A little frustrated, a little better

There were a couple of other lessons in there that focused mainly on aircraft control, but I didn’t want to bore you with the details.

Today the plan was to do a hold, some airwork, and an approach. After departure, he told me to “proceed direct Fillmore, hold north on the 360 radial”. Easy enough. Figured out the entry (parallel) correctly, and then got a little confused, thinking that 360 was the inbound – instead of outbound – course. Once I had that figured out, the hold went fine – nailed the time within 1 second.

The airwork was marginal at best. Not holding anything very tight – especially altitude – made it a frustrating day. At this point in the training, I feel like I should be more in control, but Kent says not to worry. A few vertical S and constant airspeed maneuvers went pretty good, so that made me feel a bit better.

Then we shot the ILS at VNY. Beautiful clear day meant lots of bumps. I did a good job, not overcorrecting and staying focused all the way down to the DH. I guess that’s the important part, right? I’m now at exactly 20 hours of instrument time (you need 40) and am nearly done with the Kind Instrument CD’s. I’ll do some cramming for the test in the next week or so, and have Kent sign me off for the written.