A few months after earning my private pilot's license, I began work on my instrument rating. I made a couple of flights with my original instructor, Brad Smith (also a friend of mine from my Boy Scout days) before joining a flying club over at Coweta County Airport where the aircraft were a little less expensive (way less expensive compared to today!) and the schedule was not quite as busy. Before I ended up taking a hiatus from flying, I accumulated about 8-9 hours of dual instruction and roughly 30 hours of simulated and actual instrument flying.

Due to my upcoming career change, I talked it over with Tiffany (my wife) and decided that now would probably be as good as time as any to go ahead and finish my instrument rating, since flying money may be a little tight (or non-existent!) for about a year or so due to the training period for the ATC position I have accepted.

I talked with Andy Manning, one of the CFIIs at Superior who was down at FTY (they have since closed that location), and went over where I was, what I thought my abilities were and roughed out a brief roadmap of getting my IR done in the shortest amount of time possible. With your primary training, if you take a couple of weeks off, it probably isn't the best idea, but you probably aren't going to have to review too much the next time you go up. With the instrument rating, not having flown or practiced in some way (Flight Simulator comes in handy here!) can mean spending half an hour or more in review, when you should be working on the next step. Once you start, it is important that you try to fly at least once a week at a minimum. Some people advise you should try twice a week, but unfortunately my schedule and budget doesn't support that kind of flying anymore.

Anyway, here is a synopsis of what I have done to date:

1/11/09 - My first scheduled flight gets scrubbed due to low celings and PIREPs in the area just to the north of Cobb Co for icing. I was looking forward to getting some actual time, but with a 1500ft celing and reports of icing at 2500ft, there was just no safety margin in a light single should I encounter ice. Instead of scrubbing the lesson entirely, Andy set me up in the simulator where I worked on holding patterns. I did both standard and non-standard patterns, with a variety of entries and wind conditions. I actually did fairly well considering the time it had been since I had flown one last. There was one pretty tricky one (direct entry across the fix, 90 degrees from the inbound course, with a 20kt tailwind!) that I messed up the entry on, but I was still within the protected area and managed to re-intercept the inbound leg OK. Thank goodness he wasn't judging me on the ability to hold altitude in that thing, to say that the pitch control was sensitive is an understatement. With no control feedback, the slightest touch put it in a 300-400' per min climb or dive.

1/14/09 - The weather was beautiful, save the 30ish degree weather. After my last lesson I had discussed my interest in flying the 1975 Grumman AA5-B Tiger, 1568R on my next flight. It is well equipped for IFR work, and is one of two aircraft there equipped with a WAAS GPS (Garmin 430W) making it possible to perform LPV approaches. So in conjunction with the IR training, it also turned into an aircraft familirization flight. That night, I did basic manuvers under the hood, such as constant airspeed climbs/descents, straight and level flight, timed turns, compass turns and a little partial panel flying without the attitude indicator. I asked for the Localizer 27 at Cobb Co (glide slope is currently inop) and did pretty well holding that all the way in. I was about a dot and a half off at the missed approach point; I think I was a little too fixated on the altimeter (funny how airplanes always want to descend when you're at MDA!) and let the heading drift a tad in the last mile or so of the approach. Overall not too bad. Andy thought I did well and said he thought I'd probably be ready for a checkride in 3-4 flights. I really liked the way the Tiger flew and decided to do the rest of my training in that airplane. I found it to be much more stable in some light chop and is faster to boot.

1/21/09 - This entire flight was dedicated to partial panel. About as soon as we had climbed out of Cobb Co's class D, Andy covered up the attitude indicator and direction gyro. He just had me do some basic straight and level to get settled in, then had me dial in the Rome VOR, track it inbound, then set up for the VOR/DME Rwy 1 approach into RMG. This particular approach involves a hold for the course reversal instead of a procedure turn, which was more than a little interesting with nothing but the compass for reference. Once I was established inbound, Andy set up the display on the 430 so I could get my heading information off of it instead of having to drag out the flashlight to look at the compass. I came in a tad high, but I was reasonably well on course at the missed. I flew the published missed, then set up for the LOC 19 at Cartersville (VPC). Since the Tiger is not equipped with an ADF (thank goodness!) I used the 430 to track to the IAF and to fly the approach. My procedure turn was a bit sloppy but I tracked the localizer fairly well and was in a good position to land if need be at the missed approach. On the way back in, I asked for the GPS Rwy 27 back into Cobb Co, largely because I had never flown a GPS approach before. Compared to the previous two approaches, this one was a breeze. It helped that by that time Andy had thought I had done well enough partial panel, but the prompts and GPS glide slope made it like flying an ILS. I was a little high (3 whites, 1 red) at the missed approach point, but I was still able to get it down and make a nice landing (I love the way this airplane lands!) without having to force it down.

1/28/09 - I was supposed to have done my long IFR cross-country, which would have put me over the hump for hood and dual time, but alas, the weather did not cooperate. Icing probablity was over 75% around Birmingham (one of the airports I had planned to fly to) and night IFR in low celings with a single engine airplane just don't mix. So I cancelled it, came home and flew the route on Flight Sim instead just to get a feel of the flight. Assuming the weather holds out I have rescheduled the flight for the upcoming Monday.

So far, that's where I'm at. I'll try to make sure to keep the blog updated after my next flight...and maybe add some pictures here too!