Today was review of the previous flight material, before we move on to approaches. Started with some autopilot work (yay autopilots) — the KAP-140 in the C-172 is pretty trivial to use, and provides 2-axis (heading and altitude) control. We worked on entering holds, steep turns (finally didn’t blow it), stall recovery, unusual attitude recovery, and just flying around. On descents to an assigned altitude, I’m not fast enough getting the nose up and the power in, so I end up 50′ too low. Since the practical test standards for assigned altitudes are generally +100/-0′, I have to stop going too low (but staying a bit high would be ok). For most of the flight, I had a pretty good scan going and was staying mostly ahead of the plane.

Then came the landing part. We did a full own navigation ILS 22 approach (with procedure turn) into AEG again. Due to another aircraft doing the missed approach procedure into the hold at DUDLE, we were initially assigned an altitude restriction of 8500′. This isn’t a big deal for the outbound leg and procedure turn, which normally has a minimum altitude of 8000′. But by the time approach removed the restriction, I was pretty close to again DUDLE, at which point I really should have already established on the glide scope and been at 7630′ and descending. Obviously, 8500′ is greater than 7630′, so I had a problem and it became a localizer only approach. I still can not for the life of me track the localizer well inside about 2 miles, which is annoying. After the stage check, we’ll be flying approaches all day, so hopefully I’ll improve with a bit of work.