1.2 hours of hell.

With my decision made with regard to the weather, Bob and I started making alternate plans to achieve something productive. Bob grabs my PTR and looks it over, “Hmmm, only 0.4 hours of instrument time, how come that’s so low? He wonders out loud.

“Well,” I reply “It could be that I complain any time you try to put me under the hood. Most vocally. Oh yeah and last time I threatened to vomit over you.”

“That’ll do it,” he laughed. “We need to get you some more instrument time before your cross country. Up for some simulator work?”

I agreed, even though I know that simulator is universally reviled throughout the flight school community. It is, errm, let’s say “special”.

It’s overly sensitive and no one seems quite 100% sure how to work the finer points of the darn thing. But it has its uses and is considerably cheaper than time in the air. We will give it a go.

Usual briefing on what instruments give what info, scan technique, selective scan and what we plan to achieve. An optimistic list including some VOR work as well as the usual straight/level, turns, climbs and descent combos.

First problem, my legs don’t reach the pedals and no chance of solving that issue with cushions. Ok we’ll make do the best we can and hope I don’t need too much in the way of rudder.  We eventually figure out how to fire the thing up and I attempt a takeoff.

I promptly crash because the damn thing is stupidly, ridiculously sensitive and appears to require 10 degrees of left aileron input to maintain wings level.

This minor setback leads to me flying the next half hour or so with the ELT bleating in the background because we can’t figure out how to reset it.

I manage some flying and a lot of swearing, somehow muddling through some basic instrument manoeuvres.  Bob sits manning the computer at the back, occasionally calling out instructions. His solo student lands and pops in to say “Hi”. I can hear him and Bob having a conversation about his flight. I provide a background commentary of four letter words. I apologise in passing but daren’t look around to see the poor kid’s reaction to the scene in front of him. I’m having trouble keeping both altitude and heading and so am oscillating back and forth on both. The kind of flying that induces nausea in any passengers.  I’m swearing profusely and cursing Bob out with every second breath. Bob’s used to this and promptly ignores me. The kid, probably not so much!

I did manage to achieve some useful stuff, but maybe I’ll save that for another post