Passed our commercial check rides today. Warning: Long post ;-)

Longworth wrote:
Rick and I had just talked about
our instrument vs. commercial training yesterday. While we had great
fun with the commercial training, the instrument training was much
more thrilling and exciting. There is no way that one would get the
real IMC sensation just by playing with the simulator.


No sensation at all, in fact. The closest you can come is to simulate a flight
in thick stratus, since that gives you a smooth ride anyway. As for flying in
the bumpies, no sim that you or I could afford can come close to a real IFR
trip.

Nope, but I never suggested it would. I only said it would help you get your
scan back up to speed. It will, too. Why do people always say it's easier to
fly a real aircraft IFR than a sim with your instructor breathing over your
shoulder? Because your scan is the first to go when you get rusty. You tend to
fixate and the next thing you know, your altitude or your heading is off. What
is it about real IFR flight which makes it easier? Shadows sliding across the
panel... the feeling in the pit of your gut when you hit an updraft or
downdraft... the difference in the sound of the prop as it tries to maintain its
rpm by varying its pitch. Lots of visceral clues that we say we should ignore
but nobody does. You don't ignore them so much as you take them with a grain of
salt.

I feel an updraft so I glance at the VSI and the altimeter. Do they support the
feeling? If so, I correct. If not, I ignore. But it's the feeling that gets
me to even glance in that first instance.

If you don't fly enough hard IFR to really keep the rust off your skills, then
flying a practice flight of the route on the sim can be useful. At your busiest
moments you will be able to recall a heading or a frequency without having to
look; maybe while turbulence is shaking the teeth out of your head.

Scan and procedures is all the sim is good for, IMO. They are no substitute for
regular flight in a real airplane. They just help out. Just another tool.



--
Mortimer Schnerd, RN
mschnerdatcarolina.rr.com

Way to go Hai. Congrats to both you and Rick. I just passed my CP
written and am hoping to start the flying portion in late April. Thanks
for the great writeup.


--
Jack Allison
PP-ASEL-Instrument Airplane
Student - CP-ASEL

"To become a Jedi knight, you must master a single force. To become
a private pilot you must strive to master four of them"
- Rod Machado

(Remove the obvious from address to reply via e-mail)

On Mar 19, 1:03*am, Jack Allison
wrote:
Way to go Hai. *Congrats to both you and Rick. *I just passed my CP
written and am hoping to start the flying portion in late April. *Thanks

Jack,
Congratulations on passing your CP written exams. IMO, this is the
hardest part of the training not so much because of the materials but
because it is so darn tedious and boring. It was like eating 100%
whole bran cereals without any milk ;-).
For my flight training, I found two books being quite useful. One
is the ASA visualized flight maneuvers handbook. It's good to have it
as a reference to review just before doing each maneuver. Another one
is the "Flying the Commercial Flight Test" by Ron Fowler. I bought
this book used by searching through www.campusi.com for something like
$5 including shipping and handling.
If you can get an instructor to give you an introductory
commerical maneuver training session, you can go out and do some
practices either on your own or with another pilot. This will give
you a feel for those maneuvers before starting the official training.
Some portions of the maneuvers are just review or improvements of
'regular' stuffs like stalls, slow flights, short field, soft field
take off and landing. The 180 degrees off approach is just a standard
power off landing with precision.
Have fun with your training. The

Thanks for the book recommendations Hai. I'll have to check into them.

As for the maneuvers, one advantage I have is that one of my airplane
partners passed his commercial check ride about 4-5 months back so I can
learn some of the basics in our plane from him. I'm looking forward to
the flying part. Everyone I've talked to says it's a ton of fun.


--
Jack Allison
PP-ASEL-Instrument Airplane
Student - CP-ASEL

"To become a Jedi knight, you must master a single force. To become
a private pilot you must strive to master four of them"
- Rod Machado

(Remove the obvious from address to reply via e-mail)