Just completed my second flight of the year; yesterday I met up with my CFI for some cobweb-shaking, and today we did some instrument work.
Started off yesterday with a first for me – took off from Montgomery Field with a “Miramar Transition” which enabled us to fly due north over Miramar MCAS (after a climbing 180 turn to 2900 feet) to the practice area west of Ramona. Santa Ana winds are in for the week making it a little bumpy near the foothills so we moved closer to the coast. Went through all the usual suspects – slow flight, steep turns, departure and approach stalls, climbs, turns, descents under the hood.
It was all going well so we went back to Montgomery and did a bunch of landings which also went pretty good. I swear I do my best flying after a couple month break.
Today was step one of getting back to instrument currency. Got a TEC clearance to Oceanside, did some turns in the hold and once I was dizzy did the approach to a missed. OKB is a tough one, I find, a lot to do all at once but it worked out pretty good. I forgot to announce my intentions on the CTAF and got a bit of a spanking from someone on the ground. Oh well.
From the missed we got vectors to the ILS approach at Carlsbad, another missed and vectors back to Montgomery. En route, my CFI ‘failed’ the gyro so I got some partial panel while back in the light chop of the Santa Ana winds.
A nice ride down the ILS (not without a little chasing of the needle I am sad to say) and we were done. In a couple of weeks we are going to do some Garmin 430 work in the sim to complete my 6 approaches. Total of 3.1 hours for the two flights.
Kind of a sad day as this is the last time I will fly the ILS as I have known it. Starting on the 15th there is a whole new set of approaches for KMYF including changes to the ILS that have removed the marker beacons and now require DME to identify the fixes. If you don’t have DME or IFR-certified GPS I’m afraid you aren’t welcome here in IMC.