IFR Phase Check

I'm learning how to fly by instruments. It's been a long, slow process often interrupted by that thing we call everyday life. In fact, I recently celebrated two years of "I should be finished in a month."

This week, however, I reached a milestone: my club's IFR phase check. This is not an actual FAA-mandated activity, but my flying club insists on this as part of the learning process. It is a practice test, where you fly with a different instructor who acts as an examiner. The instructor puts you through your paces, makes you do all the things you are required to do in the actual exam and then gives you feedback.

In preparation for the phase check I was assigned a route and some approaches to plan and that's where the fun started. I did not have the appropriate charts, but a quick trip to the Airport Shop should have solved that. Crisis time, however! The store was out of the charts and plates I needed and the new ones were not arriving until after my test. Not a biggie, though: the plates I could download and print from my computer and I was able to borrow a chart from one of my friends.

So the day of the test arrived and I made my way to the airport at the ungodly hour of eight in the morning and met my instructor. We proceeded to the back room for the question and answer session. Half an hour later I had learned that I needed to review my knowledge of charts and the different phases of an instrument approach. I think I would have done better on the chart part if I had borrowed an NOS chart instead of a Jeppesen one: same information, but different symbols than I had studied.

When that was done I went to get the plane ready for our flight only to find out it had a leaking tire. Luckily for me, 172SPs are abundant at our club and we were able to get another one for the flight. So we refuel the plane, do the standard checks and are ready for our flight.

The flight itself was entertaining (and baffling) from the start. Our clearance was "vectors to our final destination" which means air traffic control would point us in the right direction. And point us they did, until they told me to fly straight to the EWTOF waypoint from where I was supposed to start my approach to Salinas. I let the GPS take the best of me and as a result did a really crappy initial leg for the approach, significantly overshooting it. I eventually managed to correct the situation, but not before getting the dreaded 3/4 scale deflection, which meant I would have failed should this have been a real test. I did manage to get it down and stabilized, though, so and we would have been able to land okay.

After that we were off to the missed approach, which they had us do at 6000 feet, so as to keep us out of clouds. I had never done a GPS-based holding pattern before, and fixated on distance from the fix as the way to determine when to turn, forgetting that the to/from flag in the VOR would have worked just fine. This made the two laps around the fix a little bit sloppy and again I did not like my performance.

After that we were off to the VOR/DME approach at Watsonville. The arc was managed properly and so was the approach, though we did not descend past 3000' so as not to get into clouds. I finally began to feel good about my ability to fly IFR.

From Watsonville we went to our last approach, the ILS at Moffett. It starts way, way away over Watsonville, but we flew it without a problem, mostly because we let the autopilot do it. We did take over at some point, when the instructor "failed" the autopilot and the vacuum instruments. Still that approach was ok, within limits and safe.

After that it was back to Palo Alto and the debriefing. The instructor gave me good feedback, pointing out the areas where I needed to work on: some more time with charts, a little bit more fluency with the GPS and more attention to radio work. A little bit of polishing, he said, and I would be ready for my checkride.

So the phase check was a good experience like expected. We identified my weaknesses and came up with a plan to deal with them. So now it's a few more flights with my instructor and then I hope it will be time to go for the gold, or at least a new rating.