"Paul Folbrecht" wrote in message
...
Hello all,

I've made the appointment for my IR checkride, although it's still a
ways out, and had a couple things on my mind.

1) Concerning the heading standards (+- 10 degrees, of course), I find
that I still, at this point, _occasionally_ exceed them, _especially_ in
prepping for an approach (though I have a yoke-mounted clip for my
plates I still find my scan degrading a bit when I'm prepping & setting
up). So, that's occasionally, not _consistently_, getting off-heading
by more than 10d (probably 20d at the most). How picky are most
examiners about this type of thing? I know that the PTS states that
"consistent" exceeding of the standards is grounds for failure, so I
rather hope that me getting off-course by, say 20d, then correcting
immediatly, isn't going to have a huge impact. But who knows. Perhaps
my skills are still not quite up to snuff. BTW I have about 33h total
instrument time now, about 8 of which is in a FTD.

Think about it this way: in real life ifr, if you bust your altitude, you
could cause a loss of seperation, period. If your heading drifts 20 degrees
for 10 seconds, you're not going to create a loss of seperation. The
examiner want see that if you deviate, you identify your deviation quickly
and correct as necessary. Keep your scan up by dividing the approach
briefing into small steps.


2) I also seem to have a devil of a time passing DIRECTLY OVER a VOR
(when I say "VOR" of course I mean "VOR or "VORTAC", etc.), for instance
when flying a full approach and the navaid is the IAF I'm using. My
instructor tells me that I ought to fly so directly over that thing that
the CDI is perfectly centered and then immediately flips from "to" to
"from" on passage, with only an instant of the flag. What I tend to do
is be off by just a bit, getting full-deflection on the CDI (for a
second or two) before the flip. He correctly points out that the
standards call out 3/4 deflection as max deflection, and there seems to
be nothing to account for this type of thing. So, is this (passing
directly, I mean directly, over the navaid) a skill that I really should
have down by the time of the checkride? Just looking for a 2nd (and
possibly 3rd-150th) opinion here.

I've watched students convinced they were about to cross the station while
they were still four miles out and would let the needle go full scale and
just fly a heading. The deal is this: you should be making heading
corrections based on the deflection of the needle. If you continuously make
small corrections, you should be able to keep the needle centered right on
up to the station. If the needle starts to head one way or another, make no
more than a 10 degree heading correction; if that doesn't bring the needle
back in, you're probably getting right on top.


Thanks,
~Paul

P.S. I scored a 98% on my written and am a bit worried that this may
indicate I know nothing at all of real-world IFR flying! It also may
indicate that I think like the FAA, which scares me even more. Perhaps
I should retake and hope for a lower score?

I hope this is a joke. The "don't get too high a score on the knowledge
test" theory is yet another aviation myth. Hint: the examiner already
knowns you don't know anything about real-world IFR flying...you don't have
your rating yet.