IFR Training

In January of 1997, I made myself a promise that this would be the year of obtaining my Instrument license. After a particularly good profit sharing check in February, I decided to begin my IFR training. Also at this point, two favorable things happened. First, I was able to hook up with a freelance CFII who charged me about 30% less than the local flight schools. Second, I entered into a rental agreement with a fellow employee on his airplane at about a 50% reduction in wet hour price from the local FBOs. These two items cleared the path for very economical and convenient training. So, on March 5^th, I took my first IFR training flight. For reference, I'm training in a 1978 Piper Archer II (PA28-181) with lots of IFR goodies like dual NAV/COMs, DME, and standby VAC system for IFR redundancy. My flight instructor, Greg Sauter, a long-time teacher of our Compaq groundschools, is a CFII and holds a multi-engine instructor rating. Additionally, Greg is my age (30-something), a difference from the post-college age kids who normally teach at our local flight schools, has a great sense of humor (whew!), and we get along very well.

March 5^th, 1997 - Lesson 1 ( The wheels in the sky keep on turning….)

The days are still somewhat short, so the majority of this flight was at night, which I found to be very useful for hood training. Even in the twilight, I found it hard to not peek out of the corners of the foggles I was wearing. However, as darkness set in, it became much easier to concentrate completely on the panel in front of me without outside distractions.

This first flight was Basic Attitude Instrument Flight, which consisted of straight and level flight, turns, climbs, descents, MCA, and steep turns. While these are the most rudimentary elements of flying, it took on a whole new light under the hood using only the instruments set before me. You become acutely aware of your power settings, and you marvel at how little you actually have to turn, push or pull on the yoke to direct the aircraft. At this point, you begin using that strange little instrument in the lower left hand corner of your panel that was largely ignored during your private pilot training: the Turn Indicator (or Turn and Bank Indicator). In PP training, I learned the fundamentals of this little instrument for coordinated turns to keep from slipping or skidding around turns, but beyond that, I seem to recall very little emphasis on it. Now however, it took on a whole new level of importance with its little marks on the sides to indicate Standard Rate Turns. Another instrument, the Vertical Speed Indicator, also took on a higher level of visibility. Before, it had been just something that helped remind me that I was climbing or descending. Now, however, it became a precision instrument where I would track a standard rate climb or descent.

We buzzed around the practice area west of Houston for about two hours, 1.5 of which I had the foggles on. Turning, climbing, descending, turning AND climbing, descending AND turning, on and on, with Greg playing ATC and giving me headings to turn to and altitudes to ascend and descend to. The whole affair was very docile, with the exception of steep turns. The standard rate turns were barely 15 degrees, gently banking the airplane. The climbs and descents were at a mild 500 ft/minute. However, the instruments, especially the directional gyro, came alive on the steep turns.

During Private Pilot training, we are taught to learn a "picture" of what the horizon looks like on the cowling of the plane during steep turns. We basically use this "picture" as our reference, and try to hold altitude and airspeed. Now, the horizon was gone, replaced by a tiny artificial horizon on the attitude indicator. I banked into a left-hand turn, adding power and added back-pressure on the yoke as the attitude indicator passed 30 degrees. I rolled to 45 degrees and the first thing I notice was that the directional gyro was spinning rapidly. You have to practice continuously scanning the instruments without fixating on one instrument, but our ancient hunting instincts draw our eyes to quick-moving objects, and the DG was really moving! After locking my eyes on the DG for a few seconds, I noticed my altitude dropping. I fought the VSI, Altitude Indicator, and Attitude Indicator to keep a coordinated steep turn up. After a few practice tries, Greg taught me a handy trick for keeping altitude. Instead of pushing and pulling on the yoke to maintain a constant altitude during a steep turn, I slightly added or subtracted the angle of my steep turn. If I was ascending, I banked a little more. If I was descending, I took a little of the bank out. The overall effect was that I stayed within a few degrees of the 45 degree bank angle, and was able to maintain a constant altitude with ease.

After an hour and a half with the foggles on, I was exhausted. Greg gave me directions back to the airport, and after talking to the tower and getting clearance to land, he directed me to the proper altitude and heading for final. I then pulled off my foggles and lo and behold, there before me lay the runway lights. We taxied up to the pumps (I pump my own fuel for this plane since it is cheaper), and then taxied back to the hangar. I swore that I could feel the room spinning that night as I lay in bed with my eyes closed!

March 19^th - Lesson 2 ( The night the vacuum pump went out in Georgia…)

After a few more ground lessons to brief me on partial panel work, we took to the skies again. The day had been somewhat dreary with a broken layer at about 2,500', and overcast at 25,000'. We headed west looking for holes in the clouds. The high, overcast layer was melting away and the setting sun was peeking through the broken layer in a few sparse holes. We picked the biggest hole and climbed up through it. At this point, I had been under the hood for the majority of the time. I had put the foggles on after we had taken off and turned west. Greg told me to level off at 3,000'. He then told me to take my foggles off for a moment. There, like a rolling field of snow, was the broken, almost solid, layer we had just climbed through. The sun was just about to drop below it, and during the two minutes I had my foggles off, the pinkish-white layer turned orange, and then red. "This is what I like about Instrument flight", Greg remarked. "Most VFR pilots will never see this."

I put the foggles back on and we rehearsed the maneuvers I had done last time. Turns, climbs, descents, etc. After we had reassured ourselves that I had not had a memory lapse, we started into stalls. I had developed a fear of stalls during my private pilot training that took several flights to overcome. Now, under the hood, I wondered how I would react. I found out that they were much easier to deal with and recognize, as I was using several instruments to track my attitude and airspeed. Additionally, this Archer broke into the stall gently at MCA, and under full power, it was almost impossible to force into a stall, as it wanted to continue climbing. With the instruments shedding a whole new light on my flight orientation, stalls became just a another minor maneuver. "OK", Greg said. "You just lost your vacuum pump". ( A virtual non-emergency in this plane with its backup VAC system). He reached over and placed covers over my vacuum driven instruments: the attitude indicator and the directional gyro.

That little Turn Indicator in the lower left-hand corner became one of the most important instruments in the plane. Kind of like the vice-president. No one ever really pays any attention to him, until the president is killed and he becomes top dog. Then all eyes are on him. So it went with the turn indicator. It was my primary instrument for making sure I was flying level. It is very sensitive and tends to lag behind the movements you make on the yoke, so you have to be calm and gentle. I'd scan over to my compass (now that the DG was dead) to make sure I wasn't drifting off course. Like the Turn Indicator, the compass is sensitive and floats and moves around, making it somewhat difficult to track.

So went the next 45 minutes. Turning to a heading, climbing, descending, on and on, using just the Turn Indicator and Compass for primary attitude and heading controls. You learn to bank gently, never over-banking past a standard rate turn to keep some semblance of banking control. You also learn the compass' idiosyncrasies of leading and lagging your turns as you turn north and south. A new phrase came into my repertoire. "Never see North, Always see South", became my motto for working with the compass on north and south turns. In essence, you roll out before you get to your northerly heading, letting the compass catch up to you, and you roll out past your southerly heading, letting the compass roll back to you. Definitely not an exact science. Another instrument came into use, now that I "did not" have VAC instruments. Instead of using the compass, one can also use a timer or clock to track to a new heading. That's what the little "Standard Rate Turn" marks mean on the Turn Indicator. If one were to bank the airplane in a Standard Rate Turn, one should have made a complete 360 degree turn in 2 minutes. Thus the old saying, "A 2 Minute Turn". Based on that, one can break down turns by minutes and seconds. To make a 180 degree turn, just bank to Standard Rate, time off 1 minute, and there you are. 90 degrees? Easy. Turn Standard Rate for 30 seconds, and so on. When used in conjunction with the compass, you can track to a new heading fairly accurately.

After about 45 minutes, Greg pulled the covers off the AI and DG, and I was back to a full panel. Wow! I felt like I never had so much information and control before in my life! But I also felt confident that I could survive if the VAC instruments ever really did die.

All this time Greg had been keeping the big hole that we had come through in sight. It was drifting southeast towards the Hobby Class-B, so we dropped back down through it and Greg played ATC again and gave me directions back to Hooks. This time I kept the foggles on until we were short final, kind of like breaking out at "minimums". The transition from instruments to visual is strange, as you have to put yourself in a different frame of mind for the new visual reference. One of the things I like about this plane is that it has wingtip landing lights and strobes, in addition to the normal nose landing light and tail beacon/strobe. You feel like a 737 on final approach, and I even had the Unicom at Conroe ask me one night as I was doing stop-and-goes, "How many lights do you have on that thing?!"

March 24^th - Lesson 3 (The lights are on, but nobody's home….)

Tonight brought another blustery, low broken ceiling evening. We took off and headed northwest, towards the Navasota VOR to practice IFR Approach Procedures. There was one guy already there doing the same thing, so we stayed high for a while reviewing what I had learned. The Basic stuff from the first lesson, and little more partial panel work. The guy had not finished in the area quite yet, so Greg threw a few new maneuvering twists at me. Unusual Attitudes…..under the hood. Now, I had loved these during my private pilot training. The instructor would take control of the plane, tell me to look down, and would proceed to do what almost felt like aerobatics. He'd then say, "Your plane!" and I'd grab the yoke, look up and at my panel and try to determine what I should do next. The recovery was always pretty fast as when you look out the window you know if you are going up or down, and a glance at the airspeed indicator gives you a good indication if you are too slow or too fast. Now with the hood on, it became some high-tech video game with the DG spinning, the VSI pointing up or down, the airspeed piling up or bleeding off, altitude rising or falling, and the attitude indicator doing its best to simulate what the world looked like outside. Where my private pilot instructor had wanted me to recover as quickly as possible after I took control of the plane, Greg had me assess the instruments for a few more seconds to get the overall picture. In the scheme of things, the few added seconds where probably a small fraction of the recovery effort, but they made a world of difference in the assessing the attitude of the plane and determining the proper recover procedure while under the hood.

During the previous ground training, Greg had instructed me on the maneuvers we would practice for Procedure Turns to Approaches. Like in the previous lesson with the clock, a lot of timing came into play. Things like, "Track this radial. After crossing the initial approach fix, fly straight for 2 minutes. Then turn left 45 degrees and fly straight for 1 minute. Then do a standard rate turn to the right 180 degrees. Fly straight until your NAV radio picks up the inbound radial from the VOR." We did this over and over, and a few variations of these such as the teardrop and the racetrack. All involved timing and turning. After about 45 minutes of this, we decided to head back in, as the broken layer was starting to solidify. My head was hurting so I removed my foggles for the short jump back to Hooks.

We tuned in the Hooks ATIS. The first thing I noticed was that the ATIS was still the Tango identifier we had used over two hours ago and the ceilings they were calling, 2,500, where much lower now. Sure enough, as the ATIS repeated itself, it was over two hours old. Our hole in the broken layer had shrunken considerably and as I descended through it we actually clipped the lower edge of it. About 8 seconds of Actual IMC! Popping out at about 1,800 feet, the first thing that we noticed was that the wind was blowing about 25 knots, probably gusting over 30 knots, and was REALLY kicking the plane around. I had never been in turbulence that severe before. It took all my control to keep the plane on a semblance of constant altitude and heading. We called the tower about 8 miles out, telling them we were inbound with old ATIS information. No reply. We figured they couldn't be busy because we didn’t hear anyone else on the tower frequency. I tuned ATIS into COM1 to see if we could hear it and we could. Back to tower. We called them again at 7 miles and they finally replied, "Report 3 mile final for 17R." I fought the plane all the way to final. It became slightly easier to handle as we turned south into the wind. At three miles we called the tower again. No reply. We tried again at 2 miles. Nothing. Still nothing at 1 mile. Now we were inside of a mile, basically almost short final for 17R, and had not received clearance to land. Another plane, a twin Cessna, called up the tower. The tower replied, "Twin Cessna, cleared to land 17R." The guy responded that he was still 18 miles out, but thought that the tower might be having a radio problem, as they had not answered us in our last three calls. The tower responded, "Uh, we're a little busy". We quickly radioed, "Archer is over the threshold!" And the tower responded, "Cleared!".

Turned out that the tower had received a call about an ELT going off approximately 1 mile north of the field. The twin-Cessna behind us just happened to be a local CAP pilot, and began helping the tower search, in addition to an inbound Citation that began monitoring as well. We landed, fueled and taxied back to the hangar. As we piled out of the plane, we saw several fire trucks and police cars race down the road. A couple of days later I learned that it was a malfunctioning ELT going off on a helicopter that was stored in a hanger. A lot of hassle for the local authorities, but I'd rather see that than a plane down. With the amount of turbulence that we fought, I had feared the worst.

March 27^th- Lesson 4 (Feel the Force, Luke…..)

Tonight was to be a special treat as Greg was going to direct me on my first full IFR "intro flight". The weather was marginal with overcast at about 2,500' and light rain. We filed IFR to College Station headed out to the plane. I decided that I would not wear foggles for this trip as we might get actual IMC, plus I wanted to see what was going on for the whole flight. As we taxied out, Ground gave Greg our IFR clearance. "Archer 2052M is cleared to CLL via radar vectors. Climb to 3,000, expect 4,000 after 10 minutes. Contact Houston Approach…" etc..etc. It flew by so fast that I could barely hear what was happening, and I've always prided myself on my radio skills! Whew, something new to learn, I guess. Thankfully, Greg was to handle the radios, Nav and Com, for the trip while I flew. After our runup, we awaited our IFR release from the tower, and then we blasted off. We had been vectored to turn to 360 after climb out, and as I turned north and passed through about 2,000 feet………….everything turned white. "You're in actual IMC now!", Greg grinned from the right seat. It was like someone had wrapped us up in a big cotton ball. "Keep up your scan", Greg prompted me. I shook myself out of my reverie and looked down at my instruments. That can't be right I thought as I watched my Attitude Indicator rolling to the left. I'm in level flight. "Trust your instruments", Greg said like Obi Wan Kenobi. It took all of my will power to roll the plane to the right to level out, when my body was screaming that I was doing the wrong thing. Once I quit looking out of the window, got my scan going over the instruments, and leveled out at 3,000 feet, things got much easier. We were handed off to approach, who sent us up to 4,000' and then turned us to 310 degrees. So it went, straight and level for the next 30 minutes as we headed up to College Station. Approach began directing us to descend and giving us radio vectors for the approach. About 5 miles south of College Station, we popped out of the side of the clouds to see wispy clouds below us in the gathering darkness and rain hitting our windshield. Approach vectored us in a left descending turn to intercept the College Station ILS. As we turned final about 3 miles out, I began to see the strobes blinking their way through the rain and darkness. We were handed off to Easterwood tower and then it was pretty much a VFR approach to landing. We taxied in to the terminal and got out to stretch our legs and to file the return flight.

Let me say here that if you ever get stranded at Easterwood, don't worry. They have an excellent pilot's lounge with a kitchenette, break area, TV room, and a room with beds, not to mention showers. All the amenities of home.

After we had filed and headed back out to the plane, we called the Tower and began to taxi out. After our runup, they had our IFR clearance ready. We had filed for 5,000' on the way back, as it looked like the ceiling was rising in the area and we wanted more actual IMC. We were cleared for 5,000' immediately and began a rapid climb up to it. We passed into IMC at about 4,500' and leveled off at 5,000. We were there all of about 5 minutes when approach directed us to descend to 4,000. The ceiling was sloping down towards Houston, so our descent to 4,000', followed by another directive to 3,000', and then to 2,000', kept us in IMC all the way back. We were given a radio vector to intercept the localizer at Hooks. After we were handed off to the tower, we began a descent to about 1,200'. At 1,800' we popped out of the clouds to see a bleary, rainy, Houston landscape. We intercepted the localizer and in a couple of minutes had the field in sight. Much like the final approach into Easterwood, we were VFR for our landing into Hooks. We landed, fueled, and headed back to the hangar.

All totaled, I had gotten 45 minutes of Actual IMC !

April 16^th- Lesson 5 ( Walking the straight and narrow…..)

Bad weather and work during the first week of April combined to restrict me to just a couple of hours worth of ground instruction on VOR and NDB navigation and course intercepts. Then, a week off for vacation (sunny Cabo San Lucas) interrupted flying as well.

However, I was back in the saddle this week. We went up and did the basics to knock the rust off my skills and the cobwebs out of my head. Twenty minutes of turns, climbs, descents, etc. worked to bring me back up to speed. It was still very light outside as Daylight Saving Time had gone into effect a week and a half ago.

We picked up where we had left off at our last ground session on VOR and NDB navigation. We started with what I consider to be the "easy" one: VOR. Greg slapped the Low-Altitude IFR chart on my new yoke-mounted board, and said, "Where are you?". For the northwest area of Houston, you basically have two VORs to work with: The Navasota VOR (just south of the Navasota airport) and the Humble VOR, which is basically on the Houston Intercontinental Airport property. I dialed both into my two Nav radios (taking the time to select each one on my audio panel and monitor it to make sure it was active and the right one!) and started spinning the OBS knobs. After I got two centered needles, I triangulated and pointed at the map. "Here I am!", I said smartly. After all, this was old, VFR navigation stuff. "Why did you do it the hard way?", Greg asked. I looked at him dumbly. He pointed at the DME (which can be slaved to either VOR) and said, "What does this number mean?" Oh yeah, I thought, all you need is one VOR with DME and you know exactly where you are. All I had to do was tune in either VOR look at the DME, and I would have know how far away I was from the VOR on a particular radial. Good example of learning to use all the equipment available to you.

"Ok", Greg said, "Lets track a VOR radial". He proceeded to tell me to intercept and track the 180 radial on the Navasota VOR inbound. I had already determined that I was about 19 miles southeast of the Navasota VOR. That was step one: Where are you from the VOR? The next step was figure out what my course heading was going to be. I wanted to turn parallel to the course I wanted to fly. Remembering that I was south of the VOR and want to fly the 180 radial inbound, I knew my northerly course heading would be 360. After setting the OBS and watching the CDI needle deflect to the left, I turned to 360. I then determined my intercept course by choosing to a 45 degree intercept angle. This is pretty easy to do since the DG has 45 degree tick marks all the way around it. All you have to do is look at the tick mark you want, and read the heading. In my case it was 315 degrees. I turned to 315 to begin angling towards the 180 radial.

After about 5 minutes, the CDI needle started to "come alive" and begin its gradual trek towards the center of the dial. When it got to about a half-dot deflection, I turned back to 360 and began tracking the radial inbound. Fortunately (or unfortunately for practice) there was very little wind that day and I need virtually no wind correction. I tracked it all the way inbound and then outbound.

We did this over and over with Greg giving me different inbound and outbound radials to intercept and track. Our last task of the day was to do a couple of intercepts and tracks of the Hooks NDB. In some ways this was easier, in many ways it was much harder. The intercept process was somewhat similar to VORs. The tricky part was knowing when to begin the inbound turn. In the case of NDBs it's "when the angle of deflection equals the angle of correction." That's a mouthful! In other words, after paralleling my course and choosing a 30 degree intercept angle, I angled inbound until the NDB needle was deflected 30 degrees in the opposite direction. Theoretically, I would then turn inbound on course and the NDB should be straight in front of me on the inbound course I had selected. It worked pretty well. I began to understand that NDB navigation was somewhat of a "pretty close" strategy.

After we had hit the NDB a few times and were inbound, we locked onto the Localizer at Hooks and followed it in. I felt that I had VORs down pretty good, although my NDB work would need a little practice.

April 21^st - The Non-Lesson

We were supposed to fly tonight, but a family illness kept Greg at home. I decided to take advantage of the evening and do a little pleasure flying. However, the sky kept getting more obscured into the late afternoon, and by six, a broken ceiling had formed at 2,500'. As I lifted off to the west, it became apparent that the rapidly increasing haze was going to put an end to any pleasure flying that evening. The broken layer was spaced by long "trenches" in the sky rather than holes, so I poured on the power and climbed up above the cloud layer, which topped out at about 3,200'. It was crystal clear above, and looking down I could see line after line of the open "trenches" in the broken layer. I decided to make the best of it and proceeded to spend the next two hours doing course intercepts, tracking and procedure turns on the Navasota VOR (without the hood of course!). I think it made a big difference in my confidence with VOR procedures.

April 23^rd- Lesson 6 ( When the Angle of Deflection equals the Angle of Correction ! )

As usual, we started out our lesson with a quick review of all the basics, just to make sure that my skill didn't deteriorate in those areas. Following that, we began where we had left off last time with course intercepts and radial and bearing tracking on VORs and NDBs. We headed over to the Navasota VOR and Greg began giving me inbound radials to intercept and track. This was relatively easy since we had done some during the last lesson, in addition to my spending almost 2 hours two days prior doing this back and forth over the Navasota VOR. Greg felt that I pretty had the VOR stuff down pat, so he gave me a radial to track outbound from Navasota that would take us to Montgomery County and their Outer Marker NDB.

I was a little wary of working bearings on the NDB as I had felt a little disoriented during our last lesson when we worked the Hooks NDB. I told myself that I had been tired the last time, plus we had been dealing with Hooks ATC while we worked the NDB. Tired and distracted. Yeah, that's it. So I kept an open mind as we motored our way over to Conroe.

As we headed over to Conroe we talked a little bit about what we were going to do. Basically, it was a lot like VOR course intercepts. The exceptions were that your bearings were always the same relative to the to/from standpoint. Unlike a VOR, where you have radials all around it, and inbound and outbound courses were tracked on the opposite radial, your NDB bearings were all relative to the station, since NDBs don't give directional indication. Once I cleared out the VOR radial stuff from my head, I was able to work the NDB intercepts pretty good. We passed back and forth over the Conroe NDB. Another major difference in intercepting and tracking the NDB was the way you calculated both course intercept and wind correction. The on-course saying of "when the angle of deflection equals the angle of correction" comes into play here. The other hard part is once you've figured out your wind correction, keeping yourself on a straight course into the NDB. If you just try to keep the needle pointed straight ahead as you close on the NDB, the wind will continually blow you off course and you will wind up "homing" to the station. This means that although you will eventually arrive at the NDB, you probably did so in a big arc, depending on how much crosswind you have. It sure is a lot easier to have that "fixed" radial out there from the VOR !

April 30^th- Lesson 7 (Hold please….)

We spent a few hours on Monday talking about parking lots in the sky. Or rather, holding patterns. Not used very much these days with most airports having radar services, holds are one of those things that you have to know and demonstrate on your practical, but probably will only use once in a blue moon, if that often. I learned about multiple ways to enter a hold, and the different types of fixes used in a hold, along with holding procedures. It all sounded pretty easy. Of course theory and reality are often two different things.

On Wednesday we took off and headed towards Navasota to practice holds on a VOR. Greg had me do a couple of course intercepts on the VOR just to get me warmed up for the hold, and to help me gauge the wind. We then started out with a "standard" hold, or rather, one that had 1-minute legs. There are three basic ways to enter a hold, depending on your location from the hold. For the first hold, I determined that we needed to use a parallel course entry. I headed directly to the VOR, and once we crossed over the VOR, I paralleled outbound what eventually would be my inbound course. It was at this point that I was really glad that I had added the stopwatch holder onto my yoke mount. That stopwatch would become very important. I tracked outbound for one minute and then did a left turn that basically looked like a teardrop that put me back on an intercept for my inbound course. I had barely intercepted the course when we had station passage and it was time to do a 180 degree turn to the right, signaling the beginning of the oval-coursed hold. After we finished the turn, I watched the VOR intently, waiting for the TO/FROM flag to flip, indicating station passage. It did after a few seconds, and I started the stopwatch again. One minute outbound. Then I did another 180 to the right. The goal is to intercept your inbound course when you complete the turn. In this case I over shot the inbound radial by a few degrees. I started the timer running again. If everything went according to plan, we were supposed to hit the VOR in exactly one minute. One minute came and went with no passage yet. That's when I realized that the wind was having a larger effect on use than I originally thought. Twenty seconds after our deadline, we hit the VOR and I began another 180 turn to the right. The turn gives you time to think about what you need to do to adjust your outbound course leg timing. Since I was twenty seconds too long on the inbound course, I subtracted twenty seconds on the outbound, only flying forty seconds instead of one minute. At forty seconds I did a 180 and miraculously intercepted my inbound course radial. And even more surprising, I had station passage on the inbound leg at about 58 seconds. Close enough. We went around the racetrack course a few more times, fine tuning and adjusting for the wind. Then we broke off and headed east.

Greg had me intercept a specific outbound radial and then said, "OK 2052M, let me know when you are ready to copy instructions for a new hold". Another good reason I had brought my notepad and yoke mount along. Greg told me to hold northwest of the Flika intersection. I checked my Low Altitude Enroute chart which showed me that Flika was on the 076 radial of the Navasota VOR. Greg had made it easy for me by making 076 the radial that I had intercepted outbound. We were about 15 miles out from Flika so I had ample time to establish a good crosswind correction to keep me on the heading. This intersection hold was to be distance-based with 5nm legs, rather than timed legs. I can't describe how much easier this is…(IF you have DME!). After crossing the intersection, I did a 180 and headed back in the opposite direction, watching the DME as the miles decreased towards the VOR. When I had gone 5nm, I did a 180 and reestablished myself on the 076 radial outbound and headed back to the intersection. Having had a good idea of what crosswind correction to use ahead of time was extremely helpful.

We ran the racecourse track on the intersection a couple of more times, and then he had me head towards the NDB and Montgomery County airport (CXO). He told me to fly the published hold on the approach plate. It was a standard hold, one minute legs, right hand turns. I set up my intercept which appeared to be a teardrop intercept. I originally thought that determining station passage on the NDB would be difficult, but to my surprise the needle gave a good swing as I passed it. I headed outbound for a minute on the bearing, did a teardrop and re-intercepted the inbound course. The wind had died down considerably in the last 30 minutes, so virtually no crosswind correction was needed. I carefully watched the ADF needle as I approached the NDB, and waited for it to give its 180 degree swing as I made station passage. Suddenly, it wavered ever so slightly and then snapped around 180 degrees! To my surprise I had crossed almost directly over the NDB station! Talk about luck. I did a 180 to the right and headed outbound for one minute. I did another 180 and re-intercepted the inbound bearing. Almost exactly one minute later, the ADF needle gave another brisk indication of station passage. We did a couple more of these on the CXO NDB and then headed back to Hooks. Of the three holds, the timed holds on the VOR had been the most difficult to manage. However, I could see that if we would have had any decent amount of crosswind, the NDB hold could easily become very difficult to manage.

May 5^th- Lesson 8 ( Homebuilts, Taildraggers and Diapers…..Oh My ! )

I had a bit of a scare this past weekend when my instructor, Greg, informed me that he had gotten a job with Continental Express. The shock eased somewhat when he told me that his training would still take place in Houston, and that there was a good chance that he would be based in Houston after training. (Houston is, after all, the headquarters for Continental Airlines). It looks like the only initial change will be in our training schedule. From now on it will be more "catch as catch can" as we look for days when he will be free.

We decided to spend today as a review and summary of all the things I had learned so far. I won't bore you with all of the details as it was pretty routine. It was a long flight, as we spent almost 3 hours in the air. We did take about a 5-10 minute break in the middle so I could remove my foggles and rub my aching temples. Greg flew the airplane and gave me a tour of all of the abandoned and/or private airports between Houston and Navasota. There are some extremely large horse ranches out here, as well as big farms, and a lot of these people have airstrips. Some are really nice paved ones. Mucho dineros.

I did do one interesting thing that I had not done before. Although not required on the practical, I wanted to do a 0/0 visibility takeoff. We taxied onto the runway and got lined up. I double checked my directional gyro and put the foggles on. As we powered down the runway, I kept a sharp eye on the DG making sure that it stayed exactly on the heading bug that was set the to runway alignment. We did our takeoff on the small runway at Hooks, which is only 30 feet wide, so accuracy was imperative. Wow! That runway felt like it was blazing past me and the needles on the panel seemed to be bouncing around. It's not the smoothest runway in the world, but normally all of the cockpit aspects of takeoff seem muted as the vast majority of your attention is outside the plane. Before I knew it, we had hit rotation speed and were off the ground.

The next several months will be slow as Greg will be doing intensive simulator training at Continental Express. I'm going to fill some of the time with taildragger lessons. I've always wanted to get checked out in a taildragger, and my goal next summer is to take some basic aerobatic lessons. The well-known Harvey & Rihn Aviation is on the southeast side of Houston at LaPorte airport, and they give acro instruction in Citabrias, Decathalons and Pitts. All taildraggers. There is a Decathalon at the flight school next to where I hangar at, and the instructor comes well recommended. Should be fun! Additionally, I've decided to build a WWI Biplane replica (a 1917 Nieuport 11) experimental-class aircraft. Also, a baby is on the way so I expect things to get hectic!

1998 - The Adventure Continues !

Well, the "next several months" turned into over a year and a half. Multiple things combined to bring my IFR training to a screeching halt. First, Greg, my instructor, had to spend much more time with training at Continental that we had anticipated. Second, I became involved in building my own airplane, a replica of a 1911 bi-plane. This ate up several months through the summer and fall, and then the big event, the birth of my daughter, happened in Oct. '97. So, I filled up the next year and a half with diaper changing, popping rivets in my new airplane project, and filling my flying days with taildragger training (great fun!).

October, 1998

A lot of things happened in October of 1998. First, "reductions in force" (ie:layoffs) were happening at Compaq, and after over 10 years of service, I drew the short stick. The payoff in dollars was attractive and took some of the sting out of the process. So, with some extra cash and time on my hands, I decided to finish up my Instrument training. I headed down to the flight school where I had done my Private Pilot training and picked an instructor who's calendar was fairly empty over the next several weeks. My goal was to pack in as much training as possible before going back to work in early December with my new job.

November 18^th, 20^th, 24^th 1998 Lessons 1, 2 and 3 (Starting Over)

After briefing my new instructor (Eric Kortegast) on what I had done up to that point, he decided to do a review of Basic Attitude on Instruments flying and Intercepting and Tracking of VORs and NDBs. My BAI skills were still pretty sharp, and I didn't have much problems with VORs, but NDBs were giving me brain-lock for some reason. After scraping the rust off, we also did a lot of partial panel work to get my navigation skills back up to par.

November 25^th, 1998 ( An All-Day Sucker….. )

Ever heard of a "sucker hole" ? It's a hole in the clouds around your area where you are checking the weather, fooling you into thinking that the weather a few miles away is the same. So went today. The ASOS was reporting scattered clouds at 1,300 and overcast at 6,000. More than good enough to head out and practice. Once up and a few miles north of the airport however, we discovered that the scattered layer at 1,300 was more like 1,000 and it was more like a broken layer. We didn’t feel too bad as there were a few other planes that got suckered into the air and were heading back.

December 1^st, 1998 Lesson 4 ( Hold Please…..again )

Direct, Parallel and Teardrop. Three ways to enter a holding pattern. At the end of my first round of training over a year ago, holds were the topic I was practicing, and I felt that I had a pretty good handle on them. It took a few times before I could remember how to decide which was the proper method to use to enter the hold, but after a few tries I got back into the swing of things and soon was entering the holds on VORs, NDBs and intersections and running the oval track. Towards the end of the day, Eric introduced me to DME Arcs, which are another way of intercepting an approach. Basically a DME Arc is exactly what it sounds like. A VOR that sits on or near an airport is used in conjunction with the DME to fly in an arc around to some approach radial on the VOR. You intercept the arc when your DME reads the arc's published distance, and continue to monitor the DME while flying around the VOR until your preset intercept radial on the CDI comes up. Then you just turn inbound on the radial. In reality, you don't fly in a continuous arcing track. You actually fly short straight lines that roughly follow the arc. Our process was to "fly 10 - turn 10", which meant that we flew from one radial until we had gone through 10 degrees of radials (ie from the 090 radial to the 080 radial), and then we would turn our heading 10 degrees to go on to the next point (in this case the 070 radial). We'd keep this up until we were within a dot or so deflection on the CDI (which we had preset to the inbound intercept radial of 360 degrees for the published arc we were flying). It sounds pretty busy, but arcs are generally pretty far out, such as this one at 20 DME. So it took a while to fly to the next 10 degree radial before you had to turn 10 degrees.

December 2^nd, Lesson 5 ( The Blue-Plate Special….)

We only flew one lesson today due to morning fog. We did a quick review of holds on an NDB to make sure my brain was still working, and then we flew another DME Arc to see if I had forgotten it all overnight. Then we flew back to Hooks to practice the Localizer approach. A Localizer is basically the same technology as a VOR, only much more accurate. It uses your CDI and you track the needle just like tracking a radial on a VOR. The localizer has DME so you know how far out you are. Eric pulled out the Hooks LOC 17R Approach Plate and handed it to me. An Approach Plate is a wonderful thing. In a small, roughly 5x7 piece of paper you have all kinds of data that details every aspect of the approach. The meat of the chart is the route or overhead view and the side or profile view of the descent. Basically you fly to, enter and establish the final approach using the overhead view. Once established on the final approach (heading straight in to the airport), you switch to the profile view to see what altitude you should be at and when (based on time or distance to the airport). The profile view sort of steps you down the flight path towards the airport, bringing you ever closer to the MDA, or Minimum Descent Altitude. The hope is that on your way down to MDA, or upon arriving at MDA, you have broken out of the muck and can see the landing environment. If so, then you complete the landing approach. If not, you do a Missed Approach as described by the Approach Plate, which generally has you climbing out to either give the approach another try, go into a holding pattern, or just give up and divert to another airport. This approach was a "partial" approach, as I was basically being vectored to the Localizer and then would just shoot the step down process. Once established on the Localizer, it was pretty straightforward. Just maintain the heading on the CDI and maintain 1800 feet. We would do this until we hit the FLIKA intersection, which was 6.0 DME out from the airport. At this point I was supposed to start setting the airplane up for the final approach. This basically entails slowing the plane down to a speed of about 90 knots, getting a notch of flaps in, etc. and then just watch the DME tick down to 6 DME. At FLIKA, I pulled back the power and began a descent. Our "floor" or MDA was 560 feet. I was watching the altitude fall off and then noticed that I was getting off the Localizer, so I began messing with trying to get the plane lined up again. Eric began saying , "560, 560…" I thought he was just reminding me of what our MDA was going to be, but in actuality he was warning me that I was already below 600 and about to bust the MDA, which I did. After realizing it too late, I crawled back up to about 600 feet. He had me take off the goggles to look out to see where I was, and lo and behold, there was the runway right in front of me. It works!.

December 3^rd, 1998 Lesson 6 (Wherever you go, there you are….)

After spending the morning inside due to heavy fog and sifting through the finer details of an Approach Plate, we headed out after lunch to do some Full Approaches. During ground in the morning, I had learned that there are basically two kinds of approaches: Precision and Non-Precision. The precision approach pretty much lines you up with your destination runway, while a non-precision approach basically just puts you in the vicinity of the airport and you have to enter the pattern, circling to land. My first attempt was a non-precision approach to a small airport just west of Hooks called May Field. As small as it is, May has a non-precision approach via the Navasota VOR some 20nm to the northwest. This is a relatively straightforward approach. You basically just get lined up on the specified outbound radial from the VOR and start watching your DME. After getting established at 2,000' , I began to get the plane configured and started slowing down. When the DME hit 20nm from the TNV VOR, I knew that I was at the JOSEL intersection and could begin my descent. From then, you just ride the elevator down and watching your DME tick off and watch the altimeter wind down to your minimum descent altitude (MDA). Once I had descended to the MDA, I just putted along until the DME showed that I had reached the missed approach point (MAP). I took off the goggles, and lo and behold, an airport! We repeated this process a non-precision approach at a field further south called Weiser. Unlike May, this approach utilized an NDB for the directional process. In the case of Weiser, the NDB is right on the field, so flying to the field is pretty easy. However, knowing how far away you are is another case. The process works like this: From whatever direction you are coming from, fly to the NDB at the field and then turn outbound on the specified fix from the NDB, in this case 205 degrees outbound. Maintain your specified altitude of 2000 feet, head out for a minute, do the procedure turn back inbound (now on the 025 degree back towards the NDB, and begin your descent down to the MDA. Ideally you'd like to get down to the MDA before reaching the airport/NDB. If you hit the NDB and can't see the airport, you have to do a missed approach (specifically described on the approach plate). However, in the real world, you 'd hopefully see the airport at this point and circle to land. After that, we shot back to Hooks and did the Localizer approach to a full stop.

December 4^th, 1998 Lesson 7 (Been there, done that…not ?..)

Today we went to an airport on the west side of town (appropriately called West Houston Airport) and basically repeated the lesson from the previous day. West has both VOR and NDB approaches . The VOR is basically the same process as the one at Weiser, and the NDB is only slightly different. The difference is that the NDB approach is pretty close to the direction of the runway, so that if you are landing from the north, you can just land straight in. (However, if the wind dictates a southerly landing, you'd have to circle to land.) The approach plate also gives you a cross radial fix 4 miles out to help you with judging the distance to the airport. Then we headed back to Hooks, this time however to do the NDB approach to Hooks. In the case of Hooks, the NDB is set north of the airport, providing the initial approach fix (IAF) rather than sitting right on the airport. You basically head for the NDB and depending on your approach direction you may or may not have to do the procedure turn to get you heading back towards the airport. In our case, we came from the south so we headed to the NDB and then turned the specified heading outbound to the north. One minute out, procedure turn back to the south, and we headed southbound to the NDB again. Once hitting the NDB (which now becomes your final approach fix, or FAF) you begin your descent to the MDA. However, how in the heck will you know when you've reached the airport ?! Well, the approach plate gives you a handy little chart showing you the amount of time it takes to travel from the NDB to the MAP depending on you speed. For us, we were running at 90 knots , which equated to 2 minutes and 8 seconds (calm winds) to the MAP. So, after crossing the NDB, I just kicked on my handy dandy little count-down kitchen timer (in which I had already entered 2:08) and started the descent, upon reaching the MDA, I just kept on track and watched the timer count down. Sure enough, within a second or two of the time running out, we were right at the threshold!

December 19^th, 1998 Lesson 8 (A Tale of Two Needles…..)

If you wanna be like the big iron, then you'll generally always fly the approach to the big airports on an Instrument Landing System, or ILS. Fortunately, a lot of smaller regional airports have an ILS system as well, allowing us small-timers to fly very accurate approaches as well. We headed up to Montgomery County airport which has such a system. Basically, it's just like a Localizer approach that gives you horizontal alignment, but adds the wonderful feature of vertical alignment as well, called The Glideslope. Basically, the glideslope is just a localizer turned on its side. One of your VOR/OBS indicators will have two needles (one for the localizer, and one for the glideslope) and the goal is to keep both needles centered like a crosshair to bring you all the way down to the threshold of the runway. Flying the ILS is pretty easy if you know how to get your plane configured and stable for the approach. In our case, once we were on the localizer portion of the approach, I got the speed slowed down to 90 and just crept forward until the glideslope needle began to come down towards the middle of the OBS indicator. Once the glidslope needle was centered, I pulled back the power for a stable 500' per minute descent, which basically let us glide down the approach like we were on a slide at the playground. At the end of the approach, the MAP is also the decision height, or DH. Basically, since you are on the ILS system that puts you right at the threshold, once you slid down the ILS to a certain height, you have to DECIDE if you can see the runway and land. If not, then you go missed. All in all, it's a pretty easy operation. After we called missed, we did the missed approach procedure and headed to the NDB near the airport to practice a hold, and then reentered the approach and did it again. I love ILS!

January 30^th, 1999 Lesson 9 (ILS Redux….)

With the Christmas holidays and travel for the new job eating up all of January, I was out for over a month! So we decided to head up for an hour to review ILS approaches and holds, Localizer approaches and NDB approaches. It helped to knock the dust off and get me back into the swing of things.

February 4^th, 1999 Lesson 10 (Déjà vu all over again….)

We decided to repeat a lot of last time but roll it all together in a more realistic setting. It was a good review, and brought many of the little details together to help me understand how everything flows together, from the time of nearing an approach, to doing the approach, to going missed and doing the missed approach and going into a hold, and then going back into an approach. Real world stuff.

February 7^th 1999 Personal IFR building (Approach to the $100 Hamburger)

Ok. You have to build x-country hood time, but it DOESN'T have to be with an instructor! Just get a safety pilot, stick on the foggles and head out for a long lunch. In this case, I got a good friend (who happens to be instrument rated) to ride along and we headed up to Tyler about an hour and half away. They have a nice little restaurant there on Pounds Field which features a hamburger called "The Pounder". You guessed it, a whole whopping pound of a hamburger! (It's generally split between two or more people <grin> ). I shot an approach there and again back at Hooks, and flew with the foggles on most of way, accumulating about three hours of IFR sim time. My sister and her fiancee rode along in back and we combined practice with pleasure flying. Great way to build time!

February 13^th, 1999 Lesson 11 (Same song, different dance…..)

Continuing the practice of rolling everything together, we did a VOR approach at an aiport on the southwest side called Sugarland, went missed into a hold, came back and did the ILS, went missed again and went north to Weiser to do the NDB approach. Kind of a simulation of what if some really low weather had been around Sugarland and we had to divert north. I'm really getting into the roll of these approaches!

February 18^th, 19^th, and 20^th 1999 Lesson 12, 13 and 14 (Now you see it, now you don't ! )

Ok, so this started out as the same as before, but as we flew toward the initial approach fix at Montgomery County, Eric whipped out two guage covers, and voila, we had a simulated vacuum failure! No attitude indicator, and also no directional gyro! In the nomenclature of the business, a "partial panel" approach. Basically, at this point you still do everything the same, but instead of the attitude indicator you use the turn and bank coordinator, and instead of the directional gyro, you use the compass (which swings around like a drunken sailor). This really requires some control and coordination, and forces you to be as precise as possible. If this had been a true emergency, I'd have just reached up and turned on the Standby Vacuum system this plane is equipped with, but hey, this is practice! We did this for the next two days, polishing my partial panel skills during approaches. After three days of this, we flew another approach with the full panel, and it was so easy it was funny.

March 4^th, 1999 Lesson 15 (Over the river and through the woods……)

Ok, it was just under two years ago that I did this same flight. We filed IFR to Bryan-College Station (home of Texas A&M). This time however, I did all the planning, weather briefing and actual filing of the flight plan. Even scarier, once out on the ramp, I called ground control and copied the IFR clearance. Eric had pencil in hand as well to back me up. I had received the Jeppesen Clearance practice cassette tape for Christmas and had been practicing copying clearances for a few weeks, so I surprised myself and copied the clearance perfectly. I realized that the clearance tape had given me random clearances to copy, while in the real world the clearance you are copying is generally the same one you filed. So you know what to copy! It was dark by this point, and the ceiling had been overcast and dropping during the late afternoon. However, for our short 1 hour hop to Bryan, we were in the clear. I did an DME arc to a localizer back-course approach at Bryan in a stiff 30 knot wind, and managed to get it down in one piece. After a Diet Coke and filing the return route, we taxied back out and I copied the clearance again. By this time the ceiling had dropped to 2,000' and we were assigned to 3,000' on the way back, so a minute after takeoff, I was in the soup. Actual IMC !! We had to kill the strobe lights as they were pretty annoying in the clouds. ATC kept us in the junk until about 15 minutes out, so I got about 45 minutes of actual IMC. I did the NDB back into Hooks, with a stiff headwind still beating us around. All in all, I was extremely excited. I had planned, filed and flew and actual IFR x-country trip. Next up…..the long cross country !!!!

March 6^th, 1999 Lesson 16 (Who's on First ??!?!?!?! )

The day had arrived. A real, no-holds barred (no pun intended) IFR cross-country to multiple airports, dealing with various branches of the ATC. Eric had me plan our first leg into Austin's Mueller airport, which is the BIG airport downtown. Eventually, all the big carriers will move over to the bigger Austin-Bergstrom Intl. (which is a former air base), but downtown Mueller still serves the big iron. After departing Hooks, the tower handed me off to Houston Approach, who eventually handed me over to Houston Center. After that, we were handed off to one or two more Houston Center frequencies before finally being handed to Austin Approach. I had filed the Biter-2 arrival which is what is called a Standard Terminal Arrival Route, or STAR. This is basically a pre-planned route for you to follow into a major airport. However, since it can get crowded, once you are approach the vicinity of the airport, the controllers my vector you all around for spacing. In our case, Approach got us pretty much lined up in a northerly direction to intercept the ILS at Austin and then handed us over to Austin Tower. Tower acknowledged our approach and told us to intercept the ILS. A few minutes later, as we were pretty much lined up for the localizer portion of the approach, the tower came back and said, "52M, why are you turning away from the airport?! What are your intentions?" Eric and I looked at each other in bewilderment. I responded, "Uh, Austin Tower, 52M is on the localizer to intercept the ILS." Which basically put us due north-bound. The tower came back frantically, "Negative 52M ! You are going southbound, turn immediately to a heading of 270." I was speechless. Eric and I frantically looked at the compass, the directional gyro, outside…heck we could see the airport up ahead ! I responded again that we were northbound, and the tower insisted that we were going south and to turn west and contact Austin Approach. I turned west and called approach. The same guy who had handed us off earlier came on, and sheepishly replied, "Uh, Archer 2052M, sorry about that. A Mooney showed up in the middle of everything with the same ending number, 52M, and really threw a monkey wrench in the works." He got us turned back towards the airport, and handed us back to the tower. Apparently, Austin was also hosting a Bonanza fly-in and dozens of Bonanzas were coming in along with the regular big iron service. So the tower was a bit overwhelmed. He got us lined up again for the ILS and apologized. I told him that I'd talk to the Mooney about buying me 20 minutes worth of gas! Once on the ground, we taxied in amidst 737s, Learjets, and a mix of Bonanzas and Barons at the convention. A short break, a Diet Coke and I filed the next leg of our journey: Austin to Waco. The sun had set and it was a beautiful evening, but that quickly got cut short as I stuck the foggles on. The route to Waco was a straight shot north up a Victor airway, which also pretty much lines you up for the ILS up there. We did that in less than 50 minutes. It was about 7:30 now and the airport was getting quiet, as the last American Eagle flight was in for the day. We taxied up to the FBO, told them to top it off, and went inside. A very nice lady gave us the keys to one of their brand new courtesy cars and gave us a map into town where all the restaurants were. After a quick 10 minute drive, we got some Mexican food and were back in an hour to file the next leg of the journey: Waco back to Hooks. By this time, I was an old pro at copying clearances, and then we were back in the air. However, we had a 30 knot headwind to contend with, and our hour and twenty minute flight became an hour and forty five minutes. We taxied back to the hangar at about 10:45, roughly 5 and half hours later, and 4.5 hours under the hood. I was wiped. But I really felt that I had some great exposure to the realities of the ATC system. It would probably be different with rain and low ceilings, but nevertheless I felt much more comfortable with my abilities.

March 16^th, 1999 Lesson 17 (Back to Basics……)

Ok, with the IFR Cross-Countries out of the way, everything has been learned (HA HA !!!) It's now time to start polishing the rough edges and begin "practicing" for the check ride. To make sure that I hadn't completely forgotten everything from the early lessons, Eric ran me through some NDB and Localizer holds, an NDB approach, and a Localizer approach. I performed them all adequately if not perfectly. It's amazing how quickly your skills can deteriorate. But I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and it's getting brighter. Also, due to work pressures and home life, I've only recently finished watching the last of the 7 video tapes in the King IFR Written series. I've started sneaking time in at work to review the Written questions (all 904 of them) before I begin taking the practice exam.

March 18^th, 1999 Lesson 18 (This is your brain… This is your brain on Partial Panel…)

Blame it on a long day at work, unfamiliarity with the plane (C-172 tonight as the Archer was in Dallas) or bad biorhythms, but BOTH the approaches were awful tonight. We started out with a VOR-B approach into West Houston. Eric played ATC and vectored me onto course. This approach comes up pretty quick after taking off from Hooks, as West Houston is not far away. I thought everything was going along ok, but something kept nagging me in the back of my mind. The MAP for this approach is based on time after the FAF. However, West Houston has an NDB right on the field, and for some stupid reason, I got it into my head that crossing the NDB was the MAP. I'll plead some of the brain-lapse on the fact that Eric had slapped covers on the attitude indicator and DG to simulate partial panel conditions. In any case, I basically hosed up of the approach and went missed. (The NDB is on the opposite side of the field from the approach direction, and by the time I had NDB passage, I was past the airport). My biggest error? Not FULLY briefing myself on the approach plate, BEFORE getting into the actual approach. Eric vectored me out and I did a semi-decent (well, not really even decent…) partial-panel NDB approach. I think that I'm too anxious for this all to be over and I need to focus on each step. Well, I'll take a short break as I couldn't get on Eric's schedule for almost a week.

March 23^rd, 1999 Lesson 19 (NDB stands for No Duh Bozo !!!! )

Ugh….. It hasn't gotten any better. Eric decided not to do partial panel tonight to help me focus on getting the NDB stuff right, as it appears that I'm having serious brain-hiccups with these. Things were going pretty well on the West Houston NDB approach. I had really briefed myself and was cruising towards the NDB. After crossing the NDB, I turned outbound to go out and do the procedure turn inbound. Of course, after crossing the NDB, I couldn't turn on the actual outbound course, as I was past the NDB and had to turn back to intercept the outbound bearing. I was about 30 degrees left of course, so I turned 60 degrees to the right and began tracking back towards the course, also remembering to begin the timer for the 2 minutes outbound. As I approached the outbound heading, I had brain-lock on NDB intercept procedures and instead of turning to the outbound course after seeing 30 degrees of opposite deflection on the ADF, I kept going, thinking the needle needed to be straight up. Of course, this put me well past of the proper outbound course (almost 25-30 degrees past before I realized what was going on), and well past my 2 minutes. I should have realized that something was wrong when the timer approached 2 minutes and I hadn't even gotten established on the outbound yet. That completely wrecked the NDB approach. It was starting to sprinkle and threatening to rain, and it was dark, so Eric vectored me towards Weiser, which is between Hooks and West Houston, for the Weiser NDB approach. Well, we were so darn close to the airport that it was difficult for me to plan how fast to come down, and I wound up crossing the MAP (which is the NDB as Weiser) at about 1300 feet, rather than the 720 feet on the approach plate. We went missed and kept heading towards Hooks. At this point Eric decided to give me a break and told me to take off my foggles and let him fly the NDB approach into Hooks. Following along with him was very easy, and it seemed to be so simple to do. I realized though that he was always doing something, and always talking to himself / me. Something I had read one time about flying approaches came back to me: "If you're not doing something, you're forgetting something." Although approaches aren't wild, abrupt maneuvers, they are very busy and constantly require attention. Especially the ones like NDBs, where constant vigilance must be kept for heading accuracy. I think I'm suffering some training burn-out, and have gotten lax in my concentration. However, Eric says that my flying is great, and that the only thing I seem to be having problems with is working with NDBs. So, we'll concentrate a little more on those, and I should be darn close to the checkride. In the mean time, I've gotten about halfway through the 904 possible questions in the FAA IFR Written question pool. I really want to go through all of them before taking the practice exams.

March 27^th, 1999 Lesson 20 (Close only counts in Horshoes and Hand Grenades…)

I flew the ILS first at Conroe just as a warmup (read: confidence builder) since my ILS approaches are nearly flawless. After the missed, I headed to the NDB as published and entered the hold. There was a fair amount of wind, so we went around and around the hold to help me practice tracking to the NDB. All in all, it wasn't too bad. After the hold, I began the NDB approach and while not pretty, it was passable. We left Conroe and headed back to Hooks for the NDB approach there. Eric vectored me to the NDB and I crossed the NDB and began the approach. I was absolutely determined to track that NDB in. The track looked perfect. I was stabilized in my descent. I knew the MDA. But….. oh yeah, remember to time the approach from the NDB. Without the time, this approach was useless. Eric let me descend to the MDA and then look up. Fortunately, there was the runway, but not by any skill of mine. Turn, Time, Twist, Throttle, Talk. The 5 Ts. Learn them, live them, love them.

April 15^th, 1999 Lesson 21 ( DHI/TDI…. NOW I understand !!!)

Ok, sometimes it's the little things. At the beginning of my lessons with Eric, he had taught me an acronym to remember to help with NDB intercepts. DHI and TDI. Desired, Head, Intercept, and Tail, Desired, Intercept. Somewhere between the blackboard and the airplane, I had translated DHI into Desired, Heading, Intercept, when the H was supposed be just Head (for the Head of the ADF needle) and TDI into Track, Desired, Intercept, where the T was really supposed to be Tail (for the Tail of the ADF needle). I would look at the DG and see where I was going, but couldn't resolve that with my Desired course and Intercept course. Bad weather a few days earlier had led me to sit in the simulator for about 30 minutes while Eric threw NDB stuff at me. At one point, he said, "Where is the Tail of your ADF? Where's the Head?" I pointed to it and he said, "OK, remember, Tail, Desired, Intercept", while pointing out each of the course headings. Tail? Head?? TAIL !!! HEAD!! NOW I understood. The clouds cleared, the fog lifted, the sun came out, the lights came on. You name the saying, it happened right then. So….with that knowledge in hand we headed down to Sugarland (for a change of pace) and warmed up with the ILS, and then I did the NDB……perfectly. We headed north and I did the NDB at West Houston…….perfectly. It was getting dark and starting to rain so we did a straight in landing for 35L at Hooks and called it a day. A great day indeed. Additionally, during the two weeks between Lesson 20 and Lesson 21, I finished going through all the 904 written questions, and score consistently in the mid to high 90s on the practice exams. Eric signed me off for the written, so I'll get that scheduled asap. Another interesting item to note: The Archer has been down off and on for maintenance, or gone with the owner since he has moved out of town, so I've been flying a Cessna 172 from the flight school. The Archer will be permanently gone in about a month, so I'll probably continue to fly the 172 for familiarity as I approach the check ride.

April 22^nd, 1999 Lesson 22 (NDB. No Problem……on Partial Panel ??????)

With the NDB problem out of the way, Eric decided to remove the net out from under me (or rather the gyros) to see if I was really on top of it. We flew the NDB at Conroe with full panel just as a warmup, and then he slapped on the gyro covers during the missed approach. I flew the published missed back to the NDB, went around the hold once and then did an ILS under partial panel with no problem, and there was even some wind! We stayed under partial panel all the way back to Hooks where I did the NDB there under partial panel, again with no problem. To make sure this wasn't a fluke, we'll do another day of partial panel to see if it is sticking with me.

April 24^th, 1999 Lesson 23 (Partial Panel? Piece of Cake……)

With the previous lesson still fresh in my mind, we headed up to Conroe to enter the hold. On the way, Eric threw on the gyro covers, and then played ATC. I copied a non-standard hold instruction for the Conroe NDB, entered it properly and tracked it with no problem, all on partial panel. He then sent me into the NDB approach out of the hold, which went flawlessly. After the missed, he vectored me to the ILS, which I again flew perfectly on partial panel. This prompted him to comment that I seemed to fly better on partial panel than with the all the goodies. We headed back to Hooks where I flew the NDB approach perfectly, again on partial panel. This convinced Eric that I was on top of the game. We will do a review flight next Friday to go over all the maneuvers, and then Eric will arrange a Stage Check ride with another instructor to see if I'm ready for the real Checkride. The light is glaring at the end of the tunnel!

April 29^th, 1999 Instrument Written Exam

Just a quick note about the IFR Written Exam. Took a long lunch today and went and took the exam before all the info leaked out of my head! Passed with a 92 (missed 5 out of a possible 60). After watching 7 video tapes and going through all 904 questions, it was pretty anticlimatic. The test took a whole 50 minutes, and that was with going back and rechecking each question. Thanks Martha and John!

April 30^th, 1999 Lesson 24 (I remember the Good Ole Days…….)

Steep turns ? Stalls ? Timed Turns ? Wow. Hadn't really done any of those in a loooooong time. So, back under the hood I went to brush off the dust and knock off the cobwebs. The steep turns under the hood brought back memories from over a year ago when I realized how active all the gauges seemed to be when the turn was active. Eric seemed to want me to focus more on making sure I maintained exactly 45 degrees and constant altitude by yoke pressure, whereas Greg had emphasized altitude maintenance more and used slightly increasing and decreasing bank angles to maintain the altitude. However, after a couple of times around, it was pretty stable and we moved on. Stalls were no problem. To me, by focusing on the attitude indicator rather than the VFR version of the stall which is looking out at the sky, it is much easier to maintain a level attitude and recover more crisply. Greg then covered up the DG and had me do a timed turns, one 180 degree and one 360 degree turn. These were pretty easy. We capped it off with an NDB partial panel approach back into Hooks just to keep them fresh. Next week I'll spend about 4 hours with Les Hock, another flight instructor at UFS, to do a stage check, or, "simulated" checkride.

May 1^st, 1999 Non-IFR event but eventful none the less……..(long, skip if you don't want to hear a sob story.)

Ok. I'm no superpilot (as John King is fond of saying), but I grade myself as a competent and safe pilot. Saturday, May 1^st 1999 will be ingrained in my mind for some time to come. I have about 500+ landings to date (about 100 of those in taildraggers), and about 250 total hours under my belt. All without incident. But nature, fate and complacency can be a deadly combination and I was lucky to be only bitten by a small dog of an incident rather than a full-grown grisly bear of an accident. For those familiar with the EAA, of which I am an active member, you will be familiar with the Young Eagles program where we give youngsters their first ride in an airplane to encourage them on to an aviation career. I've done lots of these before and it's always very rewarding. I took off from Hooks early in a rented 172 (actually the same one from the prior evening) and headed over to West Houston. It was breezy, but manageable and I didn’t give the landing a second thought. (Probably my first mistake.) After the morning briefing, we lined up to start flying the 100+ kids waiting in the terminal. My first passenger was a young girl about the age of 10. She was very quiet as we walked out to the plane, and as I finished telling her about flying and what we would be doing, we climbed into the plane. When I started to get her buckled in, she looked up at me with her big brown eyes……..filled with tears. She confessed that she was "really scared". I told her that it was completely alright, and she absolutely did not have to fly. We got out, and she really cut loose on the tears and said she was sorry. I felt really sorry for her and told her that she could fly any other day when she was ready. So, first one down, still haven't flown. The second one was another girl, about 14. She was very excited about the flight and we got settled in and took off without event and flew our pre-determined 20 minute course. I got back into the pattern with about 5 other planes and eventually got lined up in a long line of planes on final. Even though we were some distance out from the runway, I could see that the wind was really kicking up and now was steady at about 10 knots and gusting, probably to 15-17 knots…….almost perpendicular to the runway. Still, I was completely confident and proceeded to go about the process of getting set up for the landing. Quite a bit of crosswind correction was required to keep the plane on the centerline. We descended across the threshold, getting kicked around somewhat by the gusts and flared out for landing. Just as the nose wheel came down on the pavement, the tail of the plane seem to lift off the runway and the plane veered to the right and up on its nose. I frantically fought for control, killing power and trying to get it settled back onto the surface. About then, at the highest angle that the tail had lifted up, I heard a noise like a chisel on concrete. Prop strike. The tail dropped to level and the plane skewed across the runway. I continued to fight for directional control and to bring the speed down. I got all three wheels on the surface and the plane going straight…..into the grass off the runway towards the end. The plane ended up in a clearing off the corner of the opposite end of the runway. We both sat there, stunned by what had happened. I had enough lucidity to know that the engine was still running, and remembering the prop strike, began scanning the engine gauges. Everything looked and sounded normal, so I taxied onto the taxiway and to the ramp nearby. I shut it down and apologized profusely to the girl who, amazingly, was not flustered in the least (not outwardly at least). With shaking hands I signed her Young Eagles certificate and congratulated her on her first flight. And, at that moment, what I wanted to be my last. I went into the pilot's lounge and composed myself. A few other pilots in the lounge commented on seeing what happened and felt that the wind was getting extremely strong, especially for a crosswind. At West Houston, crosswinds also roll across the T-hangars and end up on the runway as vortices. I still couldn't help but be distraught, frightened and very embarrassed. Everyone else was still landing. Why did I have a problem. I gained enough composure to call the FBO (same place I take lessons) and give them the news. I told them about the prop strike and they agreed that I should leave it parked and they would come pick me up in about 20 minutes. It took more like an hour and a half for them to come, during which time I looked at the prop and inspected the small curls at the end of each blade, and answered about a dozen questions from friends and curious bystanders. The guys from the FBO arrived, snapped some pictures of the prop and marveled that I didn't strike a wing tip, making the incident all the more mysterious. We flew back to Hooks in the 172 they had brought, and my palms were sweating, even though I wasn't flying, as the pilot fought nearly identical crosswinds back at Hooks. He commented that they were rough at Hooks and that West Houston had been even worse coming in for the landing. I talked with the owner for a while and he was very understanding. I already knew that I'd have to cough up some money for the insurance deductible. He told me that I hadn't really caused the school any added downtime since the plane was scheduled to come off the line in a couple of weeks for a new engine, which was already waiting for it over at the shop. I went home feeling like I'd never want to fly again, much less finish my IFR training. The FBO owner had given me an insurance form to fill out, along with a description of the incident. I thought long and hard about what had happened that afternoon and night, going back over the weather still available online from that morning, and fell asleep trying to dissect what happened. I spent the next morning cleaning the pool and basically not thinking about flying. Later in the day, I had an FAA Aviation Safety Representative give me a call. However, it's not what you think. This gentleman is a both a member of our EAA chapter and a friend, and was present at the Young Eagles event that morning. He did an enormous amount of spirit lifting and confidence boosting for me, basically telling me that it can happen to anyone, and to get back in the saddle as soon as possible. He told me to review crosswind landings to help me reassure myself that I knew all the maneuvers. I went over to the FBO later in the evening to drop off the insurance record and the owner was there. He too reassured me that while it was frightening and unnerving, it could happen to anyone and I should fly again as soon as possible to convince myself that I was competent. I probably spent most of Monday at work reading everything I could get my hands on about crosswind landings and felt that I knew them intimately. My final diagnoses is that upon landing and the mains and nose where on the ground, I might have become lax about the crosswind and not held in the aileron correction appropriately, especially if a gust hit me. That would have caused the plane to drift, and if the yoke was not fully back, the plane was susceptible to nosing over. I may never fully know what happened, because it happened so fast. However, I can tell you this: I will NEVER, NEVER be complacent about any landing again, ESPECIALLY crosswind landings!! I fly again on Thursday for my stage check and I think now, Tuesday, that I'm ready to fly again. I certainly feel much better about it than last Saturday !!!

(Postscript: After checking out the plane, the FBO's mechanic declared it fit to fly, and they just replaced the prop with a spare. The damaged prop went into the shop, where they easily repaired the bent tips.)

May 6^th, 1999 Lesson 25 ("Congratulations gentlemen. You are everything we have come to expect from years of training."-Zed, chief Man in Black, from Men in Black).

We had set aside 4 hours today to perform a "pseudo-checkride". Les Hock, the instructor, and I basically sat down with the Practical Test Standards, and he focused on all the required items for both the oral and practical segments, and then we went over an oral practice review. Les quizzed me on things like required instruments and instrument inspections, IFR currency, etc. I had planned an IFR flight from Hooks to Dallas Love field and back. We reviewed that and he said that I had done a good job, especially in choosing the SIDs and STARs. We then spent a lot of time reviewing approach plates and he focused on some of the more tricky items of some of the plates. I then went and planned a quick flight to College Station, got a full weather briefing, and filed the flight plan. After preflighting the plane, strapping in and lighting the fires, I called ground and he rattled off our clearance. I wasn't really ready for it, since they usually say, "We've got your clearance, advise when ready to copy." In this case he just started right into the clearance after my first call and I got a little behind. I thought I had gotten all of the salient points because he came back with "Readback correct." However, on the way out to the runway, I realized I didn't know our immediate on-course direction. Les smiled and said, "I figured you didn't have it all after hearing your readback. " He gave it to me since he had copied the clearance as well. He said that it just goes to show you that the controllers can be lax and you should be on top of things. After taking off, he said that I had already done one thing wrong: I had forgotten to enter the squawk code. I blame this on the fact that someone had taken the checklist out of the plane, and I had used the pitiful one in the POH. However, I also blame it on getting behind and getting flustered. Once in the air and on course, the tower handed me off to Departure. I started tracking on course and making sure everything was set up on the comm and nav radios. Everything went pretty normal and Departure eventually handed me off to Center. After about 10 minutes of that, Les had me cancel IFR and we proceeded out to the practice area to do a variety of maneuvers. One that he did I had not done since my first days of IFR training over a year ago: Unusual Attitude recovery while under the hood. I did pretty good for not having done them in some time, although he wanted me to be a little quicker in my recovery. I remember that when I did these with Greg way back, he wanted me to be more procedural and thorough rather than rapid. However, I feel that I'm pretty good on diagnosing the situation with these and can respond quicker if required. We did stalls, steep turns, etc, and then he did manage to trip me up. I had just finished turning to a heading of 020 under partial panel using the compass. I rolled out darn near right on the heading so things were going good. Then, he covered up the compass as well, and told me to do a timed turn. I thought, "No problem", figuring that he'd have be turn 180 or 360 degrees (one or two minutes on a standard rate turn.) However, he told me to turn to a heading of 180. Let's see, that's 160 degrees, and how many degrees per second? I had brain lock. We did the math together for review. 180 degrees is 60 seconds, or 3 degrees per second. I needed to turn 160 degrees, which worked out to about 53 seconds. I managed to turn out almost right on the heading. We then headed back in for an NDB approach with a circle-to-land completion due to the wind direction. I darn near flew a perfect NDB approach, right up until the very end. The wind was blowing out of the north pretty good by now, and although I had planned on a 90 knot approach (which should have required 2 minutes from the FAF to the MAP), I was moving across the ground more like 100 knots. I didn't compensate for this and after a minute had gone by he told me to look up. I was darn near to the MAP. Per our instructions from the tower, we broke off to the west and began the circle to land. As we turned west, I watched the timer and determined that I was about 15-20 seconds off, which would have put us directly over the airport. Probably would have sufficed for a circle to land approach, but it wouldn't have been pretty in real IFR. We landed and Les congratulated me on a great job. He said that he thought I was ready, with a little polish on a few areas, namely: Unusual Attitudes, Enroute Preparation and NDB Approach Speed. I feel good about all of those, so I'll go up again with Eric to knock those out, and hopefully be ready for the Checkride very soon!

May 16^th/17^th, 1999 "Relax Luke. Feel the Force"

Sorry, with all the Star Wars hype, couldn't resist the reference. But that's exactly what I did for a couple of days in preparation for the checkride, and to help convince myself that the previous crosswind incident was a fluke. The 16^th was a little windy, which was good for helping me practice my crosswind technique. I headed over to West Houston, the scene of the crime as it were, and did about 5 touch and goes. The crosswind wasn't nearly as bad as it had been that fateful day, but enough to let me experiment. After 5 uneventful landings, I headed back. About halfway back, I crossed over Weiser, which has an east-west runway, and darn narrow and short to boot. The crosswind looked to be 90 degrees across the runway at about 10 knots, so I girded up my courage and got in the pattern. Guess what happened? Nothing. The landing required a lot of crosswind correction, and setting the airplane down on one main and then the next, but the rollout was uneventful and I powered up and headed back to Hooks. The following day, I went up for a joyride, something I hadn't really done in months, and also just practiced holding on an NDB. Three days to the checkride. Ugh…

May 20^th, 1999 CHECKRIDE !! "Failure is not an option." - Gene Kranz, Apollo 13 Flight Director

The day had arrived. I took off of work early the prior day to work on my flight plan and brush up on a few details for the oral exam. I also wanted to get to bed at a reasonable hour to get a good night's sleep. In retrospect I probably should have taken the entire day off, as I still didn't get to bed until about 11pm! In any case, I was up bright and early the following morning, polishing off a few weather items for the flight plan that the DE had assigned to me. I ate a light breakfast and headed over to the airport. The appointment was for 9am, and Eric had told me to arrive an hour early to get some paperwork out of the way. After I got there, I signed out the plane (the same 172 that the prop strike occurred in!), and then got with Eric to make sure that the Form 8010 was all filled out and that he had put all the proper endorsements in my logbook. I had taken the Oral Exam Review Guide with me and just spent some time walking around the ramp, reviewing a little bit, and relaxing and enjoying the morning. I should say at this point that although I didn't plan to fail the checkride, I had promised myself that failure wouldn't be the end of the world. In fact, if I failed a portion of the process at any point, I would elect to continue on, knowing that I'd probably pass a lot more than I failed. That way when I came back to finish the checkride, I'd only have to redo the failed segments. The Instrument Checkride is arguably the hardest oral/checkride of any of the license/ratings exams. Looking at it this way helps to reduce the amount of stress you put yourself under. The DE, Dan Jones (the same guy who had given me my Private checkride a few years earlier), arrived about 9:15. We chatted a little bit and then sat got down to business about 9:30. Dan reviewed all the paperwork, checked my logbook and gracefully accepted his $200 examiner's fee. Dan asked some cursory questions about pilot and airplane currency, and then jumped into his favorite portion: the cross-country plan. I remembered that Dan was more concerned with safety than details from my Private checkride, and he pretty much followed the same process when quizzing me about the cross-country plan. I think he figures that if you made a decent grade on your Written (92 for me), that you know all the "right, technical" answers, and he applies more reality to the process. Most of the oral dealt with things like, "You're enroute, in actual IMC, and you lose Comm. What do you do?" Or, "You lose electrical". Or, "You get to your alternate and it's socked in." Or, "You're icing up. What are you going to do?" And on and on. He really makes you think about the practical elements of flying in IMC. When then wrapped up the oral segment with a discussion about the various aspects of approach plates. I really like this portion because I'm pretty good at reading the plates (something about being a map buff has it in my blood!). However, I couldn't remember the diameter of an MSA circle (25nm), or what a combination Outer Marker, NDB is called (Compass Locator). Turns out he could remember either of them as well, so we agreed to look them up later. He then briefed me on the plan for the practical flying segment, which was basically to head down West Houston, Sugarland, back to West Houston, upon where we would be done and then head back to Hooks. We talked a little about how he would operate as ATC, what he expected in terms of simulating approach communications and to what standards I'd be held. He told me that he'd be monitoring my heading and altitude accuracy for "general guidelines", but that as long as I stayed within "reasonable" limits I'd be OK. He was more concerned that I not break any minimum altitudes for the approaches. He then gave me some time to review the various approach plates for Sugarland and West Houston (which I had fortunately flow all before) and do the plane pre-flight. This is a good break in between the oral and practical segments to get your thoughts together and prepare yourself for the real meat of the Instrument checkride. Once settled in the plane and powered up, Dan gave me a practice clearance (which if followed would basically put us on course to West Houston). I did the readback correct, called Ground and taxied out. We did the runup and were cleared to take off. I turned to the heading that Dan had given me in the clearance and began the climb to the assigned altitude. After about 5 minutes of silence, I realized that Dan expected me to simulate the frequency change over to Approach. I apologized that I was momentarily confused about the ATC "play" scenario, and then "contacted" Approach. Dan responded with a new heading and began giving me vectors to the VOR approach at West Houston. Upon briefing the plate, I was pleasantly reminded that this approach used DME off of the Humble VOR, ie…no timing required. However, I programmed in the time in the timer as a backup. It was at this point that Dan reached over and slapped covers on the attitude indicator and DG. I made a simulated call to ATC to inform them that I was No Gyro. They (Dan) asked if I could still accept the VOR approach. I responded in the positive, hoping that I wasn't making some critical mistake. Luckily I wasn't. I intercepted the radial and began tracking in. At this point I made a minor but not critical mistake. The FAF was designated primarily by a DME distance, and secondarily by a cross radial from the Hobby VOR. I was fixated by the DME distance reading for the MAP, and didn't pay attention to the DME for the FAF. Instead, I was focusing on the cross-radial reading for the FAF. As a result, I actually began my descent a little late. However, it was legal and it worked out Ok. Upon nearing the MDA, Dan had me remove my goggles and said, "You've broken out of the clouds. Do a circle to land." Now I made another minor error. I turned into the downwind landing on 15, and called my position out on the CTAF frequency. As I proceed downwind, Dan asked how I knew I was supposed to use 15 instead of 33. I realized at that point that I hadn't gotten an airport advisory. I backed up my decision by saying that we had been monitoring the CTAF frequency, and that I had heard numerous aircraft make calls for the 15 runway. He accepted that but commented on the importance of getting the airport environment info prior to the approach. I turned base and final, and made an uneventful landing. We powered up and headed south towards Sugarland. He vectored us out west somewhat and had me do a steep turn to the right. That went with no problem. He followed that up with an unusual attitude recovery on partial panel. Again no problem. He then gave me vectors towards Sugarland and then said that he had a Holding Clearance to give me. I got my paper ready and responded that I was ready to copy. I was to track to the Sugarland NDB and then track the 350 outbound (also the ILS radial) to an intersection and hold there as published. A little bit of crosswind made the track inbound a little challenging, but it all went well. I got a little flustered after contacting Sugarland tower and requesting what Dan had just told me to do. They wanted to know my position. Well, I know I was west/northwest of the airport, but really didn't have a clue on my distance. I said that I was just west of the airport and pretty darn close, as the NDB began to get sensitive. Tower cleared me for my request and told be to report entering the hold. I tracked outbound from the NDB and when I got slightly south of the airport, the localizer from the ILS kicked in and gave me more accurate info, as well as the DME info I would need to find the intersection. I decided to do a teardrop entry on the hold and began my one minute outbound after crossing the intersection. I remembered in the nick of time to call the tower and report entering the hold. I did the teardrop out and got aligned on the inbound portion of the hold. I tracked inbound to the fix and turned outbound for the first circuit. It was at that point that I realized that I became confused with the distance to make the hold. The answer was 1 minute legs, although I had brainlock since I was using DME to identify the holding fix. I was still pondering the question in my mind and had decided to turn inbound at one minute when Dan came on and said to turn inbound at pilot's discretion, and to make the ILS approach. I answered him appropriately and called tower. They approved the approach and told me to report turning inbound. I turned inbound and realized that the glideslope was already centered and that I needed to start descending and began getting realigned on the localizer. After about 30 seconds I realized that I hadn't called the tower and did so then. They told me to report the fix inbound (from the hold earlier). I looked at my DME and realized that I was already just inside the fix and reported so. Luckily they weren't busy and cleared me for approach and landing. At this point I just tracked the ILS in to the DH. Dan had told me that if he didn’t have me remove my foggles or tell me anything, that I was supposed assume that I was still in IMC and go missed. Which is what I did. I reported the missed to the tower and that we would be heading north (per instruction from Dan). This put us a few miles south of West Houston and Dan instructed me to proceed direct to the West Houston NDB when able and that I was cleared for the NDB approach. I like doing this NDB approach because the NDB is directly on the field and the passage of it indicates the MAP…ie, no timing required to the MAP! Dan handed me off to the traffic adivisory frequency and I announced my intentions to West Houston. I crossed the NDB and began my two minute outbound track. My biggest concern at this point was to make sure I stayed on the proper outbound course. Fortunately, the wind was pretty much directly behind us and tracking was easy. After two minutes out, I did my procedure turn and got established inbound and made my first descent step, making calls to West Houston traffic. The FAF is a cross radial from Humble and I hit that and began my descent to the MDA. I hit the MDA and began chugging along (actually about 50-100 feet above the MDA for safety). The MAP is also designated by another cross radial from Humble, so I dialed that in so I could see how close I was getting to the NDB/MAP. With the wind cooperating, the inbound track was very easy. A minute later the cross radial lined up and a few seconds later the NDB showed station passage. Since Dan hadn't said anything, I went missed and called both CTAF and then "Approach". Dan told me to turn to a heading of 010, altitude of 1500 and proceed towards Hooks. Proceed back to Hooks? Hadn't he said after the oral that we would do our stuff at Sugarland and West Houston, after which the test would be over and we'd deadhead back to Hooks?? Could this mean the test was over??? Upon reaching 1500, he told be I could remove my goggles and navigate back normally direct to Hooks. Others had told me, as well as Dan himself, that if the DE doesn't specifically tell you you've failed a segment, then you haven't failed yet? And was the test now over? I decided not to take any chances and flew my best VFR back to Hooks. Being so low at this time of day (about 1:00pm), the ground was pretty warm already and it was pretty bumpy, with thermals lifting us like a piece of paper every now and then. A couple of times I fought a thermal pretty hard, after which Dan pushed on the yoke and said, "Watch this. When you push down on the yoke, the plane goes down. Don't let the plane fly you." I wanted to respond that the thermals had caused the sudden lifts, but decided that the test was over and he was now providing general flying advice. I bit my tongue and accepted the input and called Hooks for the landing. We landed and taxied back to FBO and shut down. At this point I was pretty sure I had passed, and couldn't quite believe I had really done it! Dan gave me a variety of feedback, most of it dealing with being more communicative, both with ATC and local traffic frequencies. He then said those golden words, "I think you know what your doing though, so I'll write up your ticket." I stammered my thanks, and he headed inside. I don't think I've ever had so much fun tying down an aircraft. I headed inside where I ran into my instructor, Eric, who stuck out his had and said with a big smile, "Congratulations." Thus, a little over two years since I began this adventure, for a total of about 9 actual months of flying, countless dollars spent (really, don't count the dollars, you'll get ill) and much study and sweat, I now am Instrument Authorized!!!! Was it worth it? Of course…<grin>