Flying with a Stopwatch

Today's lesson started out by filing another IFR flight plan. I called 1-800-WX-BRIEF and talked to the briefer and gave him all the information necessary. It went smoothly, except when I forgot the phonetic identifier for the letter R. I was spelling out the word STORE, and I said, "STORE, Sierra, Tango, Oscar, uhh... I forgot R..." It's Romeo- the briefer quickly reminded me. When filing an IFR flight plan, you have to spell out everything with the phonetic alphabet in order to avoid any errors.

I picked up my IFR flight plan from Clarksburg Ground, took off, and began flying to STORE intersection. Once we got close, we cancelled IFR. It may seem stupid that I would file an IFR flight plan just to turn around and cancel it a few minutes later; but it's good practice for me to learn how to file a plan and copy a clearance.

I did some slow flight, stalls, and steep turns. Then my instructor failed my vacuum pump again, which caused me to lose my attitude and heading indicators. I then did slow flight again and for the first time, stalls. Stalls without my artificial horizon were fairly difficult; but I did them successfully.

I then started flying by using the stopwatch. My instructor kept my attitude and heading indicators failed, and then he also failed my compass.

So now I have no way of knowing what direction I am flying. Then I would have to do a 180. So, how can I do a perfect 180 degree turn without any kind of heading indication? The answer lies in a standard rate turn.

A standard rate turn is a turn that takes exactly 2 minutes to do a complete 360. It is indicated on the turn coordinator by a white line in either direction. So by starting the time, and turning at standard rate for exactly one minute, I will have turned a complete 180.

My instructor then gave me my compass back, but then he failed my altitude. I was then told to descend 1000 feet. So, using the stopwatch and the vertical speed indicator, I descended at 500 feet per minute for two minutes.

We then headed back inbound, I tracked the localizer and glide slope down to the runway and landed.

We taxied to our crossing point on the runway which is at the end, and we got stuck behind two planes waiting to take off. There was a Baron up front, and a King Air behind him. There was a small twin engine Bonanza coming in to land. We noticed that he was about 30 feet above the runway and that he did not have his landing gear down. The Baron holding short started shouting on tower's frequency, "No landing gear! No landing gear!!!" The Bonanza applied power and went around.

It was funny because the entire time the Bonanza was in the pattern, my instructor was talking about how he knew the guy and how he was a terrible pilot. Needless to say, when the guy started blaming his aircraft for the near-miss, my instructor was laughing and rolling his eyes.