---------------------------------------------------------- Pietenpol-List Digest Archive --- Total Messages Posted Mon 09/19/16: 4 ---------------------------------------------------------- Today's Message Index: ---------------------- 1. 08:14 AM - Re: electronic item for peace (nightmare) 2. 04:25 PM - VERY OT my recent Instrument training. (Steven Dortch) 3. 06:01 PM - Re: Re: electronic item for peace (Steven Dortch) 4. 09:55 PM - Re: VERY OT my recent Instrument training. (taildrags) ________________________________ Message 1 _____________________________________ Time: 08:14:04 AM PST US Subject: Pietenpol-List: Re: electronic item for peace From: "nightmare" lol. I usually use a rock tied to a 8 ft rope. swung around over my head yields a 16 ft phone and people free radius. -------- Paul Donahue Started 8-3-12 do not archive Read this topic online here: http://forums.matronics.com/viewtopic.php?p=460586#460586 ________________________________ Message 2 _____________________________________ Time: 04:25:13 PM PST US From: Steven Dortch Subject: Pietenpol-List: VERY OT my recent Instrument training. Hit delete NOW. This is a long winded OT report on my Instrument training. None of it is Pietenpol related. Don=99t Bitch about having read it i f you don't want to, just hit delete. Yesterday, I completed my IFR checkride and did quite well. After 25 plus years as an off and on VFR pilot who had dabbled at IFR training, I decided to use my GI Bill for a post Army retirement flying career. I just want someone else to pay for my flying hobby. Step one was to get a instrument ticket. After looking at quite a few schools, I selected of Tempus Training Solutions in San Marcos, Texas. I wanted a school with a good reputation and they had to be able to do Part 141 training and be able to get GI Bill approval. Redbird Proflight Academy moved Flight training operations to Tempus Training. (BTW there is a CFI shortage that has affected most schools.) Tempus met these requirements and was $3500 cheaper than the other part 141 programs due to extensive Sim use. Tempus is the flight training laboratory for Redbird and uses Redbird full motion flight simulators and has an agreement with the FAA that allows them to do a majority of the training in the Sim with the student proving his knowledge in the aircraft. The flight sim closely replicates the 2006 Cessna 172Ses used by the flight academy, including the G1000. The aircraft are well maintained. The Chief pilot for Tempus (a retired F16 driver) has been able to attract good CFIs by understanding that they were going to move on and by helping them get ratings and resume enhancing jobs. (IE my instructor took a break from teaching to fly a Pilatus PC12 from Nairobi, Back to Virginia via Europe and then North sea.) He also treats them as professionals and expects them to act accordingly. Several instructors who became Airline or Corporate pilots come back on their days off to teach (and earn a little change.) The first thing I had to overcome was 25 years of lazy VFR habits such as simply getting close to an altitude or letting the plane drift off heading. I did however get complements on my ability to fly the plane, do cross wind landings At week two, I started having equilibrium problems (Dizzy) , more in the sim than in the plane. I had to cancel several flights and end some sim sessions early. I called a retired Army National Guard buddy who had been the Flight Surgeon for the Texas Army National Guard and told him my problem. He told me several things to try. There has been a huge mold problem in South Texas and the mold count was so high that even those not allergic were having problems. So he told me to take Allegra (NOT Allegra-D) and use Flonase on my nose every day. Also to Shower often to get the mold off of me. He told me to start wearing my reading glasses for every IFR session and any time I read or used a computer. I had not used them early in the day since I could focus, but as my eyes got tired and would not focus, I would put them on. I had been swimming with my grandsons and he told me not to get my head more than three feet below the surface. He ended by saying sleep and eat at the right times and drink water. I think it was a combination of the mold and my aging eyesight. Though I am not sure which one it was, it worked. In two days I was fine. I felt really good about my learning curve at first, but after about 3 weeks I simply felt like I would never get it. If I looked away from the Attitude Inidcator, I climbed, dove, turned or a combination of all three. Taking time to write things down, read them, change frequencies, set up the GPS flight plan, get my tablet set up on an approach procedure, change a freq, check the engine gauges or anything else resulted in a deviation from heading and/or altitude. I called Vernon Foster, a 99 year old buddy. Vern was once a pilot for United Airlines and became their manager of flight simulator engineering and maintenance. He did my tailwheel signoff two years ago at the young age of 97. I told Vern of my problems and how I would never get it. He listened patiently and then laughed and said "you are at the right place in your training. Every pilot thinks that they just aren't going to figure out Instrument flight! It will start to come together and when it does it will get easier." He questioned me about what I was doing and his pearl of wisdom was. "Let Go of the yoke when you look away from the AI!. If the plane is trimmed and flying level it will continue on course while you take 5 seconds to do something. So just let go!" That fixed my problem. I was steering the way I was looking! This school uses iPads to manage the Simulators and all of the instructors have drank the Foreflight Koolaide. So I had to get an iPad, buy foreflight and learn to use it. (I joined NAFI and got a good enough foreflight discount that it almost paid for the NAFI membership.) It took me a while to get down the G1000 buttonology. This High tech device will do a lot of things including providing IFR certified GPS guidance for the pilot (or an autopilot), show a moving map. display all the needed instruments for IFR flight, Show required altitudes, and so on and so forth. I spent many hours in the sim just figuring out ho w to do simple things like activating the next leg on an approach, or how to delete and add an approach. I finally learned to use all the needed functions of a G1000 but it has MANY functions that I have not figured out. I had to learn the balance between trying to get ahead of the plane (IE setting the next approach up) and just flying with what I needed to get to heading and altitude. For example, I had to not try to extract more info from the G1000 while on approaching an ILS approach, "just intercept and fly the localizer and glide slope." About two and a half weeks ago, I had to cancel my scheduled IFR checkride due to a lot of Cumulus activity in our area. Also, I felt marginally ready. Then there was a sudden shortage of DPEs. Many students in the Houston area were scheduling with "our" DPEs. It took me until yesterday to get my checkride and that was on a Sunday morning. My checkride went very well. Even with trainee ATC controllers and the PTT on the DPE side failing 10 minutes into the flight. I asked for a RNAV approach to 31 with a circle to runway 13. But the controller told me we had to use 13 and we could circle at ORALE (confusing a circle with a hold pattern). My DPE explained I had to explain that I was on a checkride and had to do an approach and circle to a different runway. This confused them and the DPE PTT quit right then. So I requested an approach to 13, holding at the IAF and a circle to 31 and proposed that I to do a low approach. I was able to take all this in stride, the DPE was pleased with my ability to communicate and execute. My Checkride was much easier than my "pre check ride" with the Tempus chief pilot. The DPE said he wished all checkrides went so well. All in all, a good experience and glad I did it. I did not enjoy instrument training though I did get comfortable doing it. It is not near as fun VFR flight, but it sure adds to my ability. Next Step is my commercial ticket. BTW I was driving back from lunch and saw the distinctive curve of a Pietenpol wing in a hangar. Slammed on the brakes and who do I find but our own "Axle" working on his AirCamper. Man it sure looks purty! He is a true craftsman. (Pietenpol Content!) Blue Skies, Steve D ________________________________ Message 3 _____________________________________ Time: 06:01:16 PM PST US From: Steven Dortch Subject: Re: Pietenpol-List: Re: electronic item for peace The Phone that bothers me the most is mine! ________________________________ Message 4 _____________________________________ Time: 09:55:29 PM PST US Subject: Pietenpol-List: Re: VERY OT my recent Instrument training. From: "taildrags" I'm responding to this OT post with more OT material in the context of several things: (1) Steve is one of the few individuals with the nerve to have gone up with me in Scout, (2) Steve is one of the few individuals who came out to help me disassemble and help load Scout into the big yellow Penske truck for the 2100 mile journey from Texas to Oregon, (3) all of my instrument time has been at the same time extremely enjoyable and extremely challenging, and (4) my last flight review was in a C172 with the Garmin G1000 full glass panel and I was so impressed with it that my eyeballs nearly fell out. Moving right along, I don't care to talk about items (1), (2) or (4) other than to again tip my hat to Steve for always being ready to lend a hand and to tip my already-tipped hat to anyone who can learn the dials and buttons on the G1000 so as to use even 1/10th of its capabilities. If not for the fact that the G1000 panel costs about as much as four or five nice Air Campers, it would be fun to keep writing about it but that's not my world anymore, I'm finally conceding. So now to comment on item (3). Every moment that I've spent under the hood or in 'actual' has been some of the most enjoyable and rewarding time that I've ever spent in airplanes, but it was about as different a flying experience from an open-cockpit Air Camper as you can imagine. I am an engineer with a completely logical outlook and mindset and I completely 'get' instrument flying. I can visualize everything about instrument flying in my head, and I can almost always translate that to the instrument actions as I manipulate the controls, but it's a completely different flying experience, period. I've flown jet and prop sims and I've flown real single and twin hardware, and I always love the challenge. I envy those who have the rating and wish I had gotten mine too, but now my flying is all about stick and rudder and just the sensations of flight and the airplane. Nothing much on the instrument panel is of interest to me anymore if it does nothing to keep the airplane in the air or help me keep it so. Every now and then I have a weak moment when I open the latest AOPA Pilot magazine (I get the Turbine Edition!) and see the super cool panels and instruments, but then it passes and I remember that I much prefer the smell of too-rich Continental exhaust to looking at a glass panel. Sometimes I regret not going for my instrument. As Marlon Brando said in the classic movie "On The Waterfront": "You don't understand. I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am, let's face it." -------- Oscar Zuniga Medford, OR Air Camper NX41CC "Scout" A75 power, 72x36 Culver prop Read this topic online here: http://forums.matronics.com/viewtopic.php?p=460606#460606 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Other Matronics Email List Services ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post A New Message pietenpol-list@matronics.com UN/SUBSCRIBE http://www.matronics.com/subscription List FAQ http://www.matronics.com/FAQ/Pietenpol-List.htm Web Forum Interface To Lists http://forums.matronics.com Matronics List Wiki http://wiki.matronics.com Full Archive Search Engine http://www.matronics.com/search 7-Day List Browse http://www.matronics.com/browse/pietenpol-list Browse Digests http://www.matronics.com/digest/pietenpol-list Browse Other Lists http://www.matronics.com/browse Live Online Chat! http://www.matronics.com/chat Archive Downloading http://www.matronics.com/archives Photo Share http://www.matronics.com/photoshare Other Email Lists http://www.matronics.com/emaillists Contributions http://www.matronics.com/contribution ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- These Email List Services are sponsored solely by Matronics and through the generous Contributions of its members.