Every pilot license has certain criteria which need to be met for a student pilot to obtain it. The first license any pilot anywhere, no matter what, gets is the private pilot license, or PPL. Some of the requirements for the PPL are a minimum of 40 hours flight time, 10 hours solo time, and 3 hours BMI time. BMI time is also referred to as “under the hood” or instrument flying simulation. What they all mean is that while flying with an instructor the student puts on foggles. Foggles look like sunglasses but block the view of the outside world to the person wearing them. There is a cut out on the bottom of each lens so that the wearer can only see the control panel of the airplane and not look outside the windows. The purpose of this is to practice flying with no outside references, or flying in the clouds (instrument flying). So to get a PPL, aside from passing the flying and oral tests, the student also needs 3 hours under the hood time.
A pilot wearing Foggles
Yesterday, my lesson was 90% under the hood. I took off and at 1500 feet, after doing the climb checklist; my instructor told me to put the foggles on. Once on, I flew the plane out to the practice grounds, over the ocean. When students wear the foggles, the instructor usually tells them what heading to turn and what altitude to stay at. Personally, I like flying with foggles on. Not because I can’t see outside, but because it make me a better pilot. For example, it’s easy to keep the wings level while you’re looking out to the horizon. Once the horizon changes its angle in relation to the dashboard of the plane, that means you’re turning the airplane. However, with no outside references, like the horizon, the student really needs to make sure he or she is watching the instrument panel closely. Flying under the hood really strengthens a student’s ability to scan the instruments. Having a good scan is paramount to being a good pilot.
Once in the practice grounds, my instructor had me do slow flight, and stall recoveries first. My slow flight was good. Unfortunately, when I do slow flight without foggles on, I watch the instruments a lot. This isn’t exactly what you’re supposed to do. I should be looking outside more than inside, but I developed a bad habit that I’m trying to break. Because of this habit, my slow flight under the hood was good. I did a climb, a turn, and a descending turn in slow flight. After that, the stalls were next. As I got the plane configured for a stall, I realized that the recovery was going to be harder without the outside references. My instructor must have been reading my mind because as I was thinking that, he told me that I need to just recover from the stall as I would if I wasn’t wearing foggles. The recovery is the same, except for the fact that I’ll be looking at the instruments and not the ground outside. As I stalled the plane in the power off configuration, I realized I was losing a lot of altitude. I quickly nosed up, but put the plane into a secondary stall. The secondary stall occurs when recovering from a stall; the nose is raised before sufficient air is flowing over the wings. I practiced this stall along with the power on stall multiple times before moving on.
Piper Warrior cockpit. What I was looking at all lesson
After these maneuvers, my instructor had me track the Deer Park VOR. I’ve tracked VORs many times by now so this wasn’t too much of a big deal under the hood. I identified the station, selected VLOC on the GPS and turned the OBS to the station. Once my instructor saw me do this, he told me to break off from the 205 radial TO Deer Park VOR, and head back out over the Atlantic. Once there, I practiced unusual attitude recoveries. Without foggles, I really like these. In order to practice these maneuvers, the instructor changes the plane’s banks, pitch, and power while the student has his head down so he can’t see outside. So while wearing the foggles, I put my head down and enjoyed the change in G’s while he maneuvered the airplane. As he was doing this I thought to myself the recovery procedures. Pitch up bank: add power, lower nose, neutralize ailerons. Pitch down bank: power to idle, neutralize ailerons, nose up. I heard recover over the headset and simultaneously looked to the attitude indicator, grabbed the throttle with my right hand, and the control yoke with my left. I interpreted the instruments and determined I was nose high, banking right. I immediately added full throttle, lowered the nose, and rolled the plane back to the left. Perfect. It’s much harder to do these while having to look at instruments instead of the earth. The big difference is that while recovering from looking outside, the horizon is a large attitude indicator. Because of peripheral vision, I don’t need to be looking directly at the horizon to know what the plane is doing. However, while under the hood, I have look directly at the attitude indicator to know what the plane is doing. If I look at something else, like airspeed for example, I won’t still be able to see the artificial horizon. My instructor had me do several more recoveries then we headed back to the airport.
We only had time for 1 landing at this point, but it still needed to be good. The airport was using runway 19 and the winds were 24014G21 (14 knot winds out of 240 degrees [50 degrees off centerline] and gusting to 21 knots). Basically, strong winds from a large distance off the centerline. As I came in, I put in the crosswind correction, aileron into wind (so the plane doesn’t get blown off course) and opposite rudder (so the nose stays lined up with the centerline). I put the upwind wheel, right main gear, down first, and quickly lowered the nose and applied the brakes. A decent landing after a pretty good day of under the hood work
What I learned Today:
Simulating flying in IMC (instrument meteorological conditions) really helps all skills of piloting. Today my scan improved, and I gained confidence with keeping my heading and altitude. Something I wasn’t ready for, but handled well was unusual attitudes. Once I heard recover, my eyes started darting all over the panel to find out the information which would tell me how to recover. In all, simulated instrument flying is fun and good practice.
We only had time for 1 landing at this point, but it still needed to be good. The airport was using runway 19 and the winds were 24014G21 (14 knot winds out of 240 degrees [50 degrees off centerline] and gusting to 21 knots). Basically, strong winds from a large distance off the centerline. As I came in, I put in the crosswind correction, aileron into wind (so the plane doesn’t get blown off course) and opposite rudder (so the nose stays lined up with the centerline). I put the upwind wheel, right main gear, down first, and quickly lowered the nose and applied the brakes. A decent landing after a pretty good day of under the hood work
What I learned Today:
Simulating flying in IMC (instrument meteorological conditions) really helps all skills of piloting. Today my scan improved, and I gained confidence with keeping my heading and altitude. Something I wasn’t ready for, but handled well was unusual attitudes. Once I heard recover, my eyes started darting all over the panel to find out the information which would tell me how to recover. In all, simulated instrument flying is fun and good practice.
