Private Pilot: Long Cross Country

Posted on by AstroPilotDad

It’s been a loong time since I last posted. Things have been slow at work, home and hobby front so not much to report. The PNW weather, as usual, has been not ideal for my hobbies. While things have been slow on hobby front, we did have a little bit of travel that has kept us going through the gray winter. First, there was a family wedding at the beggning of November in Arizona. It was wonderful not only because we were able to meet with family after such a long time and partake in a week long wedding celebration but also because the weather was wonderful. Second, we made a short trip down to San Diego for the christmas break. While the gray skies followed us there, it was neverthless a nice break. While in Arizona, I also got checked out to fly C172 from a local flight school. The details of which, I will cover in another post. This post, however, focuses on long cross country requirement for my Instrument rating which I was able to sneak in during the thanksgiving weekend where we had unusually good weather for a day!

My long cross country was from Paine Field airport down to Hilsboro Oregon with a missed approach on the way back at Olympia airport. The day was interesting with a lot of learnings. First, we delayed the start of our flight by an hour because the TAF for Olympia had clouds at 1000 ft. The rest of the route had clear skies or very high clouds. We were unsure if it was low level fog with relatively low tops or a cloud layer that extended up to the altitude we were supposed to fly. During summer, that wouldn’t be a problem but the freezing level during this time of the year is very low. In fact, it was about 1000 ft on that day so going into the clouds was out of question. The forecast was getting better with each TAF so we thought it’s probably fog that should burn off soon. We figured that we will start the flight and in the worst case scenario, go around or turn back. Luckily we did not have to do either. I filed the IFR plan, preflighted the plane and started the run up and requested clearance. However, tower said that they do not have my flight plan. Apparently, my plan was not approved by flight service. I’m not sure what happened but one lesson learnt is to wait for a confirmation email that the flight plan was accepted before getting on the plane.

My CFII filed a new plan and they accepted it but when I got my clearance, they had given a different route than what we had filed. There was an interesting waypoint that ATC assigned us – If I recall it correctly, it was 20NM on the 178 radial from the SEA VOR. While I noted it accurately, and read-it back to the controller, I had to clarify with my CFII on how to identify it on the charts. He showed it to me on GTN650 by creating a user waypoint. I also learnt that, in Garmin pilot, when you go to add a new user way point in the settings menu, there is an option is to define it by Radial/Distance from a specific VOR. After adding the way point, I updated my flight plan and loaded and from then on it was a pretty smooth ride for the entire 4 and half hour 430 mile journey. The CFII I flew with was not my regular CFI who I had grown comfortable with and let’s just say this CFII has some quirks that make for an interesting ride 🙂 . Don’t get me wrong he is a pretty good CFII, I think its just that his style of training is much different from my regular one who I really love to train with.

Anyway, overall it was a pretty good cross country flight. The one key thing that I learnt I need to improve on is my ability to switch between flying with the instruments and working with my EFB (electronic flight bag) by reducing my time with my iPad/Garmin pilot app so that I don’t deviate beyond the allowable limits for altitute and heading. By the end of the flight, I was pretty exhausted more so from wearing the hood than the actual flying and needed a nice restful afternoon to recover. I’m glad that I was able to get the long cross country out of the way and complete my flight requirements for instrument rating. Now the only hurdles (although, pretty big ones) keeping me from my rating are written and checkride. Although, I think I will need a whole lot of flying practice before I take my check ride but to do that I need to get my written out of the way…. just need to find time to study. Hopefully soon… May be I should be focusing on studying rather than blogging? Well, I have not been giving attention to the blog as well, so … ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

While I procrastinate on everything, why don’t I leave you with some pictures from my flight and the flight path as recorded by Garmin

Private Pilot: Back on my Instrument Rating journey!

Posted on by AstroPilotDad

This past weekend I finally got to resume my Instrument Rating. The planned training flight got bumped a couple of times because of scheduling conflicts, incident at the airport and weather, but eventually, I got together with the instructor last weekend and restarted my training. Since this was the first flight with me wearing the hood, he asked me what I’d like to focus on. I told him that I wanted to do basic maneuvers, steep turns, unusual attitudes and a couple of approaches. So that’s what we did.

I haven’t had hood time for over more than a year now. For that level of “rustyness”, my instructor said I did pretty good. I had a little bit of issue holding the altitude but apart from that he thought I did good. He said I was closer to getting my instrument rating than I thought, which was pretty encouraging.

Lot’s of hood time and a couple of Instrument approaches

The above map from flightware shows the path I took for this refresher flight. The small loops on the left (west) are the steep turns and then the two approaches (a VOR and an ILS). There was a procedure turn with a parallel entry if you can spot it 🙂 . The first one was an ILS to a missed approach followed by the VOR. We were supposed to land right away but were a bit high and there was an embraer jet ready to take off so we did a go around, canceled the IFR that my instructor had filed and did a visual approach landing. Overall, I felt good going out there flying under the hood. The instructor also suggested that I get my written exam done so that there is only the check ride to get my instrument done. Although, there are those cross country requirements that I am still short on!!

So, next steps – get a bunch of cross country flights in (hopefully to some destinations rather than just getting the log book time), get registered for a ground school, get endorsement for a test and get that out of the way. Like I said before, I’m excited to finally get back out flying and get my instrument rating training going. Will keep the blog updated with my progress. Now time to find to a good groundschool and hit the books ugggh!

Private Pilot: Next best thing to actual flying

Posted on by AstroPilotDad

As I have ranted before, because of this damn pandemic, I haven’t been able to finish my IFR training, and since beginning of this year, I haven’t been able to fly. Due to this, I know for a fact that I will be rusty when I finally get a chance to go out and fly. I don’t even know how much I have to refresh myself from an IFR training standpoint. One thing I could (**should**) have done is spend more time on the simulator to keep myself up to date on my IFR training.

I have a pretty neat simulator set up that, while no way close to the real experience, would have let me practice approaches and flying by instruments. Here is what my setup looks like:

Flight Simulator Setup with XPlane 11

Unfortunately though, there were a couple of issues which delayed my plans for actively using this setup for practice. First, I did not have a good place to mount the yoke which would allow me to be able to use this desk for both work and flying. Second, I had not been able to figure out Xplane 11 response curves for Cessna 172 that are realistic. I have had trouble working the pitch and roll of the plane going from steep climb to steep decent and 60 degree bank from one side to another. I know it has to be a problem with my setup/configuration more than the software because my flight school has Xplane as well and the software there works.

I recently solved both the issues. First, I got a under desk shelf to place the yoke (see the picture above). I was able to place the yoke in such a way that I am still able to use the keyboard without any issue but I can also easily take it out completely if needed. For the response curves, a lot of trial and error led to better handling but I think there is still a bit of improvement needed to get them right. I think the simulator is almost ready for me to start practicing. The only thing that is pending is figuring out updates to the GTN650 trainer. Right now it doesn’t show all available approaches and for some reason it doesn’t show glideslope when using the GPS approaches. Hoping all that it needs is an updated software.

Looking forward to getting back to flying in the next couple of days. Well, to the next best thing to actual flying ofcourse 🙂

Private Pilot: COVID-19 stalls IFR plans

Posted on by AstroPilotDad

This is going to be a short post where I vent at the darn COVID virus. As I had talked about in my previous post, I had completed most of my IFR training requirement and the only thing pending was 50 hour cross country time as PIC and long IFR cross country. Since the pandemic hit, my training has virtually come to a standstill. I was only spending time on my PIC cross country time because I was being extra careful and flying alone. With the new born and unknowns related to COVID, I did not/do not want to take any risks. I haven’t flown with my instructor for almost a year now and my IFR training is getting rusty. In addition, my aviation school has a policy requiring private pilots fly with a CFI once a year for an annual before they can rent planes. In Jan of this year that annual expired for me 😦 meaning I can no longer rent a plane without flying with a CFI first. Right now, I am very hesitant in doing so given the mutating, and ever more contagious, strains of the virus. I’m hoping that we get vaccines soon and things get better for me to start flying again. If not, I’m hoping for my son to be a bit older (at least a year) before I can brave wearing an N95 mask to share a cockpit with my CFI.

Private Pilot: IFR Cross Country time

Posted on by AstroPilotDad

When I was working on my private pilot certificate, I thought that once I get it, that will be the end of my pilot training. I will use that to take my family and friends around to nearby locations for a day/weekend out. However, given that I live in PNW, the weather is not always great, and you only get a few weeks of good clear weather for you to venture out flying let alone spending a weekend at a get away destination. Due to this, I always hesitated taking my family and friends to further out destinations (where you could actually do something). All my trips were within the local area airports or just aerial sight seeing. To get around this challenge and as a safety backup, I decided to pursue my IFR rating. Due to the weather and the fact that I did my training on weekends, the progress on my IFR was slow. I completed most of my IFR training early March but had not met all the required hours for cross country and had not taken the written exam. While working towards my cross country time, COVID hit shutting down the flight school and then in April we had a baby. This threw a wrench on the timeline on getting my rating. Even after the flight school opened, I wasn’t able to go on both days of weekend to finish my cross country time because I needed to be there with the baby. I am trying to go once every weekend and get my cross country time in and I try to keep the cross country long enough such that I get enough flight time but short enough so that I am not away from my baby for a long time. Here is a screenshot of the flight that I did this past weekend.

Over the last several weeks, I have been doing 2 hour cross countries and I think I now need 9 such flights to get enough time before I go back to fly with my instructor for the required 250 nm long cross country get all my required flight time for IFR. The challenge with these long cross countries are that they are long and lonely. Because of COVID-19, I have been hesitant to take friends out as well making these 1.5-2 hour flights a bit boring since most of the time, I am flying in a straight line to destinations that I have already been to. I’m hoping to get done with this part of IFR requirement done quickly so that I can focus on getting to check ride and actually flying long distances, with friends and family, without worrying too much about IFR conditions. I still have to worry about freezing level, icing and storm activity though!