Two hours in the air.

I flew for two hours this afternoon and I gotta say, today went a lot better than last Tuesday.

We did the same maneuvers but they came a lot easier today. There is one maneuver that I'm still having trouble with and that's called "unusual attitude". This is done while practicing instrument flying.

Instrument flying involves me, the pilot, wearing a hood that prevents me from seeing anything other than the dashboard and the electronics. The instructor gives me a task and I perform it using only the instruments. Trust me when I say this is a little disconcerting because you have to have complete faith in those instruments.

Then, after performing all of the required maneuvers, my instructor takes control of the plane, tells me to look down and close me eyes. Then he puts the plane into a very unusual attitude. This might be a steep climb with low power and a steep turn. Or it might be a step dive with high power. In other words, it's something that you wouldn't do normally.

Then he says, "Okay, look up and take the plane!" That is when I look up at the instruments, determine what is "unusual" and correct it as quickly as possible and in a particular order.

The order is:

First, fix the airspeed because a lack of speed will cause a stall that might be unrecoverable.

Next, fix the vertical axis because a steep climb will eventually cause a lack of airspeed, resulting in the same stall. A steep dive will eventually result in a high-speed airframe failure

Finally, fix the horizontal axis because a steep bank may lead to a spin that is usually recoverable.

It's the process of recovering from those unusual attitudes that I want to get better at. Everything else seems to be going pretty well.

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So now I'm going to study while you click on these:

• Presenting this episodes Brilliant Criminals of the Day.



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