Instrument Lesson #3: Timing turns and bit of Alpha

The picture below is my GPS track from tonight's lesson. My direction of flight along the loop is "up" on the track starting in the middle of the picture, and we are headed "down" the part of the track to the right of center. Most of the early part of the flight was trying to test how accurate the turn coordinator is in my aircraft. We would do timed turns using the clock and turn coordinator then check it against how much turn we actually achieved on the directional gyro. From all this we arrived at the bank angles necessary for standard and half standard rate turns.

Once the bank angles were known, we flew elements of the "Alpha" pattern. The alpha pattern is flown at one altitude, and is meant as a practice of the different types of turns a pilot might be asked to perform in the IFR environment: holding patterns, course reversal, and procedure turns for example. Next time, my instructor wants to do the Bravo pattern, which is the same type of thing except with altitude changes to simulate approach type maneuvers.

I recently purchased a set of yoke and rudders by CH Products, to be used for flight sim practice. It is my hope that I can practice on my off days, so that my lessons can be as productive as possible.

I took a friend from work up flying this past week, I am working on getting the HD video he shot during the flight uploaded into a future post.

Time this flight: 1.4
Total Time: 145.7
Simulated Logged: 1.1