1.5 Hrs Sim Time

Extended my instrument currency this morning for another few months with an hour and a half ‘mucking about’ in the sim with my CFI. The club is sharing a Frasca 42 with the Anglo American flight school at KSEE so I got to see a different airport than usual. Rather than blaze through the usual route I wanted something a bit different today, loosen up some cobwebs:

• VOR approach to KSDM usual take off from KMYF, vectors to the approach down to Brown Field. The sim has an HSI so I got my second look at those, I like ’em.
• DME arc off PGY VOR haven’t done a DME arc since the checkride but, other than forgetting to turn 90 degrees when I reached 6.5 miles, it went very well. Bob had set up a 17kt wind from the west so there was some work to do in keeping close to the 6 mile radius.
• Holds at RYADH intersection exited the DME arc on a straight shot to the fix. I got there so fast that I hadn’t yet looked at my entry procedure. Fortunately its an obvious parallel entry so I turned in the outbound direction and reminded myself how I needed to turn back in. The HSI seemed to make this much easier than usual. The holds went great excepting a little timer issues thanks to the westerly wind pushing me further out on the outbound leg each time.
• LOC approach to KSEE partial panel Bob moved me to a position close to the approach and then failed the attitude indicator and DG. A few compass turns (always takes me a moment to remember to fly in the ‘opposite’ direction) and then vectors to the approach. I was doing a pretty lousy job and then it got a lot worse – you really need two navs to identify the timing point for the missed approach but the HSI was inop due to the partial panel so I only had one. This meant I had to keep flip flopping the nav frequency to check my position and in doing so my speed went up, my altitude went crazy and so on. I did manage to do a reasonable track of the localizer but I went past the airport before the timer went off.
• LOC approach to KSEE back around for another go but full panel, much better this time, timer went off almost exactly over the field. I wasn’t able to maintain 90 kts but adjusted the time based on the ‘average’ 110kts I was actually doing.
• ILS approach to KMYF partial panel a climbing turn out of KSEE and my panel failed again. I got established on the localizer but was having a lot of trouble losing altitude. 1100 rpm and 100 knots and I was still only getting 400fpm. So I was high most of the way down the slope, weaving in and out chasing the needle. Popped out of the clouds with the runway a little off to the left but thanks to some odd graphics on the screen I actually landed on a taxiway.

All in all a good workout and dusting off of some rusty skills. Now to get some flying in the real thing… time to find a safety pilot for the Archer….