When I went up for my BFR, my intention was to fly down to Raleigh (RDU) for another ice hockey game, but the weather didn’t end up looking too great. In order to make sure a plane was available, I had booked the flight well in advance. I felt bad having reserved the newest plane in the fleet for a flight I wouldn't be taking so I ended up just editing the reservation to push it back by about a week. Luckily, my pilot friend Katelyn wanted to join, so I could continue to get more simulated instrument time. We flew together nearly two years ago, on a quick flight down to Luray (LUA). Even though she had flown more recently than that flight, it had still been a while so she wanted to go back up and get the feel for it again. That said, we worked it out where I would get simulated instrument time and approaches in between Leesburg (JYO) and Winchester (OKV), and she would get some landings in to get the feel for it again.
I was able to escape work a little early to make the long trek out to JYO (it takes forever now that my office is in DC), but Katelyn ended up getting stuck in traffic. Jokingly, I told her that I would sit there and pass the time taking pictures of myself with the plane. Once I finally got to the plane, however, that joke actually sounded like a good idea since I’m pretty sure this blog now has over 200 photos in it (the videos take that number even higher), and I’m pretty sure I’m in maybe 10 of them. In an effort to make said author less faceless, here’s a picture of me and an ironic statement all in one.
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| If you're not getting the ironic statement, look at the tail versus my apparel |
I was able to get the plane all set up prior to her getting there, which ended up working out, as we departed as night time officially started (for logging it, anyway). As soon as we departed, we went directly to CLADD to fly the ILS Runway 32 approach into OKV. On the way, I pointed out some of the features of the G1000 as we both joked continuously about how it really felt like cheating based on the equipment we learned to fly with. Since she’d flown with Garmin equipment, though, she picked it up pretty quickly.
I flew the approach down near the minimums, but with the flight path vector (FPV) and runway showing up on the Synthetic Vision display, it really felt like I was just flying in a low detail version of Flight Simulator (side note, I was recently part of a Washington Post article on that very topic). I made the first landing since I flew the approach down so low. After the landing, I took back off, and passed the controls over to Katelyn for a few laps of her own. Three landings later, I took the controls back to fly the LOC Runway 17 approach into JYO (the glideslope has been out for a while, so it’s LOC only for now).
Compared to the approach I flew at the end of my BFR, this one looked really good. Then again, the approach I flew during my BFR wasn’t aided by Synthetic Vision displays, or a cue that factors in wind drift for you. I seriously feel like I’m cheating using something like that. Don’t get me wrong – I think it’s an awesome tool for the practical environment, but I think I’m going to stick to doing it the hard way for my training. It’ll help me appreciate the G1000 with SVT more, and it’ll keep my skills sharp for all of the fleet.
In the end, it was 1.1 total and 0.7 of that with the blinders on. Not bad since the only major obstacle between me and the instrument rating is all of the simulated instrument time.
Hours:
Pilot in Command Cross Country (PIC XC): 0.0 - 88.2 (of 50)
Actual/Simulated Instrument (Act/Sim): 0.7 - 14.7 (of 40)
