How much do you trim?

On 2006-10-10, Mortimer Schnerd, RN mschnerdatcarolina.rr.com wrote:
Heh heh... I must have done it four or five times before the pilot caught on.
G Lucky for me, there was no ejection seat in the C-172.

You are only a student in evil tricks, I'm afraid :-)

When doing hood time for my instrument rating, I tended to do all the
training at night, since it simulates IMC better when under the hood -
no sunlight cues to tip you off.

At this point I had ILS approaches nailed - I could keep the needles in
the donut in the middle of the instrument. I was really proud on how I
could make it look like the instrument wasn't even functional.

My safety pilot - let's call him Paul because that's his real name and I
don't want to protect the guilty - gave me lots of aggro that night in
the name of training, but his best one was on the ILS.

Passing the outer marker, I made the customary power and pitch changes
and began to follow the glideslope. Then the plane started drifting
high. So I corrected. Then it drifted low. I just couldn't nail the
glideslope whatever I did. I was getting more and more distracted by
this, when two lights shone through that bit of the windscreen the hood
doesn't quite block, convincing my sense of balance that we were now in
a 60 degree bank. Not only was I fighting spatial disorientation, I was
all over the place on the glideslope, and now started to go all over the
place on the localiser. At the decision height I was so glad to whip the
hood up - I was starting to get overloaded.

We did the missed approach, and flew home.

When we were taxiing in, I grumbled about how terrible the ILS was - and
how I couldn't figure out how I'd flown it so badly. Paul did not say a
word. He just slid his seat back then forwards! The seat rails in a C172
are very long, so he could move an awful long way fore and aft - and
he's quite a big guy...

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