Long instrument X/C

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mxalix258

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mxalix258
Flew my long instrument cross country this past weekend, I live in VA and we had some rainy weather so it ended up being some great experience. We departed Manassas for Norfolk, we were in the clouds at around 900ft agl, and was in fairly solid IMC until we got to about 1200agl on the ILS into Norfolk, had some intermittent times of rain which kind of freaked me out. We got fuel, and headed to Richmond, which was a pretty quick flight, I got really flustered on getting everything setup for the approach in time and hand flying while going through everything in the garmin 430, I got really behind. After landing at Richmond, we picked up our clearance back to Manassas. Flew a little over 4 hours total, and about 2 1/2 was IMC.

Pretty good experience doing everything from start to finish, I can tell how the pieces of the puzzle are starting to fit together, but I still really feel like my workload management is not up to where it needs to be. I keep missing opportunities to stay ahead of the game, and find myself scrambling at higher workload times.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get any pictures from the trip!
 
I always wondered about that for people who got their instrument rating with little/no actual experience.

I am still a student, but the first time I flew in IMC, it definitely freaked me out a little bit. What was the experience like for you?
 
mxalix258 said:
I always wondered about that for people who got their instrument rating with little/no actual experience.

I am still a student, but the first time I flew in IMC, it definitely freaked me out a little bit. What was the experience like for you?
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not that bad, but I haven't flown in turbulent IMC. The first time I flew into clouds, I really wanted to bank left. I felt like the plane was falling to the right for several seconds. Never had that problem with foggles, but I think it's because you can peak a little out of the edges. Just gotta remember to listen to the instruments and not your senses.
 
A home sim can really, really help with those workload management issues.

And yes, rain freaked me out the first time I encountered it, too, during training in the 172. It was another level later on in the Lancair because it was happening at 200kts instead of 115, and it was a lot louder/closer. I have to admit, I'm not a fan of anything other than really light precip. My only encounter with severe turbulence was during heavy precip...so I don't have a good association with it at this point. I'll post a separate thread on that one.

Congrats on pursuing the IR, keep it up!
 
Yeah, i think a big part of the workload management issue has been getting used to the garmin 430, I seem to be fine in basic radio stack / gauges. But the garmin setup just throws me off for some reason. It's too bad that I can't run the garmin 430 on my computer because I have a 64bit operating system.
 
mxalix258 said:
Yeah, i think a big part of the workload management issue has been getting used to the garmin 430, I seem to be fine in basic radio stack / gauges. But the garmin setup just throws me off for some reason. It's too bad that I can't run the garmin 430 on my computer because I have a 64bit operating system.
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It's great that you've identified the source of the workload. Bummer that you don't have a simulation of that device for your machine. You're sure you can't get it going? I haven't seen many cases where having Windows 7 causes an issue like that. Have you tried the most recent versions of the Garmin trainer software?

That's what I used to learn the 430, too. I also spent quite a bit of time in the cockpit with the engine and lights off practicing what I'd learned in the garmin sim (programming flight plan, altering flight plan, activating legs, direct to points along the flight plan, loading procedures, etc).
 
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