The Double “I”

I just got back from three long days of training in Albert Lea adding a second “I” to my CFI certificate. I'm now an official CFII, which means I can teach instrument students.

The CFII was interesting. It's not nearly as involved as the initial CFI, but it was still a bunch of work. I'd spent about a week preparing so I arrived with all of my lesson plans prepared, which made things easier.

We spent the first morning teaching the pitot-static system then jumped in the Frasca for an evaluation of my instrument skills. I'd flown a sim about a month before and logged about half an hour of instrument time a few days earlier so I was current and reasonably proficient.

The weather around AEL was lousy but there was no convective activity or icing so it was perfect instrument training weather. We jumped into the World's Worst 172 and flew some approaches.

That didn't work out as well as I'd hoped. The 172 had a horrible squeal over the intercom that got worse instead of better as we flow along. The ADF only worked part of the time and the other navigation radios were marginal.

I was flying from the right side of course with the squeal driving me insane and doing a horrible job holding my heading. Eventually it got so bad I just unplugged the microphone side of my headset which fixed the problem but meant I couldn't talk. So when I wanted to say something I'd shove the microphone into the jack, talk then unplug again.

We wound up flying an approach to just above minimums to get back into AEL and as we shut down both decided we were done flying the 172.

Monday was below minimums at AEL much of the day so we just did ground and a simulator sesson. Tuesday was more ground and simulator then we jumped in Warrior and flew some approaches.

I'd never flown a Warrior before so it was a little bizarre to get in a different airplane type and be in the clouds about 45 seconds after takeoff. On instruments it was like anything else: Move the controls to get the instruments where they belonged.

The flying was a blast, almost always in actual conditions with low ceilings and lousy visibilities. I hadn't spent a lot of time in actual conditions, so it was great experience.

Our second flight went much better and my heading demons were gone. We scheduled the checkride for a Thursday morning. On Wednesday I showed up to finish up some paperwork and prep for the oral when the examiner called and asked how soon we could get to Maple Lake.

We banged out the 8710 form, did a pre-flight and fueled a Warrior and were on our way in about 45 minutes.

The checkride itself was a piece of cake. I presented a board lesson on holds, described the compass and compass turns, listed the required equipment for IFR, talked GPS theory for about three minutes then answered a bunch of standard instrument-rating questions.

We got in the airplane, I went under the foggles (the weather was beautiful for the first time in four days) and my examiner vectored me for the ILS-31 at St. Cloud. The ILS was nearly perfect, we went missed and he covered up the attitude and heading indicators.

We'd done a bunch of partial panel work in the Frasca (and more than I would have liked in the airplane under actual conditions) so I was pretty solid on it.

We flew some compass turns, did some unusual attitudes then started the dreaded VOR-A approach back into Maple Lake.

The VOR-A into MGG is a pain with everything working in the airplane. The difficulty is that the final approach fix is 27 miles from the Darwin VOR and the missed approach point is at 22 miles. If you're off by one dot, or don't have the OBS set exactly, you can miss the airport by a mile or more.

Even if you fly it perfectly, the approach brings you in at an angle that makes it tough to find the runway because it's slightly lower than the terrain between you and the airport. (By slightly, I mean about 10 feet, but if you're a few miles out and at the MDA it's tricky to spot.)

Partial panel it's just that much tougher. With a single navigation radio and no DME or GPS it's a bastard.

My examiner took away my DME, then my second nav radio and asked me to hold at Yazma, the final approach fix.

That left me switching frequencies between the Darwin VOR, which defines the final approach course, and the St. Cloud VOR, which can be used to identify Yazma.

The partial-panel hold with a single navigation radio worked out just fine and we flew the approach. I switched radios just in time to see the crossing radial from St. Cloud center, verifying that I was at the final approach fix, started timing and started down.

I managed to keep the needle centered, timed it pretty well and when I finally looked outside we were in the traffic pattern.

I made a lousy landing and we were done.

That's good because I'm starting an instrument rating with a guy next week. I can't wait. Flying instruments is a blast and I can't wait to start teaching it.