Flight Log 2010-09-10

A beautiful day to go flying.  Temp: 19°C, winds variable @ 03, altimeter 30.07, clear.  It was a bit windy at altitude, but still a great day.  The purpose of today's flight was to get some instrument practice with the autopilot.  I've used the autopilot en route before, but I've never actually flown a complete approach with it, I always hand flew from the FAF.  Today, I finally flew a coupled ILS (though there was a button pushing problem with me on the first one, so only the second ILS was actually coupled).  2 x ILS22 @ KZZV followed by the GPS27 @ KVTA (circle to land on 9).  A very productive 1.6 hours.  Unfortunately, I didn't get the tracker started (and up on the glare shield) so I don't have the track on Google Earth which I hope to start doing on future flights.  I still need to work on my checklist discipline a bit.  Ah, well, a great day flying.

Flight Log 2010-07-15

Instrument practice with a safety pilot. Temp 29°C, wind 220@06, alt 30.08, hazy and hot. I was originally going to go "in the system" and do some practices into KLCK or KCMH, but when I looked at the NOTAMs, the glide slope was out of service at LCK, one of the runways was closed for a few hours at CMH, the APE VOR is still out of service (though the TACAN should be back in at the end of the month), so I decided to do the ILS22 @ ZZV including the DME arc (it has been years since I did one of those) and the full missed approach procedure including hold, then another ILS22, then the GPS27 back into VTA. By that time, I was starting to get nauseated and was very hot, so I called it a day there. It was clear that I need more practice. I hand flew everything, my scan was pretty sad, I failed to hold altitude a couple of times and heading a few more. On the approaches themselves, I didn't go full deflection, but I did over-correct a few times. Had it been actual conditions at my personal minimums, I would have gotten in, and I didn't bust anything so bad that I would have failed an IPC or checkride, but I must get more practice before I fly again in (hard) actual IMC.