WHEN     : Wednesday 21st July 1999
WHERE    : SPX - T41 - GLS - SPX in N1219F, a Cessna 172N
WHAT     : Approaches - NDB, ILS and VOR, VOR holds. Night.
WHO      : Safety Pilot: Paul Reinman
HOW LONG : 1.5 flight; 1.3 hood

  With JFK Jr's recent suspected spatial disorientation crash still fresh in everyone's mind, I had a night flight booked for some hoodwork. Night under the hood is pretty much as good as the real thing: you really do lose all visual reference, and if you do get some lights shine through the bit of the window the hood doesn't quite block, it usually gives a bad case of the 'leans' - or spatial disorientation to add to the IFR experience.

  Tonight was going to be interesting. I like my safety pilots to be somewhat active in the way of giving me challenges; last week, Robert Winkler had me slow for an imaginary Piper Cub whilst doing ascents and descents. Paul had an altogether much more sneaky set of deviousness in store for me though!

  It all started well enough. I went up to La Porte to do the NDB approach. This went well, and wasn't really much to remark on (apart from the Cessna's directional gyro kept precessing unpredictably: some times you'd come out of a 180-degree standard rate turn, and it'd be 30 degrees off, and other times it wouldn't precess at all! We did the missed approach and the published hold (except we did the hold a bit closer to La Porte, because it's a long way out there!).

  After this, we went towards Galveston to do a night ILS. It was now totally dark. Paul vectored me in outside the marker, and I got set up. The marker beacon duly went off, and I began my descent. Then Paul gave me a realistic distraction - he failed my main panel light. Unfortunately, Sky King here had left everything on the back seat, nicely out of reach. The map light had to do. In the process, I had drifted off the localizer by 2 dots. I corrected for it, but then the glideslope started moving down. A slight power reduction stopped it, and a little more had it coming back, but in the process I went through the localizer again. I was now beginning to get behind the plane. I quickly added some power back to hold onto the glideslope, but then the needle started up. Add power. Now I'd missed the localizer again, and was making corrections that were too big. Finally, I started getting it settled down. At this point, the causeway between Galveston and the mainland showed up in that little windshield corner which the hood doesn't quite get. Instant spatial disorientation. It took all my concentration to keep the needles steady. Then the glideslope started to move down. I reduced power a touch, but I had allowed the localizer to get a little off in the process. I then put in too much correction...this went on right to minimums. I was starting to feel overwhelmed as we got down to 300 feet. I was never more than two dots off in any axis, but my mind was now maxed out as I intensified my scan and tried to keep everything steady. At 200 ft. AGL, I flipped up the hood with great relief. My mind was about to do its impression of Windows 98 crashing again...

  That was just about my worst ILS since starting. I wondered what must have gone wrong - I only had a distraction at the start, but it kept going out of kilter, the glideslope usually getting lost first then everything else. I did a touch and go, flew the missed approach and set up for the VOR approach into Houston Gulf. This approach went without incident, except for the altitude ballooning unexpectedly when I thought everything was trimmed whilst I was getting out the approach plate. I should have been paying better attention.

Conclusion

  That was a tough ILS. I had been getting a bit cocky about how good my ILS's had been getting, and now I had been humbled. As we taxied in, I found out why my ILS had been so bad...and why my altitude had ballooned. The Cessna 172 has quite long seat rails; the front seat can adjust a lot. Add to this that my safety pilot weighs around 200lbs. While I was flying, to add some challenge, he'd move the seat, thus changing the C of G, and thus changing the trim required! It certainly made the ILS much more challenging. I must remember this gem when I'm someone's safety pilot...

WHEN     : Friday 23rd July 1999
WHERE    : SPX - LBX SPX in N9301N, a Piper Arrow 200
WHAT     : Approaches - Off-field NDB, ILS and VOR, VOR holds.
WHO      : Safety Pilot: John Sollinger
HOW LONG : 1.7 flight; 1.5 hood

  The day before this flight, I had flown as safety pilot for John and had inflicted some instrument failures on him, and borrowed from Robert's bag of tricks and done the Piper Cub in the hold thing on him too! (And it was in the Arrow which makes it that little bit more challenging). It was John's turn to give me some aggro whilst I was under the hood.

  I decided to do the NDB approach at Brazoria County since it's different to the one at La Porte. At La Porte, the NDB is on the field. The Brazoria approach has the NDB colocated with the outer marker - about 5 miles from the threshold. This means the needle does this flip as you pass over it, which normally leads to total confusion since it goes from normal sensing to reverse sensing all of a sudden.

  We did this approach, and it actually worked out fairly well (not quite as good as John's approach the day before, which was right on the money). I made the landing, and flew the published missed approach to go back and do the ILS. John gave me a hold at the outer marker. We went around a couple of times, then he gave me instructions to pass the marker at a specific time (about 5 minutes ahead). I had to carefully time how long I went around the hold so that I passed the outer marker at the specified time. We were pretty close (within about 45 seconds). Of course, as I got down to 300 feet, my radios suddenly 'failed' and the barber poles showed on NAV1. I went missed. However, the ILS had worked out pretty good. One of the big differences when doing this in the Arrow compared to the 172 is the workload is much higher. You've got to deal with the prop and the gear (and the associated pitch change caused by the gear going down). Not to mention the fuel pump and checking you're on the right tank, all whilst tracking the localizer! Normally this is done at the outer marker. The other thing about the Arrow is that it's very sensitive in pitch when compared to the 172. It's quite difficult to get it perfectly trimmed for level flight. On the other hand, 'George' (the autopilot) is always available to hold heading while you look for approach plates etc.

  After the ILS, we headed back. John had some more surprises (sticky yellow things covering the DG and AI), and he had me do some compass turns and timed turns. Fortunately, I have no problem in remembering the compass errors, so the compass turns worked (except that I went round an additional time when I missed my assigned heading go past in the compass!) John also gave me some unusual attitude practise. On one of them, my inner ear was screaming "YOU'RE BANKING THE OTHER WAY!!" in complete contradiction to what the turn coordinator was saying. I managed to ignore my senses and levelled the wings by the turn coordinator. It's also amazing to see how incredibly quickly airspeed builds in a nose down unusual attitude. We flew all the way home partial panel, and I did the VOR approach into SPX partial panel. Of course, once I was set up, the DME 'failed' meaning all I had was the timer to time the approach. Unfortunately, I hit 'Reset' instead of 'Start' as we passed LAZZY intersection. I hit 'Start' once more, but now I had to remember the time (I had it programmed into the timer). D'oh!

Conclusion

  Another good learning experience. I needed to get some partial panel stuff in, and this worked out pretty good. One thing I want to do before the checkride is to do some actual IFR, or at least go somewhere with Lee and file so I can get used to flying in the system, and go through the process of filing, calling clearance at Houston Gulf, void times and all that other good stuff. Unfortuantely, actual IFR that's flyable is hard to get this time of year due to thunderstorms, but we'll see.