Instrument Rating

We are already nearly a month into the IR phase of our training, and I have to say that since I started at OAA I have never had so much time off! I’m not complaining really, we have really worked hard to earn ourselves a little break, though it is a little frustrating at times. We have had 5 lessons in the simulators since we started, most of which have only been because our instructor comes in on his days off to fly with us, and are still awaiting our first flight in the Seneca. This is mostly because he has other students which are higher up the priority list than us, and hopefully after Christmas we will be flying more and more, to the point where we are back in every day.

The lessons have been going fine, though the sims are set up a bit differently over here to the ones in Goodyear. We started off with a couple of lessons of basic manoeuvres, just to get warmed up again, and have since moved on to instrument work. The last two lessons have involved flying holds and the NDB approach in to Oxford, and we will be moving on shortly to flying the departure procedures out of Oxford.

The rest of the time we have mostly just been hanging around the house. It’s great after a year of living in student digs to have somewhere to call home again, and I am busy catching up on all the Xbox time I missed while I was working!