Lesson 9: Under the hood.

Today, I had my first taste of flying under the hood. The hood is a training device that restricts your vision so all you can see is the flight instruments. You're completely unable to see outside the cockpit. I had assumed that this would be relatively easy for me, since I have the bad habit of spending most of my flight time looking at the instruments anyway. I was wrong. It was hard. I didn't like it much at all. It was like flying the simulator, in that I had to fly completely by my instruments. It was different from the simulator in that I was forced to realize I was flying a real-life plane and mistakes could have very real consequences. For instance, at one point I put the plane in a considerable dive, without intending to. I know it was considerable because when I pulled back on the yoke, I could feel the G forces pushing me into my seat. That's not really good. And then Josh made me do a power-on stall without being able to see outside the plane. That went almost as well as the rest of my instrument time. So my experience under the hood was unimpressive, and it earned me a C in Instrument Reference.

After I took off the hood, things didn't improve too much. Josh has a sadistic obsession with making me do slow-flight, which means you're flying the plane at about 55kts (that's about half its normal cruising speed) with your nose pointed up in the air. And today was no exception. "Okay, Josh, you can take off the hood now. Hey, let's do some slow-flight." I shouldn't gripe. Josh is just trying to make me the best pilot I can be, and he's trying to help me polish my slow-flight so I can impress my examiner when I do my stage check.

Toward the end of the lesson, when it was just about time to land, Josh had me get involved in the traffic pattern and landing. It was a little nerve-wracking, but we got through it... And then he made me take off and do it all again. And we got through it the second time, too.

All in all, today was frustrating, but it's one more step on the road to me picking up the knowledge and finesse I need to really be the best I can be.