Blog – IFR2 Compass Turns & Partial Panel 11/12/2021
For the third straight week the weather was bit of an “everything and anything”, but once again I managed to get a good training session in before the forecasted rain arrived in the afternoon.
We departed NZPP from runway 34 and started our climb to 2000ft. At 500ft out came the foggles and I was now in Simulated IMC conditions. I continued to climb, but my FI advised that real the cloud base was around 1800ft so we started working at 1600ft above Otaki training area. Foggles are glasses that are partially ground to simulate fog or cloud conditions. All you can see is your instrument panel. After being told to not fixate on your instruments during a VFR flight, your FI is now insisting that you do! My FI took care of safety and the Radio so I could concentrate on the exercise.
Todays session was my second session of Instrument flying & continuation of compass turns. However for extra “fun” I was using a “Partial Panel” where its simulated that the G1000 Glass instruments have failed and you need to fly only via the backup Instruments. In the Cessna 172sp these are the older “Steam instruments” of Tachometer, Artificial Horizon, and Altimeter.
All turns are done at a “Rate 1 turn” which is a gentle balanced turn of around 10-15deg which takes 2min to do a full 360. The winds aloft were around 30kts again band it took a few turns to get dialled in. My FI is awesome and had me flying left and right all over the place. I had some amazing sensations of “the leans too which is when your ears send false signals to the brain that you are turning. Very strange but great to experience this in a safe training environment. It just goes to show that you need to believe what the instruments are telling you, and how very easy it is to get disorientated in cloud. I’m told that on average, a VFR (Visual Flight Rules) pilot who flies into IMC (Instrument Meteorological Conditions) is likely to crash in about 90 seconds! This is why we train for IFR: so that we know what to do if we ever get in that situation.
My compass turns today were much better but still had that fixation sometimes on one instrument rather than scanning though all the “basic six pack” of Altimeter, Airspeed Indicator, Vertical Speed Indicator, Altitude Indicator, Heading Indicator, and Turn Co-Ordinator. This again caused me to miss headings on the Direction Indicator and sail beyond the rollout point. One day I’ll learn eh?
I travelled back to NZPP circuit with the foggles still on which was challenging but my FI was keeping a good lookout still. He sent me way further into the circuit today. It was good to know where I was even after having the foggles on for most of the flight. Situational Awareness? Tick!
It took until I was on final for me to pie up and say “I still have these foggles on mate!” My FI then grinned, took control, and allowed me to remove the foggles and continue the landing which I nailed on the numbers and on centreline. Nice!
As we had another aircraft coming in behind us I braked for Alpha 2 exit and turned off runway 34. After the flaps were cleaned up and turning off of all lighting except beacon and taxi lights, we taxied back to the Aeroclub and shut the aircraft down.
Another great day of flying with heaps of learning. Excellent bang for my bucks!
Happy Days!
Aircraft: ZK-KAZ (Cessna 172SP Skyhawk)
Total Time: 1.0
Landings: 1
Go-arounds: 0
Visual Approaches: 1
Instrument Time: 0.7
Until next time….
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Blog – IFR2 Compass Turns & Partial Panel 11/12/2021