Trust the Dials

So the plane has been back up. I haven't updated because there was a crack in one of the nose struts that grounded the planed for a few weeks. I've had two awesome lessons since then.

The first lesson was crosswind landing practice. I definately could have done better but it wasn't so bad. Landing the plane safely is a good landing to me. I did progressively better until I just totally hosed one of them. It was to the point where Jeff crumpled his face and said "ooo, that's not good for the plane". Thank God for prevailing winds.

The next lesson was instrument flying... a whole hour of it! It was a beautiful Saturday morning and once I had lifted off and set a course for due South, Jeff handed me a pair of blinders. It's a set of opaque glass with lenses cut out of the bottom half so you can only see the panel. I was tasked to do a series of maneuvers only by watching the dials and gauges! It is challenging at first but rapidly becomes maneagable.The only thing is you can't get lazy, you have to continually scan everything from the airspeed to the altimeter to the attitude indicator and heading indicator. It's not so bad at all when you are leveled off because you can trim the aircraft to that speed. In fact you can let the yoke go for a while and you will maintain alititude and heading reasonably well. These GA planes are designed beautifully stable. In fact most of the pilots inputs are OVER-controlling the plane. It practically flies itself... more of a reason for anyone reading this to take lessons!
A pilot's licence requires 3 hours of instrument training. Why? you might say, can't only instrument rated pilots fly up through clouds? The answer is yes, federal flight rules maintain that non-instrument rated pilots must be clear of clouds by 500 feet vertically and 2000 feet horizontally. The idea behind the training is that if one were to inadvertantly fly into a cloud, one that could intiate a turn of 180 degrees and fly out of it. No arguments here.
So the maneuvers are trickier. We did constant turn rate turns while mainting altitude. A constant turn rate is designed to get the turned in a full 360 degree circle in 2 minutes. It feels very slow in the cockpit and has very shallow bank angle, only maybe 10 degrees. It is amazing how little you feel while turning. In fact the only indication I had I was turning was by seeing the heading indicator turning. Our ears can only sense angular accelerations. We can only feel the intial thrust of getting into a turn but once we are happily turning our inner ear decides we must have stopped by now. I wish we had evolved a turn RATE indicator, that would have been nice.
So then came the constant speed climbs and decents. These are fun and more challenging. To climb give the engine full power and pitch up to about 10 degees, wings level. Once the higher pitch angle is in there, the alitmeter will begin to spin up.. the climb has started. Meanwhile using the pitch input you can control the speed of the climb. Pull back and you can do a steeper slow climb, even at around 60 knots. Push forward on the stick and you will do a faster shallower climb at around 70 knots are so. During all of this heading must be maintained and alititude scanned so as not to overshoot the target altitude. Once that altitude is reached nose the plane over and reduce engine power. You've climbed in a cloud for all you know. Decents are kind of the opposite, reduce engine power and slightly nose over.
The final exercise was to do a climbing turn and decent. This requires almost everything to be monitored and controlled simultaneously. Once the climb is started the wing is dropped a little to get into a turn and then presto. The heading indicator is turning and the altimeter is spinning up. After airspeed looks good just wait until each dial gets where you want it too. The creepy thing is that I FELT like I was flying straight and level with not climb. In truth I was climbing AND turning! I know everyone has read this effect but the point wasn't really driven home until that lesson. Trust the Dials.