Under The Hood

This lesson was a short one. We were only aloft for about 45 minutes. I had to get back to work and my CFI had a club board meeting to get to. In addition, we got started about a half hour late, because he was late getting back from another lesson.

One of the requirements for the private pilot certificate is to log 3 hours of IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) time. We don't have to wait for the weather to get bad to do this, instead, I went "under the hood". I wore a visor that obscured my view outside the cockpit, so all I could see was the instrument panel.

First we did a couple of touch and goes to keep my landing skills up, then I asked for a southeast departure and when I got to 3000', I put on the visor. While under the hood, we practiced turns, climbs, descents, straight and level flight, slow flight, and vectoring (this is, flying a heading to a point, then turning and flying a different heading to the next point, and so on). After my CFI asked me to descend and turned me to a few different headings, we hit 1000' and he said, "go ahead and take off the visor and land this thing." I took off the hood, and I was lined up with the runway on final approach. We landed and taxied back to parking and called it a day.

I have Laser Vision Surgery on Friday, so I won't be able to fly for about a week, so I hope my skills don't deteriorate too much in between.

Next lesson: Wednesday, January 16.

Time logged this lesson: 0.7 hrs

Total Time: 13.2 hrs