I’ve now embarked on the instrument flying part of the course - lesson 26 in our syllabus here, so that’s just after 20 hours of flight time. Could be after a bit more flight time for some students depending on what lessons were skipped, as those with previous experience such as PPL holders may do. I was quite anxious for my first instrument flight, as I am sometimes susceptible to nausea in the air after maneuvers such as spiral dives, steep turns and moving my head a lot from focusing inside and outside, all in succession.

However, to my surprise I had no nausea or discomfort for this instruments flight.. which was a relief! So it is true that your body gets used to the air! It’s a bit hard to believe at first - nausea is very uncomfortable and incapacitating when in the air and it does make you anxious for future lessons where you’re going to be doing exercises that caused the discomfort. We’ve been learning in Human Performance ground school lessons that avoiding sudden head movements, believing in the instruments and other methods such as massaging the wrist or looking out at a stationary point outside the aircraft helps in losing the feeling of disorientation or discomfort.

Having said that, I did experience the “leans” - this was more interesting than uncomfortable. The leans is simply when your mind things that you are not set up straight and level and so you tend to lean towards where your minds thinks it is aligning your body up straight and level. So for example, my instructor demonstrated this by asking me to close my eyes whilst he very slowly banked the aircraft to the left. The rate of the bank was below the threshold of my senses (located in the balance organs in the inner-ear) and so I hadn’t detected the bank and still thought I was straight and level. To my surprise when I opened my eyes, we were banked in a turn and when I did roll back the aeroplane to a straight and level attitude, it felt as if I had rolled to the right, as my body had sensed the faster rate roll to the right but not the initial one to the left. These are some of the illusions pilots have to be aware of when instrument flying.

After the first instrument flying lesson, I went into the FRASCA simulator for two sessions practicing flying by the instruments - straight and level, climbing/descending, radial intercepts (radio navigation). The FRASCA is a bit tricky! It’s much more difficult to fly than the real plane, but it gives you good practice. The simulator sessions are quite tiring because you’re constantly concentrating hard for the entire session, as opposed to flying the real aircraft where you have time to relax in between busy periods. There’s no taxying, etc - straight in there flying and concentrating for the whole session. It does go fast though.

What’s next?

The first VFR  Navigatin exercise!