1st Instrument Currency of ‘08

With the general lack of flying lately, I’ve come to my personal 4 month IFR currency limit. I haven’t flown an approach in five months actually, so it was time to get in the sim. To tell you the truth, I’ve only flown 2 approaches in the last 8 months, and the last sim time I had was back in July ‘07.

Since the King Air is gone, my 135 checkride was not required, and I can’t let my IFR currency slip in to an Instrument Proficiency Check stage. It’s amazing how fast time goes by, and IFR currency slips right by if you’re not careful to think about it!

So today, I had one of our instructors (same one that did my instrument and commercial several years ago) give me six approaches, a hold, and course interception in our Piper Malibu simulator. I’ve written about this sim before, but it’s a 170 degree wrap around sim with a full Malibu cockpit. It really makes you feel like you are flying, even with no motion.

We started with a takeoff in to 300ft ceilings with 1 mile of visibility off of runway 29. From there it was immediately in to a course reversal for a non-precision GPS 11 approach. Off of that, I flew to the published miss fix, then loaded the ILS 29 in to the Garmin 530. I flew that down to 100′ above minimums when I broke out, and flew the miss to the “missed” intersection. Then it was a non-precision backcourse approach to 11. Following that break out at the runway, I was instructed to fly the published hold at “Cooks” intersection. Once around that, and I had vectors to the ILS 20 approach course. My missed approach instructions after that approach were a climbing turn to a heading of 150, up to 3,500 feet. Once established on that heading, and altitude, I turned the autopilot on to get some approach practice while monitoring the autopilot. I loaded the GPS 29 approach in, and flew that on AP down to about 500′ AGL, then clicked it off to continue the decent to the breakout at 350′ AGL. The last approach was another on AP, but an ILS 29 to a full stop landing.

I never really look forward to doing these sim sessions, but I’m always glad I do them afterward.

Here are the screens showing my radar tracks. The one on the left is an overview, sort of like what a controller would see on his screen…but nicer. The screen on the right shows profile and plan views of the approach corridor.

A close up of the radar screen…

And a close up of the approach corridor. Each approach is laid one over the other, so it becomes a bit cluttered. You can see the wide swooping turns made by the autopilot as it sort of hunts around and hones in on the course. It’s not the best autopilot sim out there, but it does a good job of allowing you to get familiar with how to set things up, and monitor its progress…or lack thereof.

The sim is so sensitive in pitch, that it’s extremely hard to keep it straight and level for any amount of time, but being sensitive in the sim, makes it easier in the airplane.

Anyway, it was good sim time, and I’m glad to be good for another 4 months or so!

1.5 hours-simulator