Taught a lesson on airspace (and more) last week and today did some instrument time !
06/01/2006
Last week I taught a session to my CFI on the various classes of airspace, including restrictions, visibility minimums and more. I also had to teach a lesson on charts and how to read and interpret them. Additionally, I had to teach a session on airports and airport signage. As you may guess the latter was a lot to cover, thoroughly, in just two hours. So, later this week I'll be picking up where I left off and get into airport lighting and how to use and read the Airport/Facility Directory.
The session went VERY well. I had done my usual practice at my home pilot area on the dry erase board. While it would be hedging to say that it went without a single hitch,,, for the most part things went well and I was pleased with my performance. My CFI told me that the following week (now this week - coming Thursday) I would teach another lesson and that I had the choice between Weather (something he knew I was really dreading - mainly because of the wide scope of weather knowledge - it's a lot to cover), interpreting maintenance logs, and one other thing that escapes me what it was. Well, I decided to 'bite the bullet' and take on Meteorology/Weather. I'm going to have to work pretty hard to get THAT organized into an easily understandable presentation. I'll likely end up just being able to cover a portion of the subject in our allotted time and resume the rest of the lesson the following week.
Since I had to get my instrument approaches, holds and tracking 'in' before January, to keep my Instrument rating, current. I had made arrangements to work with John on the Frasca 141 Sim; today and tomorrow. Originally, tomorrow I was going to teach an in-flight lesson to John (acting as my student) on how to perform the Commercial maneuvers as well as demonstrate a short-field takeoff and landing; but John was going on vacation the following week and I needed two days to get enough approaches 'in' to meet the deadline for my currency which (as I mentioned) would expire in Jan '06, otherwise.
Today, I have to admit, I was going in a little 'sheepish', wondering about how rusty I had become. I had the pleasant surprise that I was able to work most of the 'rust' off and I wasn't as 'horrible' <g> as I expected I might be. Actually John told me is was very pleased and said that I showed very little rust and was quite comparable to my performance on the sim when I was training on my Instrument Rating regularly. I did a hold, some tracking, the Salinas VOR approach and the Salinas ILS approach. The VOR approach went quite well, the ILS approach wasn't bad, but towards the point where I got near the middle marker I started to overcontrol initially and got off the localizer and glide slope a bit,,, but managed to get back on.
That's about it for today and last week! I'll make another entry for the balance of my approaches (4 that I need) to bring myself back to currency after tomorrow's Frasca 141 SIM session. After that I will be good for a little while again (6 months) so I'll be able to devote myself entirely to my ongoing CFI training
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Good Flights!
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