Instrument Student's Log
Part Eight

Flights 12-13

Flight 12: Sat, Nov 30. (1 / 18.2)

I had the plane checked out today, and the mechanic found some spiders deep in the pitot tube. I was hoping for something like that; it sure beats having to replace an instrument. I guess a long piece of wire would be a good thing to keep around.

We did a couple of VOR approaches in Lakeland this afternoon. They're starting to make more sense, but I still need more study time to figure them out. I'm having to be prompted too much to turn, add wind correction, descend, start the timer or whatever.

Flight 13: Sun, Dec 1. (1.1 / 19.3)

I brought the GPS with me today to see if I could get it working. After a few tries I found a good spot on the windshield for the suction cup antenna. We did the NDB approach at Plant City (PCM).

A cold front was coming, and the wind was strong enough that we needed a lot of correction. We adjusted our heading so much that I was getting confused. Sometimes we had as much as thirty degrees of correction, and I started to lose track of what the real heading was supposed to be and the difference between the NDB bearing interception angle and the wind correction angle.

Finally we did something we should have tried long ago: I took the hood off and watched my CFII fly the approach while explaining what he was doing. The GPS recorded our ground track so I could study it later.

After two approaches we did some maneuvers that needed practice- steep turns, stalls, and an engine-out drill. Everything but the last item was done under the hood. I got a little more hood time going to Lakeland for lunch.

I found the GPS to be very accurate. It displays ground features, like highways, lakes, and rivers, along with the airports and navaids. When we passed directly over the NDB, the map showed us on top of it, a much better indicator of station passage than the ADF. Zoom in on Lakeland, and you can see where I turned base and final, even where we taxiied to the restaurant.

The ground track is saved even when the unit is turned off. (It has to be erased deliberately.) I can see many uses as a training aid to compare the desired course with the actual flight path for approaches, ground reference maneuvers, pattern work, etc. It's also nice not to have to guess the distance when making position reports.

Mon, Dec 2.

I took the plane back to the avionics shop today to get the radio situation resolved. It had been a month since the new radio was installed. It took us a while to realize what the problem was and rule out the intercom, headsets, etc. as the cause. There were apparently loose connectors inside the radio itself, which the technicians were able to repair.

I'm not sure if the problem with the other radio not receiving weak signals as well has been fixed; I'll have to go to where the problem occurred to test that. The first VOR is still way off, but at least I now seem to have one radio which transmits and receives well and another which transmits fine and receives ok.

I've never had two radios before, since most of the trainers I flew have only one. I'll probably get in the habit of using the older one mainly as a backup and for monitoring a second frequency. The GPS worked great, too. Having the runway layouts in it makes it easier to visualize where I should be to enter downwind or whatever instruction I'm given, and I can look at the ground track later to see how well I did.

I get a lot of satisfaction out of these flights in class C and B airspace with all the extra work involved. Both times I've gone to Sarasota by myself, I've shared the place with airline traffic. I probably get more out of one trip like this than from ten hours of the kind of flying I usually do, from one uncontrolled airport to another. The flight back at night from city to city is a great experience.