CFII-ing

Today was a perfect instrument training day. Crystal was reporting 1,400 broken, 1,900 overcast with good visibilities below so I filed IFR and introduced my instrument student to the inside of the clouds.

Since it was his first time in actual IMC and we'd only flown once before (where he did an outstanding job under the Foggles) I kept it simple. We filed Crystal to the St. Cloud VOR, back to the OLLEE intersection, good ol' Gopher VOR and Crystal. (Check us out on FlightAware. )

It worked out perfectly and he did a fine job keeping us greasy side down and more or less on course. We were in IMC shortly after takeoff and stayed in the clouds until ATC cleared us up to 5,000 about 15 miles southeast of St. Cloud and we popped up between layers.

That didn't last long and over St. Cloud we were back in the soup. We'd occasionally pop out back between layers but basically we didn't see anything from about two minutes after takeoff until a few minutes before touchdown.

We'd briefed the GPS 14L approach into Crystal on the ground so I talked him through it as he flew it and we broke out at about 1,200 feet AGL with the runway about three miles ahead of us, right where it was supposed to be. We landed straight in and parked.

Teaching in actual IMC is tough. It's a delicate balance between letting your student make some mistakes long enough for them to recognize the problem and jumping in to correct things before your altitude or heading gets too far off.

It's also an absolute blast.

The flying itself is great fun, but the sense of accomplishment my student felt when we were back on the ground was the real payoff. He thought it was about the coolest thing he'd ever done and I was just happy to have been there for it.