Day 9: Hood Time

     This morning I flew with a different instructor, Nathan. He was very easy to get along with, and it was a very relaxed atmosphere during the flight. The objective for this lesson was to learn basic instrument flying. With the license I am training for, I will not be certified to fly solely by reference to the instruments, but students are taught the basics so we can fly out of any bad weather we my inadvertently enter.
     Obviously to practice flying by the instruments I should not be able to see outside the aircraft, or that could become my focus instead of the instruments. The solution to this is to wear "foggles." Foggles are glasses that are not transparent except for a small area on the bottom of the lens. That way all I can see are the instruments in front of me. Flying while wearing these is sometimes called flying under the hood.
     Nathan had me do some climbs, descents, and turns. These were actually easier than I expected which I assume is due to the the time I spent on the flight simulator at home. On the flight simulator, you are getting most of your information from your vision. In other words, you cannot feel what the aircraft is doing; you can only see it on the screen. When it came to instrument flying, I approached it in the same way, trusting what my eyes were seeing on the gauges and mostly ignoring the movement I could feel.
     The next flight was with Matt, and I chose to put the foggles on again. After some more climbs, turns, and descents, it was time to learn how to recover from unusual attitudes. Matt took control of the aircraft, and I looked down and closed my eyes. He flew some maneuvers do get me disoriented, then put the plane in a deteriorating situation. Then he would tell me to look up, and I had to get the plane back to straight and level flight using only the instruments. Once the nose was pointed up, the engine was idling, and the aircraft was turning. Another time, the wings were banked way to the left, the nose was pointed down, the engine was at full power, and the airspeed was rapidly approaching the maximum speed the airframe could handle. We did several of these recoveries, and it became almost like a game, trying to get the airplane back under control as quickly as possible.
     Today's flying added 2.5 hours and 6 landings to the logbook, which brings the totals to 22.0 hours and 62 landings. 40 hours are required before taking the test, which means that today I passed the halfway point.