[yes, the entry is backdated to the end of the lesson. cope.]

This morning was my second instrument lesson. Friday’s weather was beautiful in the morning and choppy and hot in the afternoon. I was hoping to get the same thing this morning, and was lucky to be right. We took off on 22 and headed to the northwest practice area (just north of KAEG). Takeoff was a bit harrowing — I had the engine leaned a little too much and wasn’t making full power. I had a 100 foot/minute climb which is way low, but at least survivable. Scanning instruments, the EGT (exhaust gas temperature) was high, so richened the mixture and we were able to establish a good climb rate (600-800 foot/minute) at Vy. Much happier.

Instrument flight was uneventful – I was able to keep the plane mostly where it should be. I still drift a bit more than I’d like when I’m trying to deal with cockpit resources (like tuning and verifying the right VOR or ILS). We then came back to KAEG to do the ILS 22 approach. Until about .5 miles before the middle marker (about .5 mile from the end of the runway), I had it nailed. I started losing the glidescope (the vertical guidance) a bit, but was probably +/- 100′ or less and I could have gotten it back together. however, someone decided to start using runway 4 and everyone else switched just as quickly. The runway numbers are magnetic heading rounded to the nearest 10 degrees, with the last digit dropped. So I’m coming in on 22, people are departing on 4. Those good at math have probably figured out that planes were coming right at us. So we broke off the approach early and offset for traffic.

“breaking out of the clouds” (removing the view limiting device) at 300-400′ was an interesting experience. The ground looks *really* close and coming up faster. I had practiced a VOR approach at Bloomington and an ASR (airport surveillance radar) approach at Terre Haute, but both of those go missed at 1000′, so you’re still a long way from the ground when you “break out”. I’m sure I’ll get used to it, but kind of weird.

We then spent some time doing touch and go landings so that I could get the feel of the 172 again. I finally got to the point where I was comfortable in the flare, but still was coming in high and fast. Each one was slightly better than the last, so I think there’s progress being made. It’s amazing how much different the sight picture out of the 172 is compared to the RV. And just as remarkable how much slower it comes out of the sky compared to the RV.

Next week is navigation, which should be fun.