mtuomi
En-Route
What a long day it was! Let's rewind a bit first.
A couple of months ago, I decided it's finally time to get my IR. It's been long overdue, I bought my C150 back in October, and one of my requirements was that it has to be legal and usable for IR training.
I knew right away that I wanted a CFII who is also a working pilot, not a "career" CFII and definitely not a young hour builder/someone with no experience flying in the system.
I got a few great recommendations, and decided to fly with @Lance F , our schedules seemed to match the best. He's a very experienced pilot, with a massive amount of real world experience in variety of equipment, from gliders to jets.
Besides, he let me sit in his Mooney and 414. Can't beat that
I wanted to get the rating done ASAP.
Instrument flying is fun! On my first lesson, Lance had me fly a partial panel DME arc. Really tests your situational awareness.
We flew the first 7-8 hours, but then I had to get my safety pilot hours done.
This and a few work commitments ended up delaying the project by about a month or so. Finally when I got the safety pilot hours sorted, we did the cross country and booked my checkride.
This morning we planned to depart ATL early in the morning and head north to Knoxville for my checkride. As expected with my luck - I woke up to OVC002 and 1/2 vis. TAF's etc looked promising, but we had a bit of a deadline, we didn't want to annoy the DPE by making him wait for us all day!
Thankfully, just in time, weather cleared enough to fly up.
I had the minimum hours required, 15 hours IR instruction (12 with Lance, 3 from my Private days) and 40 instrument time. Still I felt pretty confident going in for the checkride.
Normal logbook/airplane log/medical checks, IACRA paperwork, and passing an envelope full of pictures of dead presidents.
This is where having a good CFII really helped. Lance had made sure we had all the boxes ticked, all required training subjects marked correctly etc. All of the logbook checks, IACRA etc took maybe 10 minutes.
Then, the oral part. Pretty straight forward stuff. Starting with rights and privileges of the rating, inspection and alternate requirements. Then quite a bit of stuff about lost comms procedures. MEA, AVEF etc. Next we pulled a few approach plates and briefed them, altitudes, VDPs, when can you descend and where, circling approach procedures and so on.
After that, enroute charts, which airports have IAPs, can you identify this with DME, why does this radial have a degree symbol after the number, how wide is this airway, OROCA/MCA/MEA stuff, if you are here, which way your CDI is offset when trying to identify this intersection, the usual stuff. No gotchas.
Weather. Icing and convective stuff mainly, what anti-ice equipment you have in your plane, what instruments are affected if your pitot freezes over, TAF duration, when to do preflight planning for weather and what sources you have for that etc. Again, straight forward things.
I might've forgotten some parts, it was around 3 hours total, all in all, just an enjoyable conversation about different scenarios etc.
Then it was time to fly (I let out a sigh of relief at this point, I was more nervous about the oral part than the flight).
Took off and "entered clouds" at around 500ft AGL. Got "vectored" out of the traffic pattern, and was told to find radial 050 from VXV, and fly to 10DME and hold. Completed 2 full circles in the hold (with a nice adjustment for outbound leg to compensate for 15+kts winds). Then entered a left 10DME arc, and flew that for a few miles.
Then "my airplane, look down" and a death spiral above Va speed, and a second one on a climbing turn at almost stall speed. These were actually pretty challenging, because he used pretty dramatic speeds both descending and climbing.
Then contact Knox approach for the approaches. Started with the VOR 23L, ATC gave new missed approach instructions right when there's a 6deg dogleg in the approach, kept the workload nice and high. After that, flew the amended missed instructions and got vectored for ILS 23L, same thing, went missed and flew LOC 23L. Then he threw a nice curveball. At FAF, he said "go missed". He wanted to see if I knew that I cannot turn before the MAP, I told ATC we're going missed, and didn't get a reply for a minute or so. DPE said the guy at the tower is actually a trainee, and probably had to call someone to ask wtf should he do if someone declares the missed at FAF! Got a vector after some confusion in tower, and was told take your foggles off and get us back to Knox Downtown.
Landed, taxied back to FBO, shut down, and got the "congratulations". Pheew!
Did the paperwork, punched the old certificate, and it was time to head back to Atlanta with Lance. Landed at PDK, had a beer with Lance and that was it.
Drove home (I live 10 minutes from PDK), and at that point it really hit me. Damn, I'm an instrument pilot. And damn I'm tired, it was a long day. Easy 12 hours up for me after not many hours of sleep last night, and almost 6 hours of flying (remember, I'm in a C150, everywhere is far in a 150!).
Feel pretty happy right now. Now, what's this Commercial Certificate people talk about...
A couple of months ago, I decided it's finally time to get my IR. It's been long overdue, I bought my C150 back in October, and one of my requirements was that it has to be legal and usable for IR training.
I knew right away that I wanted a CFII who is also a working pilot, not a "career" CFII and definitely not a young hour builder/someone with no experience flying in the system.
I got a few great recommendations, and decided to fly with @Lance F , our schedules seemed to match the best. He's a very experienced pilot, with a massive amount of real world experience in variety of equipment, from gliders to jets.
Besides, he let me sit in his Mooney and 414. Can't beat that
I wanted to get the rating done ASAP.
Instrument flying is fun! On my first lesson, Lance had me fly a partial panel DME arc. Really tests your situational awareness.
We flew the first 7-8 hours, but then I had to get my safety pilot hours done.
This and a few work commitments ended up delaying the project by about a month or so. Finally when I got the safety pilot hours sorted, we did the cross country and booked my checkride.
This morning we planned to depart ATL early in the morning and head north to Knoxville for my checkride. As expected with my luck - I woke up to OVC002 and 1/2 vis. TAF's etc looked promising, but we had a bit of a deadline, we didn't want to annoy the DPE by making him wait for us all day!
Thankfully, just in time, weather cleared enough to fly up.
I had the minimum hours required, 15 hours IR instruction (12 with Lance, 3 from my Private days) and 40 instrument time. Still I felt pretty confident going in for the checkride.
Normal logbook/airplane log/medical checks, IACRA paperwork, and passing an envelope full of pictures of dead presidents.
This is where having a good CFII really helped. Lance had made sure we had all the boxes ticked, all required training subjects marked correctly etc. All of the logbook checks, IACRA etc took maybe 10 minutes.
Then, the oral part. Pretty straight forward stuff. Starting with rights and privileges of the rating, inspection and alternate requirements. Then quite a bit of stuff about lost comms procedures. MEA, AVEF etc. Next we pulled a few approach plates and briefed them, altitudes, VDPs, when can you descend and where, circling approach procedures and so on.
After that, enroute charts, which airports have IAPs, can you identify this with DME, why does this radial have a degree symbol after the number, how wide is this airway, OROCA/MCA/MEA stuff, if you are here, which way your CDI is offset when trying to identify this intersection, the usual stuff. No gotchas.
Weather. Icing and convective stuff mainly, what anti-ice equipment you have in your plane, what instruments are affected if your pitot freezes over, TAF duration, when to do preflight planning for weather and what sources you have for that etc. Again, straight forward things.
I might've forgotten some parts, it was around 3 hours total, all in all, just an enjoyable conversation about different scenarios etc.
Then it was time to fly (I let out a sigh of relief at this point, I was more nervous about the oral part than the flight).
Took off and "entered clouds" at around 500ft AGL. Got "vectored" out of the traffic pattern, and was told to find radial 050 from VXV, and fly to 10DME and hold. Completed 2 full circles in the hold (with a nice adjustment for outbound leg to compensate for 15+kts winds). Then entered a left 10DME arc, and flew that for a few miles.
Then "my airplane, look down" and a death spiral above Va speed, and a second one on a climbing turn at almost stall speed. These were actually pretty challenging, because he used pretty dramatic speeds both descending and climbing.
Then contact Knox approach for the approaches. Started with the VOR 23L, ATC gave new missed approach instructions right when there's a 6deg dogleg in the approach, kept the workload nice and high. After that, flew the amended missed instructions and got vectored for ILS 23L, same thing, went missed and flew LOC 23L. Then he threw a nice curveball. At FAF, he said "go missed". He wanted to see if I knew that I cannot turn before the MAP, I told ATC we're going missed, and didn't get a reply for a minute or so. DPE said the guy at the tower is actually a trainee, and probably had to call someone to ask wtf should he do if someone declares the missed at FAF! Got a vector after some confusion in tower, and was told take your foggles off and get us back to Knox Downtown.
Landed, taxied back to FBO, shut down, and got the "congratulations". Pheew!
Did the paperwork, punched the old certificate, and it was time to head back to Atlanta with Lance. Landed at PDK, had a beer with Lance and that was it.
Drove home (I live 10 minutes from PDK), and at that point it really hit me. Damn, I'm an instrument pilot. And damn I'm tired, it was a long day. Easy 12 hours up for me after not many hours of sleep last night, and almost 6 hours of flying (remember, I'm in a C150, everywhere is far in a 150!).
Feel pretty happy right now. Now, what's this Commercial Certificate people talk about...
Congrats!!
and use it.