Instrument Practice Time

After Mike and I swapped emails and I gave him the wrong home telephone number to call, he still wanted to get in a plane with me. Mike and I decided on some instrument practice time for me in 679er. It's great to have someone at ILG that will be my safety pilot and who seems to love to fly even more then I do.

I left the house with out signing out 679er on the aircraft club calendar. I was just online updating my IR lesson times and noticed the evening times were wide open. I still should have signed the aircraft out. An uneventful ride to the airport and pre-flight went fine. I bumped into some friends that just got back from a fun flight to Cambridge (CGE) and we stood around and BS'ed for a bit.

Finally time to get in the air! I went through my checklists and taxied out to runway one nine at taxiway Kilo. We were cleared to takeoff and turn on course to the south east. Mike role played as ATC and provided vectors so that I could do some radio work. I worked on trying to fly the plane. It was not my best night by any stretch of the imagination but things did settle down and I tracked my way into Millville for the ILS RWY 10 approach. Instead of working on the hold we headed back out for another shot at the approach. This time it seemed to flow a bit smoother but I still missed my timer and was to busy putzing with throttle corrections. Once at minimums I looked up and slowed for an attempt at a landing. Not a bad landing, typically left of center, but fairly smooth. We taxied back for a runway one zero departure.

Announcing our one zero departure and checking for traffic we begin our roll. 679er comes to life and we are up and away, headed back to Wilmington, KILG. Mike works with me on getting the "numbers" for 679er set up and committed to memory. 2100 rpm and ten degrees of flaps has us moving along at 90 knots. Less concentration on the throttle provides more opportunity to work the scan and fly the needles. Mike makes a call to Philly approach and requests the ILS runway one into Wilmington. We receive vectors that take us south of the airport but keep us headed north west at or around 330 degrees. Philly clears us for the approach and hands us over to Wilmington Tower. Wilmington tower clears us to circle to land runway two seven. The MDA for the circling is 580'. I could not pick up the runway lighting so I gave Mike the plane, he had no problems picking up the approach end and turning us to base then final. Once on final it was back to my plane and I slowed us down to land. I am not used to short final at 80-90 knots so I needed to float it on down.....way down with a short skip or two along the way to finally achieve wheels down. Not a pretty landing at all but we're home.

I need to focus on my procedures and checklists. It seems overwhelming at times but I still know that I can do this. I am up again with my CFII on Sunday then again on Thursday. I'll repeat this schedule again trying to average five to six hours each week.

A pirep on my new Zulu headset. At first when I put them on they sounded almost as quiet as my David Clark's, then I turned them on. WOW! Where did all the noise go? Super quiet, easy plug in for my cell phone and I never felt them on my head, they were that comfortable. It will take some time to get used to the shorter mic boom then my DC's but I think I can handle it. I did hear some engine noise but it was almost non-existant, actually just enough to hear the engine pitch changes but not that droning type of noise. After the flight Mike put them on and commented how quiet they were and he really liked the bluetooth capability along with the plug and play for music or phone. Mike flys with the Bose headset.