So Much Work For Those Two Words - Instrument Airplane

Posted this one somewhere else, but wanted to share with the gang on
the newsgroups.

Dave

Well, after one year, two instructors, 9 hours actual, and nearly 70
hours of training I passed the instrument checkride. It was
originally scheduled for Tuesday, but if you read my other post you
know that it was IMC followed by t'storms, so we did the oral. I
didn't realize how well it went until yesterday when I decided to fly
one last practice session before the big day. My instructor and a few
other people that worked at the school told me that the DE, who is
also the manager of the flight school and FBO, said something along
the lines that I was one of the best prepared applicants he had ever
seen. That was great to hear and I hoped it would have a halo effect
today.

I made it to the airport around 12:15 and the DE arrived at 1:00,
which was the scheduled time. After preflight we got underway after
he gave me my clearance and I picked up the ATIS. As it was mid-day,
it was fairly bumpy as I tracked to the Sparta VOR. But I was
diligent with my heading and altitudes. We departed Sparta on the 022
radial and I contacted New York Departure to request two ILS 27
approaches at Stewart International (SWF). We received vectors and I
briefed the approach. Other than receiving a bad vector the approach
went fine, and at Decision Height I flew the missed as published to
the Kingston VOR.

The entry was a parallel entry and I quickly established myself on the
outbound course, flew out for a minute, then intercepted the inbound
course. My instructor was up with another student in the same area
and since I could hear him I knew he was following what I was doing.
Back on the ground he admitted he was a little concerned when he heard
us request the second ILS. After one trip in the hold the DE covered
the AI and DG for a partial panel LOC approach. I placed the LOC
frequency in the #2 radio as not to be distracted by the glideslope,
and placed Kingston VOR in the #1 to ID the final approach fix,
POPOW. Well, we received another bad vector and I also forgot that
the LOC was in #2 so I flew through it, but soon realized the error of
my ways and corrected. But between the bad vector to intercept the
localizer and diverting attention somewhere else, I missed the final
approach fix. So, four miles from the threshold I'm still at 2500
feet MSL. Although I'm not proud of it I had to make a dive and
drive. Fortunately Stewart has a 10,000' runway, but my landing was
as crappy as they come. I knew I was going to be busted, but I was
prepared to go missed if necessary if I couldn't make the field.

After the touch and go and not hearing I had failed, we climbed out
and did a few timed turns, followed by steep turns. I had done steep
turns the previous day and was able to nail them with nearly zero
altitude fluctuation. In fact they were my best steep turns to date,
including private. Then we did unusual attitudes. I heard this DE
was aggressive on unusual attitudes but his nose-up unusual attitudes
ended with the plane veeeery close to stall. I'm usually pretty good
with unusual attitudes, but on the first one I ended up pushing over
too much, pulled a few negative G's and put us into a dive, from which
I quickly recovered. He had me perform another nose high unusual
attitude partial panel, and my recovery was far smoother the second
time. We followed this by two nose low unusual attitudes, then flew
direct to Sparta to fly the VOR 6 approach at Greenwood Lake. At
Sparta I entered the hold/procedure turn and flew the approach with no
problem. We descended to MDA and because Rwy 6 was in use and he
wanted to see a circling approach, he had me overfly the field for a
circling approach back to Rwy 6.

Once established on the downwind and descended to pattern altitude, he
gave me a heading and an altitude to fly back to Caldwell. We flew
back to Caldwell partial panel with the DE giving me vectors and
descent instructions to simulate a no-gyro approach. He had me take
the hood off on final and 130' AGL and again I made another crappy
landing. I think this one was due to the relief of not hearing that I
had failed up to that point. Overall, 2.4 hours on the Hobbs. I am
totally beat, but it was certainly a fair checkride. As he prepared
my temporary certificate he told me that based on Tuesday's and
today's performance he had no doubt that I should receive an
instrument rating, and that I had performed well on all the required
tasks.

Thanks to all that have read this far and those on this board that
provided encouragement. And best of luck to others working on your
ratings, instrument or otherwise.

Dave