WHEN     : Wednesday 14th July 1999
WHERE    : SPX - GLS - SPX in N1219F, a Cessna 172N
WHAT     : Approaches - ILS and VOR, NDB holds, airwork. Night.
WHO      : Safety Pilot: John Sollinger
HOW LONG : 1.5 flight; 1.3 hood

  The 172 was booked out earlier, so the earliest session I could get was 8 pm. That meant...night IFR! The sun sets somewhere between 8 and 8:30pm. I've not done a lot of hoodwork at night.

  Since Galveston is so close, I usually do at least one approach there. I did a nice ILS (although not quite as nice as the one at Beaumont last week), and went missed. I then flew off towards the Galveston NDB to practise NDB holding. John did his ATC bit and gave me holding instructions. At that point my brain did a fine impression of Windows 98 crashing. For some reason, I couldn't figure out where the hold was or how I was supposed to enter it. I don't know why. Eventually, I entered the hold somehow, and we did a couple of circuits. The hold itself worked out pretty well despite the difficulty in figuring out where it was supposed to be!

  I then went out to do some airwork. To get some en-route type flying in, I went out to the Trinity VOR, where I would practise some airwork. I did some steep turns that actually came out OK, then some slow flight which also worked pretty good. We'd been flying for a while, so it was time for a VOR approach back into Houston Gulf. Instead of being vectored, I did my own navigation to get onto the approach to see how it worked out. It went pretty smoothly, although the lights on the Texas City dyke showed up through that little corner of the window that the hood can't quite block out, giving me terrible leans (I briefly got a glimpse of a 'false horizon' effect). That hasn't happened in a while. However, my scan was going good and I was able to ignore it. The approach itself went smoothly, and I circled to land on 13.

Conclusion

  IFR at night certainly has its challenges. It's also a lot more realistic under the hood, since you don't get visual cues like the sun shining on the panel as you turn. At night under the hood you know you're well and truly solely on instruments. The session also taught me I need to work on those hold entries. Perhaps I should fire up Flight Sim again for a few sessions.

WHEN     : Friday 16th July 1999
WHERE    : SPX - T41 - 54TX - SPX in N1219F, a Cessna 172N
WHAT     : Approaches - NDB and VOR/DME, VOR/DME holds.
WHO      : Safety Pilot: Robert Winkler
HOW LONG : 1.6 flight; 1.4 hood

  For today's session I thought it was time for NDB work. I've done plenty of ILS and VOR approaches - I might as well go to La Porte and do an NDB approach or two. Robert simulated ATC for me and gave me a clearance to fly to get there. The approach to La Porte is to basically fly to the NDB (the Galveston VOR's 330 radial also points there), then turn outbound, do the procedure turn and come back in. This went surprisingly well - normally NDB approaches are the bain of my life. However, Robert had a few tricks... as we were about no more than a mile from the station, he turned the ADF off to see if I would notice the lack of ident. It wasn't hard to miss the sound from the ADF! So now I had to fly the missed approach procedure. This is basically climb to 1600 (we remained at 1600 anyway to avoid La Porte's busy pattern) then turn out on the Hobby VOR 069 radial to Fryed interesection and hold. Robert did the ATC simulation and had me climb a little too, up to 2500. We did some holding there, and Robert threw some ATC scenarios in for me. We did some descents in the hold as if going down in the "stack", and then...

"Slow to 80 knots, you're following a J3 Cub"

I got a chuckle out of the idea of an IFR J3 Cub flying an approach, but I guess it could happen! So I got to do some slow flight all whilst holding. Then Robert "cleared" me back to the approach. Halfway there, plans changed again (the weather can go below minimums), so we diverted and did the VOR/DME approach into RWJ Airpark. I've never done a VOR/DME (just plenty of VOR approaches). A VOR/DME is pretty much the same though, except your approach fixes are determined by DME distances instead. The other new thing about this approach is that it's to a turf runway. There aren't many instrument approaches to grass runways! Owing to the deluges of rain we've had recently, we decided not to land since we'd probably get dirt all over the plane (the ground around here is very soggy right now!)

  After doing the approach to minimums and going missed, we decided to call it a day and flew back to SPX. We'd been up for a while, so instead of doing the VOR 31 into SPX, Robert just vectored me round the pattern until I was on final, from which I made a very nice touchdown to finish off a productive session!

Conclusion

  Today's session was very good. I got a lot done, and I'm happy with my progress. I just need to finish off my groundschool, get a few more hours and do some 'actual' with Lee and I'll be in good shape for the checkride. I'm finding out that IFR work has a very satisfying challenge to it.