It has been six months since I have been "under the hood".  During this lapse my instrument scan and flight proficiency completely atrophied.  Today I schedule and completed the next lesson in the Instrument syllabus, which thankfully was VOR tracking, holding, and a VOR-A approach.  Having flown this approach previously, the lesson was a good refresher and helped knock the rust off the instrument skills.

Winds today were much less than we have experienced for the past week due to super-storm Sandy.  Winds aloft however, were still brisk - 320 deg at 30 knots.  Due to wind shear turbulence at between 2500 and 3000 feet, we climbed to 3500 and had a relatively smooth ride. At one point we practiced some slow flight into the wind and obtained a ground speed of 23 knots with 55 knots indicated airspeed.

We flew the VOR-A approach then turned out-bound and tracked an NDB intercept, procedure turn, then tracked in-bound for a good demonstration of NDB tracking with a strong cross wind.  It was odd, yet reasonable to see a 20 degree left crab on the Heading Indicator, and 20 degree right ADF offset to the NDB, yet each remained steady meaning we were tracking straight to the NDB in the cross wind.

today was a good refresher.  Two additional flights scheduled for next week.
11/4/2012 11:07:57 am

Glad to see you back on the horse, Ed!

Reply
Ed
11/13/2012 11:37:35 am

Chris - It took two flights to knock the rust off. Feels good to be back in it though. I have a few more hours of instruction and the x-country, then some practice to "tighten things up" as I think you said. I am sure the Holidays will set me back some, but we are in the home stretch now.

Glad to read 481 is back home - what an ordeal.

D.

Reply
11/16/2012 09:02:59 pm

Congratulations on reaching the home stretch! I suspect that I will have some rust to knock off myself. The good news is that I do not think I'll be chasing false VOR radials anymore - that should help a bit!

Reply

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.