As the title says, New Instructor, New Procedures, New View.  Today was pretty awesome.  After a studying hard for my IFR Written, and nailing it by the way, I have had a few cancellations due to weather and one due to getting rear ended in the car pool line at school.  That is a story for another post.

Today was exciting because …. well … I got to fly.  But more than that it was a day of firsts.

As I arrived at the club, I once again, with futility,  tried to get the hand scanner to realize that is in fact I, the master of not being able to get the hand scanner to work.  ugh.  Never fear my new instructor just pulled up and the scanner worked perfectly for him.

Before I head out to preflight we talked a bit and he asked “Did you bring your swim trunks?”  I looked at him oddly trying to figure out the relevance.  “I’m going to throw you in the deep end today.  We’re going to have to file IFR, how does that sound?”  I replied that if he was good, I was good.  First new thing, flying on an IFR flight plan.

The plan for this lesson was to fly over to KBUY and fly the RNAV24 approach, go missed and then fly back to KTTA and fly the RNAV21 approach.  He would work all of the radios and help me setup the gps but the flying part would be up to me.  Cool!

He selected an altitude that would put us in the clouds for the trip to and from so that I could experience actual conditions… no foggles! Well except for the parts where we were not in actual.  But we were in actual quite a bit so… super cool!  Another new thing!

Flying through clouds I was able to experience the lifting effect and deal with it accordingly.  I added a new instrument to scan and a new memorization called “Set Match”  a tennis reference.  This mean that I adjusted my heading but and cross referenced with the gps track to keep us flying right to the fix.

I will be honest, the flying part of this trip was not too bad.  I had some good fundamentals ingrained from my previous instructor and really it felt like a piece of cake.  I was never too saturated.  The only times I felt like I was getting close to being saturated were the brief parts.  I think, mainly, because I was trying to setup the approaches on my tablet while doing everything else.  This will come with time and experience.  Also if I was a little more organized, that may have helped out as well.

Flying to KBUY we flew direct to KBUY until we were cleared direct to DALSY.  We prepared for the procedure turn just in case but eventually we were vectored to the final approach and cleared.  Super cool.

Once we went missed, we were cleared to turn direct back to TTA and we asked for the RNAV21 approach via OZOPE.  As we neared OZOPE there was quite a bit of radio traffic as a baron was trying to get into TTA as well.  Initially we were told that we would hold at OZOPE but as we got close, they cleared us all the way down.  As a courtesy to the traffic, and request by ATC, once we were 500 below the clouds we cancelled IFR to unlock the airfield and allow the baron to begin approach.

Once I hit minimums, I took off the foggles and there was the runway right in front of me. Super duper cool!  So the last new experience was slowing from 90 to 65 and dropping flaps and trying to set us down nice and soft.  I kind of blew the nice and soft part as my site picture was way wonky.  I was assured that this happens to every student as well as seasoned professionals.  I will get better.

I can’t wait for the next lesson, I felt like a real pilot…. errr  minus the radio work and a lot of setting up the navigation.  I have a lot of work ahead but I am optimistic that the journey will be awesome!

My instructor took the controls for a few minutes to allow me to memorialize the occasion.