Approaches, Partial Panel, and some IMC

Today the plan was going to be to do some steep turns under the hood, some more unusual attitude recovery, and a bit more airwork, but the weather didn’t cooperate. The visibility was really bad, so we decided to get Tower Enroute to Oxnard (OXR). Tower Enroute is like a mini-clearance, with published routes to nearby airports that don’t leave the approach control area. We tried this to Fox on Monday (which is pretty close), and there isn’t a route published. Strange because there is one to Santa Barbara which is about 3 times as far.

So we went to Oxnard. After we got our first vector, Kent took away the AI, which was no trouble, considering how easy it was for me the first time we tried it. After about 10 minutes he took it off again, because the visibility was bad enough to be approaching actual, and Kent wanted to be able to see it. Fine by me. I flew the approach within tolerances, but not great. On the missed, I asked the controller if we could shoot the VOR approach at Camarillo (CMA), and he said “I thought you wanted to go back to Van Nuys – did you just change your mind?”. He was irritated. I apologized, and promised to go back to Van Nuys after Camarillo. It sounded like I got a smile out of him, and he set us up for the VOR 26 at CMA. I flew that one much better, staying on top of the plane all the way.

After the missed at CMA, it was back home for the ILS at Van Nuys. This went very well, and I stayed on top of things right down to the DH, where the needles were right inside the donut. I made a nice landing and went home for pasta and kisses from my 3 year old.

I’ve got about 13 hours left, 5 of which I’m going to do in a simulator. Not because it’s cheaper (it’s about the same price as the 172), but because we can shoot 5 times as many approaches in the same time, and do other things like unusual attitude recovery without the influence of the planes forces mucking things up. That will leave a cross country to meet the requirements for the rating. Still studying for the written as well – almost ready for that too.