WHEN     : Wednesday 5th May 1999
WHERE    : SPX - LBX - SPX in N1219F, a Cessna 172N
WHAT     : Airwork, ILS circle to land VOR tracking VOR approach
WHO      : Safety pilot: Robert Winkler
HOW LONG : 1.8 flight; 1.5 hood

   Lee has now effectively "soloed" me for IFR work, meaning he told me to go out and find a safety pilot and do a few practise sessions. This I did. I called Robert Winkler, who I safety piloted for myself last year. Now I had to set the mission, with Robert looking out the window and making sure I don't crash into someone else! He also helped out by acting as ATC giving me "clearances" for the things I wanted to do.

   The first part of today's mission was to do a bit of airwork, in particular steep turns. I have no problems with them VFR, but under the hood they kind of bother me. They bothered me again. My method of doing them is to add power as I roll into the turn and just haul back with both hands. Works fine VFR, but seems somewhat imprecise when under the hood. Robert mentioned that he does them by doing two swipes of nose up trim when rolling in the bank. I tried this and screwed up even worse! I concluded I'd have to try a few things VFR to figure out what the best way for me was. (I usually do airwork practise in the club's 150, and steep turns are fantastically easy in the 150. I also do my steep turns at 60 degrees of bank, because it means the 45 degree ones they ask for on the checkride become much easier).

   We then continued on to Brazoria county to do an approach or two. Traffic was using the opposite end of the runway to the ILS approach (the ILS is for 17, everyone was using 35). Since there was a couple of aircraft in the pattern which would conflict with a straight in, we elected to do a circle-to-land on 35 for the approaches. On the way in I managed to forget to switch the marker beacon on on the audio panel...so I would have nearly missed the turn outbound (I was going to do the full procedure turn). I got the procedure turn in quite nicely, got established on the localizer, and slowed to 90 in preparation for the descent that would begin when the glideslope came in. The approach went pretty well (except I busted altitude just outside the marker due to fixating on the localizer needle). We circled to land with an imaginary ceiling of 700 ft, then went outbound on the localizer course to try it again without busting altitude! I cocked up again just a little by forgetting that when you're outbound, the localizer would be reverse sensing. I managed to peg the localizer needle, which wasn't good, but I got it back where it should be before we were at the outer marker.

   We returned to Houston Gulf uneventfully, and did the VOR approach back into the house, circling to land on 13 (winds were calm at SPX, and although nothing official is written, 13 generally is used in this situation). The session had used up the rest of my mental energy and I needed to go to bed right there!

Conclusion

   It sort of felt funny not having Lee barking at me throughout the flight ;-) But I could still here his voice... "Small corrections...small corrections... remember it's a localizer not a VOR..."

WHEN     : Friday 7th May 1999
WHERE    : SPX - GLS - SPX in N1219F, a Cessna 172N
WHAT     : Airwork, NDB tracking, NDB holds, ILS and VOR approaches
WHO      : Safety pilot: Robert Winkler
HOW LONG : 1.6 flight; 1.3 hood

   Once again I was flying with my safety pilot, Robert Winkler. Today's mission was to do an ILS into Galveston, do the miss and head towards the Galveston NDB and track it outbound for a while (so I could get my mind around the backflip the needle does when you pass the station), go up to Trinity, do some holds there, then head on back to do the VOR approach back into SPX. We ended up doing things a little differently - Robert had been plotting and at about 200 feet, one of those black sticky things suddenly found itself stuck to the attitude indicator! However, I still had the DG after the AI "failed". It's not as difficult doing partial panel with just the AI gone as opposed to all the vacuum instruments. This failure was quite helpful since I did not expect it in any shape or form (usually I get some sort of warning off Lee that he's going to do that to me!)

   We went straight for the approach into GLS, but broke it off short of the airport because although winds were favoring 13, everyone was using 35 and we'd conflict with them. We went straight for the Galveston NDB. Robert did his ATC simulation for me, and surprised me by asking for a hold East on the 270 degree course off the NDB! I haven't done NDB holds, but it wasn't really a big deal. I quickly grabbed my board and drew a hold at the NDB and determined that a teardrop entry would work best from where we were at. This actually worked out really well, and the first trip round the hold worked out pretty much perfectly. It all went to pieces the second time though, because on the outbound leg I put the wind correction in the wrong way!

   After this, we went out to the Trinity VOR, did a little slow flight on the way (not really slow, just not cruise - 70 KIAS with flaps set to 10). Robert's ATC then cleared me onto a radial off Trinity that'd take us towards doing the approach into Galveston (since they'd now switched runways). So I accelerated whilst carefully ensuring that I held heading, altitude and all that good stuff. I thought it was sort of odd that we had 2400 rpm set now, but weren't accelerating past about 95 KIAS. Not long before joining the localizer and still puzzling over this anomoly, we noticed that the flaps were still set at 10! We had been flying with approach flaps set for the last fifteen minutes - no wonder we couldn't get above 95 KIAS! I felt like a real pillock after that, I can tell you!

   After rectifying that little item, we went on to fly the approach. The approach actually went pretty well, although that bit of sink then lift just short of the runway (caused by the water just before the threshold) once again messed with my mind. I did the miss, and then decided to go back towards the blimp base and do some VFR airwork (in particular, I wanted to play with steep turns for a few minutes, and besides it was a beautiful day, and I wanted to look out the window at least once on this flight!). After playing with methods to do steep turns for a few minutes, I put the hood back on, and went back to do the VOR approach into SPX. This went fine, and we circled to land on 13.

Conclusion

  The session was very productive today. I felt things went smoothly, and it helped my confidence (despite the little flap goof!) I will have to find time to do a short cross-country trip under the hood, perhaps to Beaumont. However, work's going to be busy next week, hopefully that won't deprive me of flight time!