After Saturday’s shortened lesson, I was able to get a last minute flight scheduled for today to finish up flight 5. Today, we’d start with a practice clearance copy, then another DME hold, then steep turns, then finish with an ILS approach. It was a nice day, and I was scheduled an hour later than usual (9 instead of 8). Double Eagle was insanely busy, and we were #5 for departure at one point. The way traffic got run together, we didn’t have time to do a practice clearance, so we just practiced vectors out of the airport. Which we would have had to do anyway, because the airspace around the airport was also insane.

We did a practice hold, and it took me a couple of times around the track to get the wind correction exactly right. Once I did, the wind changed on me and I ended up a little squashed on the last trip around the holding pattern. Oh well. I’m getting better, but need to look at the wind indicator on the G1000 (computers are great!) — it should really help in making sure I run nice holds. I was having some trouble keeping straight and level when we got close to some of the “hills” on the west side of the city, as the air was clearly already starting to cook. Not big problems, but just enough to be frustrating.

Steep turns were interesting. I haven’t done steep turns in a Cessna in over a year (last time would have been at my checkride). I’ve done them in the RV, but the control inputs necessary on that plane are so much less than in the Cessna that it really doesn’t count. The first turn was to my left, which has always been weaker than my right-handed steep turns. I lost a bunch of altitude and it took a while to get it back together. The right hand turn was pretty much spot on. The second left was better than the first, but not as good as the right. But I think i’ve got the control pressure feel back so hopefully next week will go better.

We were pretty busy dodging planes all morning, and it didn’t help that for most of it we didn’t have flight following because the controller was kinda busy already and was dealing with an airliner with a gear problem (they got the gear down and locked and as far as I know landed without incident, but that kind of thing makes everyone nervous). We probably could have gotten traffic advisories if we asked, but sometimes it’s just a good idea to give a stressed controller a break :).

After steep turns, we did a full ILS22 approach. Normally at a place like Double Eagle or the Sunport, where there is good radar coverage, you get vectored into the localizer and glidescope. Meaning that the controller turns you and gives you altitude assignments such that you are right at the initial approach fix lined up with the runway (5 miles away) and can start following the radio navigation down to 200′ above the ground. In areas where there is bad radar coverage or the radar is out, they can’t give you vectors and you have to do your own navigation. This isn’t too bad when you have an IFR-approved GPS (or two), but we practice the old radio only way. That means flying at a high altitude to the initial approach fix, which is a radio transmitter called DUDLE for the AEG ILS 22 approach, flying away from the airport, turning around while descending to a given altitude, then flying back towards the airport on the localizer. Right before DUDLE is crossed again, you should intercept the glidescope and start descending. The turning around is called a procedure turn and is used to make sure everyone stays within airspace that will keep them from hitting anything (like mountains, towers, or big buildings).

The G1000 makes flying the procedure turn trivial, as it displays it on the moving map for you. I flew that no problem, but could not stay stabilized on the glidescope. It was all in all a truly crappy approach. I ended up going missed well before the decision height because it was so bad. I need to spend some time reviewing suggested power / pitch settings so that I’m not searching for the first half of the approach, and I think that will help immensely. After going around (visually, no more hood) I made a halfway decent approach to land. I was pointed at the very start of the runway, which is earlier than I like, but it would work. Then, about 5-10′ off the runway, I caught an downdraft or a wind gust off the tail or something and started sinking rapidly. I probably could have saved it, but was frustrated from the previous approach, so just firewalled it and went around. Third attempt (sigh) at landing, I was a bit high, but made a beautiful engine-out approach. This time, I was pointed at the numbers, just in case that air pocket from the last approach was still down there. I flared pretty well, held it off beautifully, and greased it on to end the saga of no landings.

My scan still needs work — I’m having trouble with it when I have to do other things in the cockpit. Today, however, was the first day that I felt comfortable adding the MFD (the second screen) into my scan. It definitely helped with situational awareness — knowing exactly where I was, seeing the TIS traffic display, and was really helpful when trying to do the full procedure ILS — it showed the entire coarse to be flown and loaded it all into the HSI display, which beats reading numbers off of the paper chart any day.

Next week’s lesson is partial panel work (which we’ve started doing a bit of already) and then unusual attitude recovery and stalls. The unusual attitude recovery is part of the private pilot requirements, so I think I can handle that pretty well. The stalls shouldn’t be too bad, just a matter of remembering to use the rudder to keep the AI level when we break. I’m going to make an effort to spend an hour or two flying with X-Plane this week to try to work on the scan and working through maneuvers, and definitely shoot a bunch of approaches until I get this power thing under control. X-Plane has a 172SP with steam gauges instead of the G1000, but it should work well enough for my needs. Possibly better for practicing holds. Memorizing the pitch / power settings needed through the approach is also a biggie — that screwed me today.