Flight Journal: flight 46

[beaky]

Flight 46

7/21/96

1975 C-172M
TEB-N07-TEB
1.6 dual(0.2 hood)
2 landings

"steep turns, slow flt, stalls, emerg. proc, hood"


Sky clear, calm wind, warm (not hot)

I thought I'd be flying with A. today, but that duty falls on J., an instructor I'd spoken to a few times and come to like. He reminds me a little of F.
The objective here is to demonstrate my communications and pilotage proficiency,, but J. seems to want me to cover all the bases.
For example: can I cope with encroaching clouds on my own?

After climbing away from TEB after a nice takeoff, he says:
"I'll take the plane while you put these on".
Huh?
He hands me a pair of "foggles"- a pair of wraparound glasses that are only clear in the lowest part of the lenses, allowing you to  clearly see only the instrument panel. This simulates IMC- that is, looking outside and seeing nothing but a grey blur.

This should be interesting... I remove my trusty Ray-Bans and slip the foggles on. They work very well- I can't see outside unless I tilt my head way back, and J. will easily see if I'm cheating.

He has me turn a few times, then make a steep 360.
I do pretty well with that, then J. takes over again, telling me to look down at my feet as he puts the airplane into what's euphemistically called an "unusual attitude".

I'm eager to prove I can recover from this upset while limited to the narrow view of the panel, but I'm also hesitant, as I really don't know where to begin with the instrument scan... but of course I can tell exactly what he's done with the plane; when he says "OK; your plane; recover", I know before I take the plane into my hands that she's nose high, skidding steeply a left turn.
Focusing on the AH, I put in some right rudder and roll level while pushing forward, right hand riding the throttle to keep it all smooth.

"Good. Now another one".

This time I sense we're diving, and when it's time, I instincitvely tilt my head back to see over the panel. We're diving steeply, and I haven't pulled the power back yet.

We seem very close to the ground when I finally pull out of that... J. calmly explains what I did wrong as we climb out again, then we try a few more.

Overall, I do well. I can already understand how important this trick is, getting a runaway airplane sorted out with no outside reference.

Next chore is stalls. I screw up the approach stall by not knowing the checklist. But J. is very happy with my engine-out simulation, even though the nice field I pick as a landing strip turns out to have a row of small trees right across the middle...

After landing, J. approves me officially for local solo flight, But C. is not pleased to hear about the shaky stall performance, and tells me we'll be reviewing that next time.

More studying and chair-flying tonight...

Next- flight 47: more review