From: ggr@koonda.acci.com.au (Greg Rose)
Subject: Starting IFR training (again)
Reply-To: ggr@koonda.acci.com.au (Greg Rose)
Organization: Australian Computing and Communications Institute
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1992 02:24:40 GMT

Yesterday I went on my first IFR training flight in eight months.  As
background, I had pretty much completed IFR training in the US, when a
medical crisis and approaching deadline to return to Australia caused
me to drop it. It has taken the eight months to get back in the air.

Sydney is in the middle of some typical late winter/early spring
weather; we've had 10 consecutive days of CAVOK (in fact much better -- go
look it up), with another three or four forecast. (We went to the
beach the other day, and the kids even went swimming for a short
time.) Temperatures approaching 20 deg C (68 deg F) most days.
So much for the travelogue. The only problem is the WIND. Most days
have been 20 kt at the surface. This can bet pretty bumpy.

Anyway, I had planned Bankstown to Sydney for practice ILS, then
Wollongong for practice NDB approach, then Bindook (a standard
waypoint) where I simulated a VOR approach to Mudgee, then return to
Bankstown. All this was in a Piper Warrior. Almost all of my IFR
training in the US was in a Cessna 182RG.

Well, I'd forgotten a lot. Since Australia introduced a thing called
AMATS during my time away, there was actually a significant chunk of
stuff that I'd never in fact learned! AMATS is our way of getting
closer to ICAO and US operations, but I can't remember what the
acronym stands for.

I didn't have too much trouble at first, I managed to keep the ILS
within two dots each way despite the turbulence at 300 AGL, and most
of the time it was reasonably centred. Radio calls were not a problem,
although once I managed to get countries mixed up and said to Sydney
what I'd have told New York, but with Bankstown instead of Morristown.

But I was having a lot of trouble keeping my altitude. Even allowing
for up and down draughts. I'd lose a hundred feet, need to push the
throttle to regain it, then end up near redline when I finally
stabilised again. My instructor summed it up by saying "The prop
regulator is a bit slow in this plane", meaning me of course. I'd
never realised just how much fiddling one does with the throttle when
without a Constant Speed prop.

Well, having finally settled that down a bit, I did the holding
pattern entry, reversal, approach, and missed approach at Wollongong
quite well. There was a surprising amount of practise IFR traffic, but
I found that the (new to Australia) CTAF system worked quite well. In
the US, the impediment to it working is far too much congestion on the
frequency; here it is that pilots aren't used to using it yet.
Then off to Bindook. Bindook is in the Great Dividing Range southeast
of Sydney, and is the place where Melbourne to Sydney traffic always
gets put on hold. That's why they chose the bumpiest place possible.

I was handling the power settings better by now, but the added
turbulence was making it a lot harder for me to hold altitude
accurately. For a while, after pulling the wrong approach plate, I
almost lost it, and stopped scanning properly. Headings were
wandering, altitude was off, my situational awareness was out of
kilter. And I was getting tired, too. The instructor pointed out to me
that I wasn't scanning properly, and I concentrated on that for a
while. Things got a bit better, but not too much. Then he said "You're
not on partial panel, you know. What aren't you looking at?"

OMIGOD! I had hardly at all used the Artificial Horizon. In the final
stages of my training in the US, I'd done so much partial panel work
that I'd started to factor it out; it wasn't picked up at the time
(partly because I was mostly on partial panel...) and the eight month
lapse had let it settle in. No wonder I was tired. I'd done over two
hours of moderately turbulent flying, effectively without the AH.
As soon as I conciously made myself include it in the scan again, I
found that I was holding the altitude to +- 20 feet, despite
turbulence. What a stupid lesson to have to learn again.

Coming back into Sydney, the transponder failed (actually, when I left
Sydney on the leg to Wollongong they'd told me it was intermittent,
and by then it was just gone). They required a descent to get us below
the Control Area steps, and I was pleased to note that they waited for
us to confirm our DME distance before doing so -- they'd have been
asking for a descent below LSALT if they had done it earlier.

The approach to Bankstown was visual, but still very interesting. We
had a straight in approach with about a 12-18 knot cross-tailwind.
They were doing some sort of runway maintenance that required it. 
I had no trouble with the landing, but the guy in the Mooney on the
parallel runway had some trouble stopping.

The moral of the story is that you can get a bad habit really
ingrained if you don't watch out. Imagine forgetting the AH and not
even realising it! I'm now confident that I'll be rated after just a
few more flights.

This story also points out the reason why I fly with this instructor
in particular, and older, not on-their-way-to-an-airline instructors
in general. Other than simple conversation, Ray only said about five
things on the entire flight, but they were all correct and to the
point. He didn't harp on my altitude, or keep pounding on me to correct
minor problems. Instead, he watched what I was doing until he KNEW
what it was I was doing that was CAUSING the problem. In doctor terms,
he treated the disease, not the symptoms.

Overall, a nice day.

Acronyms --
  AGL - Above Ground Level
   AH - Artificial Horizon (aka. Attitude Indicator)
AMATS - I've forgotten, but means the new ICAO-like airspace rules
CAVOK - Cloud And Visibility OK
 CTAF - Common Traffic Advisory Frequency
 ICAO - International Civil Aviation Organisation
  IFR - Instrument Flight Rules
  ILS - Instrument Landing System
LSALT - Lowest Safe ALTitude
  NDB - Non Directional Beacon
   US - United States (of America)
  VOR - VHF Omnidirectional Range
--
Greg Rose                 Australian Computing and Communications Institute
ggr@acci.com.au                                              +61 3 282 2532