually trying to enforce the "You must call the watch supervisor before doing practise approaches" quasi-rule. He nearly didn't give us flight following but he relented when Lee said "Alright, we'll be going to Beaumont then good day" to him and gave us a squawk. I guess he didn't want to lose an operation in his airspace. Neither Lee nor myself could tell why the controller was being so strict on this call-the-watch-supervisor thing - I personally have never heard of it, and approach usually don't worry about it. It was very quiet too - in the whole time I think we only heard three aircraft use his services. I guess he had just had one of those days. I decided to deal with the controller by being especially polite and concise so as to not cause him any more irritation. It seemed to do the trick because he sounded calmer in later transmissions.

  After we did the approaches, we did a couple of holds at LAZZY intersection, which is a few miles from Houston Gulf. We held south east of the fix. The strong wind meant we had to crab quite a bit. From where we were, I made a parallel entry to the hold, then did the timer thing. I don't think I did too badly - although I should have shortened my outbound legs since they made the inbound more than a minute. We then returned to land where I did a ghastly landing. Well, it wasn't hard, but it was rather flat, and I like to land with the yoke in my lap.

Conclusion

  Well holds aren't too bad. And be nice to the controllers out there - they can give you vectors to hell and back ;-)

WHEN     : Wednesday 14th April 1999
WHERE    : SPX - LBX - SPX in N1219F, a Cessna 172N
WHAT     : ILS approaches and...arrrgh the dreaded NDB approach!
WHO      : Dual instruction with Lee Simmons
HOW LONG : 1.8 flight; 1.6 hood; 0.2 ground.

  We did a mini-cross country in this session, to Brazoria County. It's quite a nice airport - it has an ILS approach as well as an NDB approach and 7000 feet of runway. I flew down there using the IFR en-route chart, and then did the full procedure turn for the ILS. I also had got myself a yoke clip which was very useful as it put the approach plate in a nice position and my timer on top. I flew my best ILS ever. Right on the money, all the way down. The timer went off as we crossed the middle marker. I decided to fly the ILS with as little as possible yoke input. I got the speed down to 90 just before the outer marker, as we crossed it, started the timer and reduced power to about 1800 rpm. I just adjusted power to stay on the slope and used small rudder movements to track the localizer. I only used the yoke to level the wings when turbulence rolled the plane (it was pretty bumpy).

  Then disaster struck! Lee asked me to do the NDB approach! Well, actually not quite disaster, but I did suffer a brain-lock as we flew over the station and couldn't quite figure out which way to turn to get the needle in the right place. Also, the NDB at Brazoria County is terrible. The needle points the wrong way on some of the approach because the signal is getting reflected off something. When we had the needle in the right place a couple of miles out from the station (co-located with the outer marker), Lee told me to look up. He pointed to where the NDB was physically located and compared it to where the needle was pointing. The needle was pointing to somewhere about a mile to the left of where the NDB actually is. Once we passed the station it became more accurate (fortunate because you're descending for landing at this point).

Conclusion

  Need to work on those NDB approaches some more! It will soon be time where I start flying with a safety pilot too, so that'll be interesting.

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