Pilot Brad’s Flying Blog

I am happy to report that on May 25th I passed my IFR Stage 1 check.  For those of you unfamiliar withwhat a stage check is, it is simply a flight with a different (usually more senior) instructor where they evaluate your knowledge and skills up to that point in your training.  It is a very common practice in flight schools, and whether you are training for your private, instrument, or some other rating, there are often several stage checks along the way.  This was my first of three checks, and overall it went OK.  Just OK?  Yes, just OK.

I flew the check with Brian, whom I have never met.  He was once an active instructor with the school, but then maybe a little over year ago he got an airline job.  Now he instructs part time and since he doesn’t really have regular students he is often utilized for stage checks.

The stage check started with a round of Q&A on the ground, where I was asked the typical questions about things like the FARs, equipment requirements, currency, and aircraft systems.  This was all fairly easy, and since I had previously been given a copy of the stage check form I was able to brush up on any weak spots in advance.  My knowledge of the required topics was solid, and I quickly found myself done with the ground portion and headed out to the airplane.  I wish I could say the flight portion of the check went as well as the ground, but I can’t, so I won’t.

I went through the typical preflight, start-up and taxi routine, and once the run-up was complete Brian handed me the hood and said, ”Make this an instrument takeoff”.  We were ready to go so I called the tower and after a brief wait the tower issue the familiar “cleared for takeoff 25R, no delay, traffic base to final” clearance.  I promptly taxied on to the runway, got myself aligned with the centerline, applied the brakes and donned the hood, all as fast as I safely could.  Not wanting to cause a go-around, I promptly applied full power and called out “airspeed alive” as the ASI started to respond.  A quick check of the engine gauges resulted in all greens, and we were off accelerating down the runway. 

I was now balancing my attention between the HI and ASI, trying to hold the runway heading and looking for Vr at the same time.   We hit the 172R’s magic number of 55 KIAS and I started to apply back pressure.  The plane gently rose from the runway and we were now starting a gentle climb, still accelerating to the Vy speed of 79 KIAS.  It was a little gusty and as we climbed out of ground effect I noticed the airspeed drop from about 70 KIAS to 65 KIAS, presumably from a strong gust or perhaps some mechanical turbulence.  I did what I thought was appropriate and lowered the nose slightly with the goal of allowing the aircraft to accelerate.  Well, I guess I may have lowered the nose a bit more that I should have as Brian put his hand under the yoke and applied a bit pressure to assist in getting the nose up.  He didn’t grab the yoke, but instead just assisted or coxed me into flying a slightly nose higher attitude.  Shortly thereafter we were climbing at Vy and on our way East towards the practice area.

It didn’t take me long to realize that today’s flight was going to be interesting.  It was really bumpy which generally means it is really windy, and as we crossed the ridge line East of town I started having a slight issue holding airspeed as we got caught in some minor updrafts and downdrafts.  Actually, before we had even taken off, I noticed that the clouds in the area has some vertical development to them, and the weather report I had pulled an hour or two earlier said there was a chance of thunderstorms later in the day.  So I can’t say that the conditions were a complete surprise, but they were a little unusual for California this time of year.  While we do get fairly windy days here, for the most part the air is stable, and we almost never have clouds with much vertical height to them.

As we arrived at the practice area and started into the maneuvers, it was apparent that I was going to have a bad altitude day.  As hard as I tried, I couldn’t seem to hold altitude better than +/-250′, with most deviations in the 100-150′ range.  I could really feel the instability of the atmosphere as we accelerated and decelerated into and out of updrafts and thermals under the building clouds whose bottoms were about 1,500′ above us (5,000′ MSL).  If this was a cross-country flight I would have climbed above the clouds in search of smoother air, but for a short stage check like this climbing wasn’t practical and I was just going to have to deal with it.  It did occur to me that in many more humid areas of the country, days like this are probably typical, and while I’ve flown in conditions like this before, it’s never been under the hood.

For the remainder of the flight I did the best I could through several VOR and NDB intercepts, partial panel work, steep turns, slow flight, power-on/off stalls and unusual attitudes, all of course while under the hood.  Brian really seemed to like using the rudder when setting up the unusual attitude scenarios, much more so than Nick, and I almost started feeling a little queasy from his large diversions into uncoordinated flight.  There’s something about having your head down, eyes shut, and slipping or skidding that makes you stomach go “whoa!”.

After I was sufficiently frustrated by the altitude diversions and all the maneuvers had been completed, Brian set me up to track the ILS on our way back into Livermore.  It was windy and it was bumpy, but it all worked out fine and we arrived at the tie-down spot in one piece.  To tell you the truth, I don’t remember too much about the approach, so it must have been OK.

During our post-flight brief Brian said I did just fine, and scored me well on every maneuver with a need to improve only one, the instrument take-off.  He said I needed to work on those because, as I had mentioned, he had to coax the nose up a bit and apparently I had veered towards one side of the runway before liftoff.  I knew about the attitude thing, which I explained to him, but this was the first I had heard that I was off heading (centerline), oh well.  Overall the comments were good and I felt a bit of relief as the altitude diversions really started driving me nuts, and I was sure that they were going to lead to poor marks for my performance.  Quite the contrary, Brian explained that given the conditions I performed well, and that the important thing was that I noticed when I was off altitude and took the proper corrective actions.  So maybe I’ll stick with this flying thing after all.