As of today, I’m back in the air and can legally go off on my own, exercising the privileges of a private pilot. I went up this morning with Tim (the instructor who helped me get checked out in the DA40 back in March) to complete my BFR. We were supposed to go up last week, but scheduling got in the way of that flight.
Today’s flight was nice and simple. The wind was calm, and the clouds were pretty high. The only detractors were that I needed to spray the plane down with glycol (de-icing fluid), and add two quarts of oil (ruining my shirt in the process). After all of the ground items were taken care of, we were off.
I’m always surprised by how easily flying comes back to me after long breaks. After clearing the ridge and getting out to the practice area, Tim had me demonstrate slow flight. After that came the rest of the typical PPL maneuvers: power on stalls, power off stalls, steep turns, and engine out procedures. In my never-ending drive to get more instrument time, I also asked if I could throw the blinders on to fly the approach back into Leesburg (JYO). The approach went well, though the glideslope wasn’t providing us an indication. Luckily, the approach is an ILS/LOC approach using cross radials to identify the fixes, so I just put the Frederick VOR (FDK) in the NAV2 spot and identified step down fixes that way. Despite some hunting of the LOC, I ended up on altitude and centerline in the end, which was a nice way to end a flight after a four month absence.Given the nature of the flight I didn’t end up recording it, or even snapping a picture (got distracted with the glycol and oil before the flight), so this post is atypically light on visuals. The next flight should have more of that. Speaking of the next flight, I need to get my passenger currency back for a flight later this month, so expect another post sooner rather than later.
Hours:
Pilot in Command Cross Country (PIC XC): 0.0 - 86.5 (of 50)
Actual/Simulated Instrument (Act/Sim): 0.3 - 14.0 (of 40)
