Multiengine Training - Day 3

Today I came one step closer to completing my rating. I spent two hours in the simulator and two hours in the airplane.

The simulator time was harder than usual. After doing all the manuevers, my instructor dropped the ceiling and visibility to about 500 feet and 1 mile. He then cleared me direct to the Hopewell VOR in preparation for the ILS approach into Richmond Int'l Airport (KRIC). Since I'm past the midpoint now, he also went ahead and killed my left engine. As if that wasn't enough balls to juggle, I was having difficulties figuring out how to properly setup the Garmin GNS-430 GPS unit. I did not have KRIC set as my waypoint, so I couldn't pull up the ILS 34 approach. I also couldn't find KRIC on the 'Nearest Airport' page, so I couldn't quickly set it as my waypoint. The only option I had was to dial in a waypoint into the destination field and enter it. This is very easy to do under some circumstances, but not in a simulator running on one engine in the simulated clouds. It takes a fair amount of attention to reach across to the GPS, select the proper dial to highlight the destination field, then move the cursor one letter forward, then twist the dial to the next letter and so on. To do this and fly the plane safely, you must limit each block of GPS time to just a second or two, else the plane will quickly diverge from the path you wish to follow. I ended up just entering the frequency of the Hopewell VOR into the navigation radio and calling it good. My instructor paused the simulator and I told him my problem. He showed me a trick that I hadn't seen before on the 430; with an ILS procedure activated in the GPS, you can set the Course Deviation Indicator (CDI) mode to 'VLOC' (which means, use the navigation radio for course information) and the GPS will still track the approach points on its own CDI display. That's a handy feature. With the simulator un-paused, I managed to work my way safely to the runway, but it sure was a challenge.

With just a quick break, we headed down to the flight line. At this point in the program, my instructor was very quiet. He was now acting more like an examiner than an instructor. He told me what to do, but not how to do it. I was now doing 100% of the radio calls along with the flying. We started with Steep Turns, Slow Flight, and Stalls, then moved into the Vmc demonstration. I did it twice because the first was a little too 'yawwy'. In other words, the plane swung back and forth, left to right and back, more than desired. The trick is to coordinate rudder input with anticipated yawwing forces from the engines. Next up was a complete shutdown, secure, and air restart of the left engine. Then we did a couple landings and takeoffs at Dinwiddie County Airport (KPTB). And finally, we headed back to KRIC and requested two ILS approaches. I donned my hood and my instructor neutralized the left engine (balanced thrust and drag). I followed air traffic control instructions and flew the approach, using the cool new GPS trick I learned earlier. At 361 feet above the runway, I announced that I was going missed and was vectored away from the airport, and back for another approach. This time, my instructor neutralized the right engine. That was a first, and was quite disorienting. Banking slightly left felt natural, but I was confused by what I saw on the slip/skid indicator. The ball should have been split on the left side, but it was actually centered. I tried to center it by adding more pressure to the left rudder pedal, but that moved the ball right. Doh! I was putting too much pressure on the left pedal. Once I figured that out, the approach was very similar to the previous approach - just opposite inputs.

When the flight started, I had this slight nagging feeling that I wasn't quite 100% on my game. It started in the simulator and was still in my system. I wasn't concerned about it, though. Every flight, I work on setting my mindset to where I need it to be. In the past, I've been known to dwell on my mistakes to the point of distraction. My new mindset is to be more aware of the big picture, and if mistakes happen, fix them and continue, and not beat myself up over it. Sure enough, I made a few mistakes during this flight. Oddly, I forgot to put the gear up three different times. I caught it once, but my instructor told me about the others. Weird. Better than forgetting to put the gear down, for sure, but still weird.

Tomorrow is the last day of instruction, with the check ride scheduled for Saturday. I think I'm 90% of where I need to be and will easily polish up my performance during the next lesson. I still need to see and handle some emergency situations in the simulator and crunch some performance numbers for various scenarios.