Murk

It was a beautiful morning, but it didn't last long. I was able to get a flight in doing VOR tracking and such with one person when it was nice. I was originally going to go with Ethan to Ohio to pick up his 340, but the weather was supposed to tank right about when we were supposed to be getting back, so we didn't do it. 

It tanked all right.  I had another flight that afternoon, and I was going to cancel it. But then a guy texted me and asked if he could schedule me to go with him on an actual IFR cross country, because it's supposed to be 500' and he is instrument rated but hasn't flown in 500' ceilings before. I said "How's the icing?" and he said no ice.  So I looked it up, and he's right, nothing.  I said I'd go with him, then texted my afternoon person and said we were going in IFR today for a lesson instead of ground school or canceling.  The autopilot quit working on the last flight, so everyone was going to have to hand fly the whole time, which is just fine by me.  First person hand flies all the time anyway. Second person has been using the autopilot the whole time for the last year since getting instrument rated but wanted the practice. First person and I went to Eagle Creek, shot an approach down to 400' and 2 miles, did the missed approach, as published, then back to Kokomo, where we shot the ILS 23 down to 700' and 4 miles.  Good gentleman's IFR.  Nailed everything. Radios, flying, approaches, procedures, did great.  Is almost ready for a checkride.  Then the next guy, already rated, came out, we took off on runway heading to climb to 3000', and it went downhill from there.  Couldn't hold his heading, wandering 30-40° left and right of his heading. Couldn't hold altitude. Leveled off 200' low and stayed there. I had to step in several times on altitudes so we didn't go over 200' off.  Missed 4 important ATC directions.  Our first approach, into Lafayette, lost the glideslope and the localizer both on the first approach and had to be told (by me) to do a missed approach because everything was full scale deflection, 40 knots too fast, forgot to put the gear down, all past the FAF, not paying attention to minimums, no recognition of any of it, and so far behind the airplane he'd have arrived after the accident.

The instrument rated pilot has been using the autopilot on his own everywhere for a year, and now that it's failed, he can't fly. Dang good thing he didn't go on his own. I told him when we landed that I've never flown an airplane regularly where the autopilot didn't fail, and that's true. I went through the various failures I'd had in a bunch of different airplanes, well-maintained, new and old equipment alike. And even this was a brand new autopilot that "shouldn't" have failed, and it worked great-until it suddenly didn't. So never, ever go on an IFR trip where you're relying on an autopilot to keep you alive. He wasn't my former student but I hope he listens anyway, 'cause that was bad. The good news was, it was really good practice and a good way to see what 400 and 1 looks like to someone who usually just practices VFR to keep 'legal currency'.

Right after we landed, the ceiling and visibility dropped even lower, and now we have "dense fog advisories" for the area.  Good timing, good practice. I won't be flying tomorrow, so hopefully that gives me time to do my 340 ground training quiz, and do some prep work for my C-45 and BT-13 groundschools I'm supposed to be teaching on Sunday.  Gak.

Blue skies and sunshine on top of the crap in a 172RG.