Day 16, 8 Hours of FRASCA

Today was my second day of instrument training and it was LONG. I ended up spending 4 hours flying the simulator and 4 hours observing my flight partner today. It was our first time doing any type of instrument training in the sim and it was probably the toughest too. The first 2 hours I spent flying the simulator was basic flying to and from different navigational radials, airports, and airway intersections. My instructor got a little bored once he felt we I had a good understanding of navigating with only your instruments (the simulator monitor was whited out to simulate flying in clouds). So he got bored and cut my engine off on me in the clouds...nice. Then he had me turn with one dead engine to different headings and altitudes. For instance, "Give me a 360 turn and a climb to 7000ft at 700 feet per minute." Not only is that difficult to do with one engine and blind to the outside world, but even more difficult in a simulator that is much more sensitive to your inputs than the real aircraft. Once I did about 30 minutes of these maneuvers he finally brought me in toward our airport in the sim. I ended up breaking out of the clouds 1 mile from the airport and landed with one engine. It was gratifying and intense. I didn't think it could get more tough than that... LOL was I wrong.

Later that evening I had 2 more hours to knock out... This time we did partial panel training. Basically the instructor will fail certain instruments on you while in flight to test your instrument scan. We were told most students end up crashing in the sim the first time because their instruments start to go off and they follow the busted instrument into the ground. I hopped in the sim. The instructor started me off by doing steep turn maneuvers in the clouds (45 degree banking turns for 360 degrees). We did power on and power off stalls and demonstrated slow flight. During my slow flight he cut one of my engines and I immediately heard the stall horn go off do to my loss of lift. I surprisingly corrected by pitching back down to the horizon and adding some operating engine power, then went through my emergency procedures. He told me I did well because some students end up spinning the aircraft down to the ground. Then during a turn he failed my attitude indicator... this is what killed JFK Jr. When your attitude indicator fails(the instrument that shows a miniature plane and indicates pitch and bank) it doesn't just say FAIL on it... it just starts to slowly display a climbing turn even though you may be flying straight and level. If you don't have a good scan of your instruments and you use this failed instrument as your sole source of keeping wings level, you'll start to bank more and more chasing the horizon on the gauge and you'll enter a tight spiraling dive to the ground. Game Over. Fortunately I caught it right away and noticed it did not agree with any of my other instruments. Then 5 minutes later with a failed attitude indicator, my instructor failed my heading indicator, wonderful!! No attitude indicator or heading indicator and I'm in the clouds. I had to use my turn coordinator to roughly guesstimate when my wings were level, and used the magnetic compass and GPS for my heading. OH and did I mention he had turbulence set to 5 out of 10. Basically with the moderate turbulence it made it that much more difficult to keep wings level using the turn coordinator mini airplane because it was bouncing around just as much as the airplane was in the air. As if that wasn't enough my instructor then shut down one of my engines! Wow what a mental workout and a physical drain on your body. The amount of concentration and stamina needed is surprising. Your body wears down pretty quickly when so much has happened and you're faced with doing whatever you can do get yourself down safely. I ended up doing very well and I was pretty proud of myself. Especially because this was my first time in the sim doing instrument training and this, in my view, was pretty advanced training that normally comes further down the line in a normal training syllabus. Hopefully the rest of my instrument training goes as smoothly, though I can bet there will be days that I'll be completely off. I just hope one of those days isn't during my checkride for my instrument rating.