First Instrument Lesson
On October 28th I had my first instrument flying lesson with Kathy. An instrument rating is a much different than the private certificate. Getting your private certificate you spent most of your time learning how to fly, straight and level, climbs, descents, turns, landings, etc. These are considered primary skills. Just like dribbling and passing are to basketball, basic ‘stick and rudder’ skills are the back bone to the rest of your flying game. The private certificate only required a limited ability to do other, more precise, activities. Basic instrument flying is taught in the primary training. Basic means: if you aren’t paying attention and fly into a cloud, do this and you won’t spiral into the ground.
Flying on instruments, then, could also be considered a primary skill. During primary training, you learn to fly the airplane on reference to what you see outside. By referencing the angle between the wing and the horizon you can determine your pitch and roll of the airplane. By this method you learn to do all the previously mentioned ‘primary skills’. Instrument flying requires you to disregard the sights and sensations that you learned fly on and to rely on the mechanical gadgets that are in the cockpit. More than just disregard these sensations you must teach yourself to ignore them. The mind is incapable of sensing its orientation and motion without visual reference. Often you find yourself thinking you are in an orientation but the instruments tell you something different. Your body feels like its turning but, in fact, the instruments say otherwise. The first time this happens can be very disconcerting.
When flying on instruments, the outside world and your relation to it are summed up with the following picture.
From left to right we have:speed, orientation, altitude, rate of turn, heading, rate of climb.
The most important instrument of all of these is the attitude indicator (top middle). The attitude indicator has replaced the comforting view of the ground that was used when first learning how to fly. Done right, the attitude indicator is all that you need to keep the dirty side down and the pointy end forward. With the attitude indicator you would be able to tell how you were oriented in pitch and role but the it provides no indication of direction or heading. The heading indicator, directly below the attitude indicator, provides this.
Using these and the other 4 instruments an instrument rated pilot is capable of flying the airplane from point A to point Z with only seeing the airports at each end.
Yesterday I had my first lesson to become an instrument rated private pilot. A cold front had just moved through and a low pressure trough settled across the mid-Ohio region. This caused instability which lead to an overcast cloud layer at about 1000 feet above the ground. A terrible day for visual flying but excellent for an instrument flying lesson. Kathy filed a flight plan for us and actually handled most of the procedural things. When flying on instruments, you can no longer use the ‘see and avoid’ method of not running into other airplanes. The burden of providing separation then falls on the controller. The controller is responsible for keeping you and other aircraft from trying to fly through the same spot. Because flying on instruments requires this added layer of protection, a flight plan MUST be filed with specific intentions declared. The controller can then do what is necessary to provide separation.
Kathy handled copying our clearance from clearance delivery (a controller) and I handled calling ground and getting the airplane started, off the ramp, and into the sky. Once airborne we were given our usual turn north and handed off to the approach controllers from the tower. (The tower only controls who can land or not, the approach controllers actually handle the people in the sky.)
At some point in our climb out we flew some place I had never flown before: the inside of cloud. And for anyone interested, the inside of cloud looks something like this:
Very little to look at.
From here we continued to Appleton, a navigational beacon used for aviation. We practiced holding patterns for about an hour. Holding is basically flying around a point, waiting for further clearance.
Instrument flying is a very different ball game, much more cerebral and precise than what is required for visual flying. I am continuing with the instrument rating because:
1. I am a sucker for learning new things
2. It should serve to make me a better pilot
3. It gives me an excuse to go to the airport and fly
4. It is another rating that will never expire
So here I go again. The celebration of my new certificate has been pushed to the wayside as I dive into the books again and go from knowing an entire subject to being a neophyte. But this is the stuff that makes me tick.
( I will be writing a post shortly on my use of FSX as a training aid: the hardware, the software, and how I use it. )
