Another early morning flight today. I was early and Brad was late, as usual. ;)
Brad decided that we’d do a little instrument training today, so he brought along the ‘hood’ which blocks your forward vision above the instrument panel. We headed out to the practice area and he got me to put it on. I had to fly with reference to the attitude indicator, the heading indicator and the altimeter. I did ok, although I’ll admit I have a hard time holding a heading. Of course I have a hard time holding a heading even when I can see! :)
Brad also took the opportunity to have some fun, so he got me to close my eyes, screwed the plane up, and then got me to recover with only the instruments. Not that big a deal, although I should have looked at the turn and bank indicator rather than the attitude indicator to figure out which way we were banked.
Just before we headed back, he got me to take the hood off and then he cut my engine on me. I had to do a forced landing (or at least practice one). I kind of forgot to warm the engine a couple of times, but the worst part was that I set up for landing downwind! D’Oh. I failed. Brad said my procedures were pretty good though.
On our way back in, Brad got me to put the hood back on so that I could try an instrument landing. Turns out my difficulty in keeping a straight heading kind of screwed my chances of being even close to the runway. :) When Brad told me to take a look we were off to the right of the runway quite a bit. No worries, Brad took control and put us down.
All in all, quite a fun day today. I even treated Brad to some singing since it was Friday. :)
Next time…Sunday. Amy is also going flying on Sunday, I set up an intro flight for her.