Lesson 25 - Instrument Flying

This was one of the lessons I'd really been looking forward to!

The background is that - although, once I get my PPL, I will be allowed to fly a simple, single-engined aircraft, in daylight and in clear sight of the ground, there is a chance that - inadvertantly - when flying along one day, I fly into cloud and need to have some basic instrument flying skills to get myself back out of trouble. However both the books and Tim were very clear that I should do everything possible to avoid being in this situation, and should never expect that the skills taught to me here would be sufficient for me to fly in instrument conditions deliberately.

To assist the student pilot, we were to use a cunning device called "foggles". These are goggles worn by the student pilot to prevent them seeing out of the windows. There appear to be 2 basic designs, the ones we were using worked similar to blinkers: I could only really look down to see the instruments. Unfortunately both student and instructor surpassed their memory skills and left the foggles behind in the clubhouse! Time to maintain self discipline and not look out of the window, then!

The key to instrument flight, seemed to be the instrument scan pattern. The most important instrument being the Attitude Indicator (some call the artificial horizon). All instruments scans have to return to this instrument. The scans are broken down into primary scans and secondary scans and the components of each of these differs depending on the situation. However the AI is always in the primary scan.

For straight and level flight, the primary scan is AI -> Altimeter -> AI -> Direction Indicator -> AI ...and so on.

For climbing or descending flight, the primary scan is AI -> Air Speed Indicator -> AI -> Direction Indicator -> AI ...and so on.

For turns, the primary scan is AI -> Altimeter -> AI -> Rate of Turn indicator -> AI ...and so on.

This lesson was also time to go back to some basic principles, such as the "Power - Attitude - Trim" of he first few lessons. But also a new "Select - Hold - Trim".

The lesson was definitely a "tongue out" lesson - meaning high levels of concentration required (which usually involves me sticking my tongue out!).

My straight and level flight was OK, but my right turns were not as good as my left (opposite to last lesson on high performance turns).

On the way back from the exercise, Tim gave me headings and basic instructions to follow (he did the radio calls), before finally telling me to look up. I was very surprised to find us neatly on final, with the runway stretching before us!