Tonight, I am scheduled with Alex to get some instruction to make me a safer night VFR pilot. It’s getting dark earlier and I expect many of my flights this winter to start or end during night conditions. I left it up to Alex what should be practiced, as he may have some ideas that haven’t occurred to me. To get the ball rolling, I’ve put forward the obvious: instrument procedures (VOR navigation, ILS approach, etc.) and communication with Center. It has a convenient side-effect of dove-tailing into real instrument training.
Alex called me this afternoon and told me that 9DS’s transponder is dead, so the plane is down for most of a week. Thus, my lesson tonight will be on the Elite simulator. More and more like true intro-to-instrument training…
Jumping back to the dead transponder, the approach control at CMI last month mentioned that they only got my signal intermittently, but the transponder was reporting everything as a-okay including regular radar interrogations. When I left CMI, they didn’t report any problems and MDW didn’t either on my return—I asked each of them—so I chalked it up to a fluke, or low flight while I was relatively far from CMI, or something else. I did mention it to the flight school in case other people reported similar incidents, which would indicate that it wasn’t a fluke and was a problem with the transponder.
With 9DS down, the friend who had to bail on me for our flight to Sporty’s tomorrow doesn’t have to feel bad anymore, as we wouldn’t have been able to go anyway. I’ve already rescheduled that trip for the 29th.
Friday, October 20, 2006
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3 comments:
Well... Is still feel bad. Even if it was the fault of BA who STILL can't seem to explain why I had to spend an extra night in Switzerland... idiots.
Looking forward to the next attempt!
Hi there,
Just finished my NVFR rating (CASA in Australia requires a seperate rating for Night VFR, like some other countries).
You may be interested in my podcast for student pilots http://www.studentpilottraining.com
Or a recent addition which is proving popular from my podcast listeners
http://ozpilot.blogspot.com
Good luck in your training/flying..
Back in May I flew through Madison's airspace. The transponder was blinking away all happy-like, but MSN never for a response from it. They had me turn broadside to get a signature, but the transponder was worthless. Even 'Ident' did nothing on their end. I tried power cycling it, but it was no-go. Later in the flight, I tried getting flight following from Volk Approach, and they coudln't pick me up either, so it wasn't just MSN.
I guess my point is that just because it's blinking doesn't mean its working.
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