Today was more simulated instrument flying (and that’s about it). Took off with the foggles on, which was interesting. Did not deal well with that at all, but hopefully will do better with that next time up. Worked on stalls (power-on and power-off), steep turns, and VOR intercept / tracking. I was turning way too steep when I was trying to do the VOR navigation, which was irritating me. Oh, and IFR unusual attitude recovery, which has to go down as my least favorite part about flying at this point ;).
Tomorrow is (hopefully) the last of the IFR for a little while. I believe we’re going to be working on more VOR navigation. And probably something else that makes me want to smash the glasses into little itty bitty pieces.
TLAs?
For those of us who are clueless: what do VOR and IFR mean?
Thank you — Pete (too lazy to look it up!)
Re: TLAs?
IFR is Instrument Flight Rules. There are two “modes” in which you can fly — IFR and VFR (Visual Flight Rules). At the completion of one’s private pilot’s certificate, one can only fly VFR. Extra flight training and an extra flight test is necessary to be certified to fly under IFR. VFR has specific visibility requirements and you have to stay away from clouds, so weather can get in the way. IFR is basically navigating and flying by instruments alone and has very few visibility requirements (usually a couple hundred hards down the runway – anything short of a snow storm and life is good). Since the horizon is not always visible when flying under IFR, the reference one uses to stay straight and level is gone, so instruments have to be trusted instead. And unlike the horizon, the instruments lag the actual movement of the plane by a bit (1/2 second at most for the attitude indicator, up to a couple seconds for the altimeter).
VOR stands for VHF Omnidirectional Range. It’s a radio tower that transmits such that the receiver can determine which of the 360 radials from the tower you are navigating on. Many planes have two VOR receivers, so you can triangulate your position on the map. Others have the ability to give you direction and distance from the tower, so you only need one tower and receiver to get position. Bloomington airport has a VOR tower on its grounds, so if you are 40 miles or less from the airport, you can determine which direction the airport is from you. Then it’s a matter of heading that direction and following the receiver’s directions. A reasonable writeup is here.