WEEK 6

WHEN     : Wednesday 28th April 1999
WHERE    : SPX - AXH - SPX in N1219F, a Cessna 172N
WHAT     : Partial Panel, Get Lost! and a localizer approach
WHO      : Dual instruction with Lee Simmons, with Robert Winkler as a backseater
HOW LONG : 1.3 flight; 1.1 hood; 0.2 ground.

  Today had a slight difference to it. I had a passenger! A club member was hanging around the airport, and asked to come along for the trip, so I said "Sure!". That gave us a good load in the Cessna 172. Actually, it's been a while since I've had a rear seat passenger, and it makes a noticable difference to the trim you use for takeoff to keep trimmed for Vy. We had half fuel, so we weren't much heavier than normal - it was more of the case of the CG being shifted slightly aft.

   We flew over to Houston Southwest and did a localizer approach to runway 9. It went reasonably well (but a wind change I hadn't anticipated made the last part of the approach a little ropy as the localizer needle suddenly made a move seemingly trying to escape from the instrument case. Well not quite that bad, but it did take me by surprise!). Of course, Robert and Lee had been plotting whilst I was preflighting, so I got some surprises as we went towards Galveston after doing the approach. "Alright" said Lee, "Where are you?" he asked. Well, I'm here - I pointed to the chart vaguely between Galveston and Houston Southwest. All of a sudden, I felt somewhat unsure. It didnt feel right and there was a good reason. I checked all the instruments and NAV radios, and realized I had dialed in Hobby's VOR instead of Galveston. Oops! Trust that little nagging doubt...it's telling you something! I got myself sorted out and headed for the VUH (Scholes) vortac.

   Then the surprise came. Lee switched off all the radios. "OK, get us to Houston Gulf." I looked at the chart (fortunately, I had just looked at the DME, and could work out where we were), and eyeballed a heading that'd get us home. I started my timer, and declared it'd take 7 minutes to get to Houston Gulf. "OK, you've lost your DG too" said Lee. So now I was doing this with no NAV gear and no DG - just the whiskey compass. I frantically tried to remember ANDS and what is the other one... leads north, lags south...no..no..lags north leads south...umm? Well, I didn't do too badly. I sorted myself out and we somehow arrived fairly close to the airport on a course that was just eyeballed on an IFR-enroute chart. Note to self: bring a plotter next time...

Conclusion.

  It was quite interesting dead reckoning without being able to see outside and getting a reasonable result. It proves the old adage that the basis of navigaton is dead reckoning - everything else is just an aid! (See my rant here about over reliance on GPS for what I think about it). DR just requires you keep time and hold a good honest heading (and have some idea of the wind) and it'll actually work pretty well.


WHEN     : Thursday 29th April 1999
WHERE    : SPX - SPX in N1219F, a Cessna 172N
WHAT     : Partial Panel Plus
WHO      : Dual instruction with Lee Simmons
HOW LONG : 1.3 flight; 1.2 hood; 0.2 ground.

   Uh oh. The little sticky things went on the DG and AI before I had even rolled onto the runway! Well we took off and I was in for an hour or so's aggravation under the hood with no DG or AI. It actually went quite well. I only nearly did an aileron roll once on the localizer approach to Galveston. Well, not quite that bad, but it did feel like it at one point. My first partial panel approach (localizer only, Lee "failed" the glideslope by having me use NAV2 which isn't glideslope equipped) if its over-the-ground course was cut into a piece of stainless steel would have made a good bow saw blade! The compass bobbed about wildly in the turbulence, and I didn't help by making massive corrections. I kept hearing Lee say "Small corrections" as I took another 30-degree chop at it. We did two more of these, each one getting better. I had it pretty much down on the third one - not perfectly, but if it had been for real, the landing would have been trivial to make. The trick seems to be to just average the compass's wild gyrations and derive a heading from that.

   We then did some partial-panel recoveries from unusual attitudes. I don't know how steep the bank angles Lee had me end up in because the turn coordinator pegs at a standard rate turn (which at the speeds we were flying isn't more than 20 degrees or so.) One of them was quite steep nose down, because as Lee had me look up at the panel again, the altimeter was unwinding fast and the airspeed was headed rapidly for the yellow arc. Recovery was a matter of levelling the wings, power to idle, and then pulling up (not too hard) till the VSI started to move back towards zero. (The VSI has quite a bit of lag, so once it's moving towards zero, you can usually quit pulling, and you'll be level). After all this, it was time to head home, so we did the now familiar VOR approach to SPX runway 31, and cirled to land on 13.

Conclusion.

  Partial panel is quite taxing. However, you've got to know it. It doesn't take much searching to find incidents in the NTSB database from IFR wrecks where the pilot got spatially disoriented after the vacuum pump failed putting the DG and AI out of action.


WHEN     : Sunday 2nd May 1999
WHERE    : SPX - LFT - BPT - SPX in N1219F, a Cessna 172N
WHAT     : Long Cross Country
WHO      : Dual instruction with Lee Simmons
HOW LONG : 4.5 flight; 4.1 hood; 0.2 ground.

   The long cross country! I was hoping that we'd have moderately sucky weather so we could fly it in actual IFR. But this was not so. The day dawned bright and, in the words of Lafayette, Louisiana's METAR, 00000KT CLR. Typical! Whenever I want to make a long VFR trip, the weather is funky, but when I actually want a little bit of clag to fly in...well, the weather is nearly perfect!

  Lee looked at the clear skies and said we wouldn't file. We could then do things "without being contstrained by an IFR flight plan" he said. Uh-oh...last time he said we could "do things" he started putting stickies over the AI and DG and switching nav gear off! However, I had a flight plan with all the times between navaids, and I was armed with winds aloft data (which turned out to be reasonably accurate). I also religiously made sure I started the timer for each segment of the trip, so if Lee did start switching off radios then I'd be able to dead-reckon myself out of it just fine.

  In the event, Lee didn't play any of these tricks on me! It was a pretty much routine flight. Keeping the timer running gave me good situational awareness. Additionally, using NAV2 to get cross radials from VOR's on our way helped situational awareness. We got flight following throughout (and Lafayette has Class C airspace), so I got to do plenty of communication. I was pleased with the outbound trip - I did a good job on the radio, kept good situational awareness and generally stayed ahead of the airplane. There was a little turbulence which kept me busy, but it wasn't too bad. We got vectored for the ILS to Rwy 22L at Lafayette. It was interesting because everyone else was using 4R (ie the opposite end of 22L). The controller asked us to "expedite vacating the runway" because an ATR-72 was coming the opposite way, being flown by some random commuter airline (I forget which one). I flew a pretty good ILS, and the runway was right on our nose as I "broke out" (ie reached minimums and lifted the hood). I quickly deployed all the flaps, which on a C172 has a great decelerative effect, since they are big barn doors when they are all the way down. That quickly got us to normal approach speed. The runway at LFT looks huge when you're used to 60 foot wide runways. We easily made the first turnoff, about 800 feet or so from the touchdown zone, and the ATR landed about a minute later. Those things taxi fast...before long I could hear the whirr of a PT-6 turboprop, and looking behind I could see the massive left engine's propellor in the feathered position. I taxied a bit faster. Those things look big when they're on your tail!

  After shutting down, we fuelled up the plane and ourselves too (from the good old food simulator, aka vending machine). Actually, the sandwiches in the vending machines were pretty good. (The FBO is Fournet Air by the way, highly recommended). We then went out to the plane, powered up the radios before starting, and got ATIS (saves a little engine time doing it before starting!). We then did the customary Class C things such as calling clearance delivery, ground, taxiing out and running up. I haven't actually landed at a controlled field since last September so it was a good refresher. It isn't actually hard (communications whilst on the ground are probably the easiest part of flying!)

  I made a small error since I was under the impression we'd do another approach at Lake Charles, when in fact we were going to do the NDB into Beaumont rwy 12. This caused some minor confusion to the controller when he wanted to hand me off to Lake Charles, but we put that to rights very quickly once I spelt out that we were going to Bravo Papa Tango and I'd made a mistake specifying Lake Charles (the controller asked which Lake Charles airport we were going to and since I don't have a typical Louisiana acccent I think he couldn't work out what I was saying when I explained we were going to Beaumont the first time!) But we got it sorted out and went on our way. I made sure I kept the timer rolling etc. to aid situational awareness in case Lee decided to start turning off radios or anything like that. I was now getting fatigued quite quickly because it was now turbulent. We got vectored for the NDB approach to Beaumont rwy 12, and I made a bit of a ropy approach. I hate it when the ADF needle does that backflip thing as you fly over the station! I was getting fatigued and trying to remember which way to fly, now that the ADF needle was "reverse sensing". After Lee prodded me a bit, I finally got it. Well we were only 30 degrees of course or so!

  We then continued home. The turbulence continued to beat me up, but I did hold altitude and heading well despite this. We flew the VOR approach to Houston Gulf which actually went pretty well - the runway showed up pretty much on our nose, which due to the lack of precision inherent in a VOR approach with the VOR station nearly 17 miles from the runway, is a little bit rare. We circled to land on 13 (where there was a hellacious headwind such that our touchdown speed was incredibly slow), taxied in and thankfully shut down!

Conclusion.

   The cross country was a good exercise. I'm actually pretty satisfied with the way it went - I'm truly comfortable with dealing with aviating, navigating and communicating without being able to see the ground. However, four hours of it is really quite mentally tiring. So much so that I couldn't be bothered to cook lunch...I ended up going to Jack in the Box for a Jumbo Taco combo...

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