Lesson 55 - Where Am I???

With the first solo out of the way, I'm actually coming down the home stretch. That's not to say I'm going to be finished tomorrow by any means, but now it's just a matter of planning the lessons so they start checking off the required components needed for my final check ride. Those include night flights, 10 hours of solo time, and "cross country" flights, both with an instructor and by myself. Also included in that requirement is that I fly at least 3 hours in simulated (or actual) instrument flying conditions. We decided today would be a good day to work on that.

I prepped the plane, we took off, and once I reached cruising altitude, my instructor pulled out the "foggles," and had me put them on. Foggles are essentially clear glasses with the top half of the lenses fogged over so you can't see anything but a blur of light through them. The bottom is clear so you can see your instruments. These are different from the hood I wore my first time, which is essentially an oversized golf visor. The foggles have the advantage of letting light through, which does a better job of simulating flying in the clouds where you're still surrounded by light, but you just can't see anything through it. 

I remembered from my first time flying by instruments that I was over-controlling the plane. I was turning too steep and climbing too fast, so I overshot everything. I worked the simulator a bit between then and now, and trained myself to make smaller adjustments. This paid off. My instructor had me climbing and descending, and also turning left and right. These I did with relative ease this time. Smaller control movements meant I didn't overshoot. 

Next, my instructor had me climb and turn at the same time. This is not quite "rub your belly and pat your head," but it still required a fair amount of concentration. I did okay with this early on in the process, but when my instructor had me making a series of turns and climbs in succession, I started to lose my bearings and began missing my targets. Now, some instructors would see this and maybe dial it back a bit to get me back in my comfort zone. Nope. Instead, he decided to layer VOR navigation into the mix, since when flying by instruments, this is one of the tools a pilot would be using to navigate. 

I have practiced VOR navigation on my simulator, and I tracked a VOR radial my last time under the hood, so this wasn't necessarily new to me. What was new was having it layered in with not being able to see anything but my instruments, and having to tune in the frequencies and radials while maintaining flight based solely on the instruments. This meant for a student pilot who is relatively inexperienced with this workflow, spending an inordinate amount of time looking at the radios and VOR gauge, drawing one's attention away from the other gauges, particularly the attitude indicator which is really the best visual reference you have to what the plane is doing. You can't see outside, so there's no horizon in your periphery that can guide you. Combine that with having to track this radial, then that radial, then turn and fly towards the VOR station and a whole lot of other more-or-less unfamiliar (and certainly unpracticed) maneuvers, and things went sideways fast. 

"You don't know where you are or what you're doing, do you?"

Yeah, that's a pretty fair assessment at this point. I had no concept of which way the plane was pointed. Yes, the heading indicator showed 90 degrees (east) but my mind simply couldn't picture which way that was. I was utterly confused. My altitude control was suffering mightily as well. At least I knew which way was up, but I was just having a hard time keeping level flight. 

You often hear about "spatial disorientation" when pilots fly in the clouds. Pilots get into those circumstances and simply don't believe their instruments. I experienced that today. It's not pleasant. It's easy to see how so many pilots crash their planes in cloudy/foggy conditions. I'm not gonna lie, it rattled me. Not to the point of being afraid or incapable of continuing, but because of how quickly task saturation set in and got me to that point. 

This was drinking from the firehose again. I've had a small handful of lessons like this; lessons where I'm pushed well past my comfort zone. We then dissect things and work on the various skills that come into play in that scenario. After I got thoroughly disoriented, my instructor had me take the foggles off. Since it was the addition of VOR navigation and me trying to wrap my head around that which seemed to be the tipping point, we worked on VOR navigation where I could see out the window. I'm not confused by it, but it's not yet second nature. That will come with time and practice, and when it becomes more second nature, it will be easier to incorporate it into the workflow when I can't see out the window. 

We returned back to the airport, where I flew a pretty decent approach, but we had a fairly significant crosswind which I struggled to keep up with. Not sure why, because I knew it was there. I just didn't do a good job at all of dealing with it. Something else to work on. 

The race is on...

Teaching students to fly is the most common way for pilots working their way to the airlines to build the requisite time required, which is 1,500 total hours. Well, my instructor hit that magic number and is headed to the airlines on March 10th. So, the race is on. Can I get through all my requirements and be ready for my check ride before he leaves? Time will tell.