The Instrument Rating is often the next step after becoming a private pilot. Without it even a thin layer of clouds (common in the Bay Area) can prevent you from flying where you want to when you want to. It basically puts you much closer to parity with the airline pilots because you are flying inside the system, and you have much better priority with air traffic control (ATC). It lets you fly under Instrument Flight Rules (IFR), as opposed to the Visual Flight Rules (VFR) that I have been restricted to thus far. This means flying inside clouds, where you can't see where you are or which way is up, and which can quickly kill pilots who get into it without training.

Note that a small single engine plane is still not an airliner, so it's also important to recognize that things like thunderstorms, ice, and severe turbulence still mean that some days are not meant for flying. And not all small airports have the same sort of facilities for getting you down near the ground safely, so clouds below 1000-2000' can be an issue depending on the destination.

There are many aspects to instrument flying, such as clearances, takeoff procedures, enroute procedures, radio navigation, and so on. But the main event is called the instrument approach, which is the well-defined procedure for getting from out of the clouds to a point near the ground and lined up (usually) with the runway. If by the time you reach this point you have not seen the runway, you can't land because to descend further would be unacceptably dangerous. Different kinds of approaches have points closer to or further from the ground. So-called precision approaches guide not only your left-right path, but also the slope of your descent path. For example, an Instrument Landing System (ILS) precision approach can get even a small plane down to 200' above the runway elevation, which means that you can fly with some really low clouds. All the other types of approaches that I can fly are called non-precision, where the descent is more of a stair-step affair.

The night before the test I had a very runny nose, which had me worried. Especially when I finished three (admittedly almost empty) boxes of tissue and had to make a trip to the store to buy more. Congestion can be a problem when climbing and descending in a plane, but thankfully I was fine on the day of the test.

As for the private pilot practical test that I took in December, the practical test for the instrument rating consists of both oral questioning and a flight with a designated flight examiner (Jim Bater this time). As was true that time, the oral questioning also went well. I managed to get 100% on my instrument written test (which precedes the practical test), so I guess he thought I had a good handle on the details. We only spent about an hour on the oral part, including going over a flight plan that I had prepared for a trip to Reno. Probably the worst thing he asked was about a STAR (Standard Terminal Arrival Route), when I thought I heard him say that I was hypothetically cleared for the approach when he had really only said that I was cleared for the arrival. This means that I would need to stay at my assigned altitude rather than descending. In a follow-up question, I also made the mistake of looking at the diagram rather than carefully reading the text. But on the whole I felt good about the oral part. And he never asked for the list of when reporting to ATC is required, what must be visible to make a landing, what equipment is required, or most of the other details I had crammed into my brain.

Jim told me that for the flight he would like me to file a flight plan to Tracy (airport code TCY), and that we would also do the ILS approach at Livermore (LVK), and the locator-DME (I'll explain this later) approach at Hayward (HWD). [The instrument pilots reading this will notice that there are no Non-Directional Beacon (NDB) approaches in this plan - I gather that this is quite common these days as NDB begins to fade out in favor of Global Positioning System (GPS).] At this point he also discovered that I don't have much experience with so-called Tower-Enroute flight plan filing, but that is understandable because Palo Alto tower generally won't handle them anyway. So I called Flight Service and got a weather briefing (which I have mostly done by computer recently, but I didn't want to haul it around today) and filed the flight plan. The weather briefer suggested that "VFR [flight was] not recommended," but that was not a problem. The briefer also said that occasional moderate turbulence was forecast below 15,000'.

Next I preflighted the plane (N8312H, a 180 hp Piper Warrior) to make sure all the parts were still attached, we had fuel and oil, and so on. We got in and started through the checklist to start the plane, when Jim noticed that there was no sound or other indication that the electric fuel pump switch I had just pressed had done anything. We tried a few things, but came to the conclusion that it was not working. And while the electric fuel pump is only a backup to the engine-driven pump, it is definitely not a good idea to fly a single engine plane when something like that is broken (and I'm sure if I looked into it would also turn out to be illegal). This reminded me of why I prefer Cessnas, with their high-wing, gravity fed fuel systems which don't need any fuel pumps.

So on to the second choice plane, N4390D (a normal 160 hp Warrior). It isn't a bad plane, although the radios in it are a little noisier, it is much harder to start, and it doesn't have electric trim. But today at least it worked.

After getting our clearance to Tracy and getting everything ready, we took finally off from Palo Alto. Shortly after taking off I put on the hood, which restricts my view to the instrument panel, as if I were continuously in the clouds. In this situation the person in the right seat (who must be at least a pilot if not an instructor or examiner) is responsible for watching for other planes. Here I am wearing a hood to show what it looks like:

I remember getting off my assigned altitude by a little over 100' at one point, which is more than the allowable standard, and even worse was that ATC's radar showed me off by 200'. This imprecise control of altitude would eventually prove to be my undoing. But on the positive side, when ATC cleared me to proceed with the approach, they used the wrong call sign (80D instead of 90D), and in fact a plane with an 80D call sign had been on the same frequency just a few minutes prior. I questioned this to make sure the clearance was really for me, and Jim said that was the right thing to do. Also, when I came to the seatbelt check on the checklist, Jim indicated that he was fine, but when I looked over, his shoulder belt was disconnected. He said this was not a test, but just so that he could lean forward to keep an eye out for other planes.

The one approach at Tracy is based on a VOR. What that stands for won't help you understand it any better, but what it is is a radio navigation aid. If you imagine a point on the ground with 360 spokes coming out of it, the VOR receiver on the plane tells you which of those spokes you are over. For Tracy, you fly along the 220° radial of the Manteca VOR. The Manteca VOR also has a Distance Measuring Equipment (DME), which tells you how far away from the VOR you are. You use this DME distance to know when you can descend along the stair-step approach path. But for safety, you also use the Modesto VOR as a cross-check to keep track of your position in case the DME should fail (and the examiner will likely turn off your DME if you omit this backup measure).

So the Tracy VOR approach went fine. We did the published missed approach, as if the weather was too bad to actually land. The published missed takes you into a holding pattern at a nearby point, and this went reasonably well. We got our clearance to Livermore, and started in that direction.

The Livermore approach we were going to fly is an ILS. The localizer part of the ILS works much like a VOR, except that it only works over a much smaller angle, and so it is approximately four times more precise. An ILS also has a separate glide slope indicator, which tells you if you are high or low of the desired descent path. The glide slope is very sensitive, such that on a checkride the tolerance is only about 0.5° up or down (full scale is 0.7°, and no more than 3/4 scale is allowed). The high sensitivity of the localizer and glide slope mean that an ILS can guide you very accurately to the runway, but it also makes it easy to get too far off course.

My flying of the ILS today was far from my best. The forecast turbulence made it a bumpy ride, which I guess is an excuse, but such things do happen all the time in real world IFR flying. At times I was off the localizer or the glide slope enough to be right on the edge of failing, but I managed to keep it within tolerances. My landing (touch and go) was okay, and we left Livermore under VFR.

Next Jim covered the heading indicator and the attitude indicator. These two instruments run off of a vacuum pump that is relatively prone to failure, so we are trained to fly without them if need be. Among the more challenging parts of so-called partial panel flying is using the magnetic compass for turning. Compasses behave strangely during turns, and compensating for this is always a challenge. But that went fine, as did the so-called unusual attitude we did next. This involves me looking down so that I can't see anything while the examiner maneuvers the plane to try to confuse my senses. Then when he gives control of the plane back to me I'm supposed to figure out what's going on based on the instruments (in this case we were starting a dive, with increasing airspeed) and correct for it in the proper sequence. It went fine, and he uncovered the two instruments again.

I've never been sure why the steep turn is part of the instrument training since the required 45° bank is about three times steeper than you use at any other time. But my steep turn went very well, especially considering how much trouble I had getting stabilized on one altitude in preparation for it, which seemed exasperating to Jim and would have been perfectly valid justification for failure.

Next was the Hayward approach. Specifically it was the localizer-DME approach. The localizer part is just like the left-right part of the ILS, but without the glide slope. And DME is used as it was on the Tracy approach, except that it is required for this approach so I could be sure that Jim wouldn't turn it off. So in theory this should be much like the Tracy VOR approach except for the greater sensitivity of the locator as compared with a VOR.

Bay Approach (ATC for the Bay Area) was busy, so it took several tries to get their attention, which we needed before starting the approach to Hayward. While this was going on Jim was having me make turns to avoid the clouds, and I was continuing to have trouble maintaining my altitude precisely enough. Finally we got the approach, but with a restriction to remain in VFR conditions until a certain point (the FERNE intersection, which is about 6.5 miles from the runway). As a result Jim was giving me instructions on altitudes, mostly below the minimum altitudes used on the approach. And during this time I went through the final approach course without noticing (since the needle swings more quickly with a locator than with a VOR due to the greater sensitivity, you don't have to look away for too long to miss this). While I did figure out that this had happened, going all the way through like that would have been a perfectly reasonable time to tell me that I had failed, with the only excuse being the distraction of getting altitude instructions from Jim.

So I finally got on the right course and managed to stay within standards the rest of the way, although my heading was off because I had set the heading bug (an adjustable indicator which makes it easier to remember what heading you intend to fly) a little off, which resulted in me getting close to the maximum allowable deviation. As we got close, I reached the minimum descent altitude (MDA) for the approach. But for some reason, most likely my focus on the course, I slowly climbed back up, 200' higher than I was supposed to be. The maximum allowed is 100', and Jim decided that I had failed.

Why is this 200' so critical? Imagine that the clouds at Hayward had been just above the MDA. My creeping back up would have put me back into the clouds and prevented me from landing. If that happens a few times, fuel can become a concern, which isn't a position I want to put myself in. So it is important. If it had been 110' feet and I hadn't already put myself on or over the line before, Jim could have overlooked it, but he did the right thing.

Jim had me take the hood off and fly back to Palo Alto. Along the way he took over briefly to confirm that the plane was capable of being properly trimmed so that it would stay at one altitude reasonably well on its own. It could, which wasn't surprising since I have consistently not given trimming enough attention, which has meant that I have had to work way harder than I should. This is something I'll work on before taking the test again.

The flight ended 1.8 hours after it started, appropriately with a bad landing. I took my time getting my stuff out of the plane and putting the cover on, to give myself time to collect my thoughts. Then I met with Jim to go over what went wrong, what he would expect on the re-test flight, and to get the so-called pink slip (which is actually salmon colored) given to those who do not pass.

The re-test flight should be a short flight to Hayward, with some partial panel flying during the approach, and a circle-to-land procedure instead of a straight-in landing. I suspect that Jim will be more strict on altitude and will be watching me to see if I trim the airplane properly. My guess was that I would need two or three lessons to prepare, but Jim said he only expected it to take one or two, so I guess I'm closer to finishing this than I thought. He also commented that I did a few things that show I will eventually be a good instrument pilot, showing that I was thinking ahead. So the bottom line is that I did well on the things I generally do well on, as the mental parts are easier for me than the actual flying. I didn't deserve to pass, and hopefully the failure will make me finally learn to trim and maybe be a better pilot.

10/12/1998:

Over the weekend I flew with my instructor twice, doing the Hayward approach four times (two of them partial panel), plus some time working on trimming. Unfortunately we didn't get a chance to practice the circle-to-land procedure since they don't like you doing that in good VFR conditions.

The trouble I had starting N4390D has forced me to my third choice plane, by the way. Someone got stuck over the weekend when 90D refused to start, and it won't be back in time for my re-test. So I'll be in N8171V, which has unusual radios (#1 is a very old radio without flip-flops, and #2 is a radio with different controls than in any of the other planes). It has no heading bug, so I'll have to remember my assigned headings in my head. And the marker beacons don't work, which is okay because I don't need them for the Hayward approach (or the Palo Alto approach, which we might possibly need to get back).

10/13/1998:

Today was the re-test. Interestingly, I slept better for the first test than I did last night. The expectation of passing was way higher this time, so the pressure felt higher.

This morning when I checked the weather and the NOTAMs (NOTices to AirMen), I saw that Hayward had a new automated weather system, available via telephone. I called it and the ceiling was 1300', and the wind was from 110°. I thought the wind direction was great news, since it would probably mean that they would be using the opposite direction runway, so they would expect me to circle-to-land instead of landing straight-in. So I was hopeful that we wouldn't have any arguments from the tower about the request to circle.

The approach itself went well. It is a very short hop from Palo Alto, so you don't have time to do much if anything in the way of cruise checklists, going straight from climb to descent. Jim covered the attitude indicator a little earlier than I expected, but interestingly he left the heading indicator uncovered throughout the approach. I reached the MDA and stayed within my 100' limits, although I still didn't have things as well trimmed as I could have.

The mistake I did make was due to my earlier preparations. I was mentally expecting to come in on the runway 28L approach and circle-to-land on runway 10R. That isn't what the tower cleared me for, but that's what I heard because that's what I expected to hear. So when Jim had me look up, instead of circling 360° to the left as I had been instructed, I widened out to the left thinking I was going to circle 180° to the right. Jim asked me what the heck I thought I was doing, and did briefly grab the controls for emphasis. But he didn't say I had failed.

And I hadn't. The landing was even reasonable. We waited on the ground for a few minutes for the weather to improve so we wouldn't need a so-called special VFR clearance (and Jim seemed dead set against using the IFR flight plan I had pre-filed back to Palo Alto), and scooted over the Bay back to Palo Alto, never getting higher than 800'. I managed another reasonable landing (other than the wide turn onto final approach), and the flight was over after another 1.0 hours (most of which wasn't even really part of the checkride).

I definitely feel better than I did after the private pilot checkride. This time I was more prepared for the checkride being a milepost rather than the final destination. Now a whole new world of learning begins.

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