After he “aced” the ground (oral) portion of a private check ride I gave last week, this young man pointed the airplane in approximately the right direction, found a couple of checkpoints and made a reasonable guess about our time to the next one listed on his flight log sheet. This with benefit of a Garmin 430, two VOR receivers, an ADF and that incredibly detailed log strapped to his leg on the latest and greatest Sporty’s kneeboard. But I wasn’t at peace yet with the navigation part; I get those funny noises in my head when the sectional chart has been lying on the back seat or buried in an airline pilot-size flight bag.
Anyway, on to “airwork,” and then out came the Foggles, and he managed a nice demonstration of aviating out of an inadvertent (I would hope) encounter with clouds or fog. There was measurable relief when he discarded the “view limiting device” and he could recover his equilibrium. Both our gyros were close to spilling after unusual attitudes (hey, it’s the only time I get to fly the airplane) in a sweaty, mid-July, low altitude cockpit.
