Post by flaminghotsauce on Jul 16, 2012 18:44:22 GMT -5
Wow. I'm rusty!
Some homeschool family friends have two kids that want to start flight training. They visited a week ago. Seeing how I've passed all my groundwork, bookwork, etc. up to and including ground instructor and instrument instructor, I offered to at least assist in whatever capacity I can. I'm not a current instructor, never was except when I tested 8 years ago, so I can only promise to help with concepts, even sitting in front of a flight simulator and going over stuff with them. While they were here, we sat and did a couple of circuits, so I could get a grasp on where they were. And where I am.
Time to get myself refreshed.
I've hardly done anything but touch and goes for some time, so I fired up my sim to do some airwork. I can do an awesome circuit around my local airport, so I decided to jump in and do something hard. I flew an instrument flight with a non-precision, VOR-DME approach. The IAF was an intersection of two VOR radials, and I dialed in one of the VOR radials' reciprocal heading.
Strike ONE.
After I intercepted the fix, I kept turning the wrong way and getting farther and farther away from a centered needle until I finally noticed the FROM flag! THAT was the problem, reverse sensing! Duh. I had to make a sharp turn back toward the inbound radial, nearly 90 degrees, to keep from getting too near the missed approach point while NOT established. I got myself realigned with the selected radial, but in this whole process, I busted my altitude, not bad, only about 40' but that is a bust on a check ride.
Strike TWO.
I got my altitude straightened out, dialed in a TO flag, and proceeded. When I was nearly down to the MISSED DME point, I noticed I'd miss-dialed the VOR heading by 10 degrees!
I caught it in time, but I was only a half mile from the DME point, and had to do some radical moves to align with the runway. I was lucky it wasn't very windy. I'm calling it strike THREE even though I recovered. Had it been in real life, I'd have had to go missed.
I've been searching high and low trying to find all my Jeppesen manuals, guides, and spiral bound maneuvers booklets. Sigh. I moved my flight simulator desk upstairs, and somewhere in this house is a box full of books. I'm also missing the receiver for my TrackIR! Haven't seen that since I moved up here.
These kids I"m hoping to mentor still need to acquire a system they can fly the sim on. They're using some laptop, running FSX, and complaining about how choppy it is.
I've also been working on my throttle quadrants. One got printer refill ink in it, and the other got "spikey" to where it's very difficult to control the throttle. Some electronic tuner cleaner sounds like the answer, but I've read NOT to use that on the plastic. But I finally decided to do it anyway. The ink one still has a bad error, but the other is almost cleared completely. The inked Quadrant has the first handle throwing the first two axis at the same time. I have it set up as a twin engine control, and the prop 2 handle is moving the mixture 1 knob onscreen. The mixture 1 knob moves only the mix 1. So that's a problem. The other quadrant has a small area in the throw of the throttle that is 'dead' for just a small area.
Some homeschool family friends have two kids that want to start flight training. They visited a week ago. Seeing how I've passed all my groundwork, bookwork, etc. up to and including ground instructor and instrument instructor, I offered to at least assist in whatever capacity I can. I'm not a current instructor, never was except when I tested 8 years ago, so I can only promise to help with concepts, even sitting in front of a flight simulator and going over stuff with them. While they were here, we sat and did a couple of circuits, so I could get a grasp on where they were. And where I am.
Time to get myself refreshed.
I've hardly done anything but touch and goes for some time, so I fired up my sim to do some airwork. I can do an awesome circuit around my local airport, so I decided to jump in and do something hard. I flew an instrument flight with a non-precision, VOR-DME approach. The IAF was an intersection of two VOR radials, and I dialed in one of the VOR radials' reciprocal heading.
Strike ONE.
After I intercepted the fix, I kept turning the wrong way and getting farther and farther away from a centered needle until I finally noticed the FROM flag! THAT was the problem, reverse sensing! Duh. I had to make a sharp turn back toward the inbound radial, nearly 90 degrees, to keep from getting too near the missed approach point while NOT established. I got myself realigned with the selected radial, but in this whole process, I busted my altitude, not bad, only about 40' but that is a bust on a check ride.
Strike TWO.
I got my altitude straightened out, dialed in a TO flag, and proceeded. When I was nearly down to the MISSED DME point, I noticed I'd miss-dialed the VOR heading by 10 degrees!
I caught it in time, but I was only a half mile from the DME point, and had to do some radical moves to align with the runway. I was lucky it wasn't very windy. I'm calling it strike THREE even though I recovered. Had it been in real life, I'd have had to go missed.
I've been searching high and low trying to find all my Jeppesen manuals, guides, and spiral bound maneuvers booklets. Sigh. I moved my flight simulator desk upstairs, and somewhere in this house is a box full of books. I'm also missing the receiver for my TrackIR! Haven't seen that since I moved up here.
These kids I"m hoping to mentor still need to acquire a system they can fly the sim on. They're using some laptop, running FSX, and complaining about how choppy it is.
I've also been working on my throttle quadrants. One got printer refill ink in it, and the other got "spikey" to where it's very difficult to control the throttle. Some electronic tuner cleaner sounds like the answer, but I've read NOT to use that on the plastic. But I finally decided to do it anyway. The ink one still has a bad error, but the other is almost cleared completely. The inked Quadrant has the first handle throwing the first two axis at the same time. I have it set up as a twin engine control, and the prop 2 handle is moving the mixture 1 knob onscreen. The mixture 1 knob moves only the mix 1. So that's a problem. The other quadrant has a small area in the throw of the throttle that is 'dead' for just a small area.
