I’ve been spending a couple of nights each week at the airport working with my instructor in the flight school’s simulator. We’ve been practicing flying airways, identifying intersections, using VOR receivers and flying holding patterns. Holds are tricky –– I’m proficient enough while in the hold, but there are a variety of ways to enter the hold depending on where your aircraft is relative to the fix at which you’re holding. Some of it is counterintuitive to me, but I’m making progress.

I enjoy flying DME Arcs –– a procedure for transitioning from the en route segment of flight into the approach segment. Essentially, you enter the approach on a “curve” or arc using the VOR OBS and heading indicator to turn 10 degrees at a time until you cross the initial approach fix. Although a lot of instrument students struggle flying DME Arcs, it comes relatively easy to me.

A couple of weeks ago I bought a used desktop computer on eBay and have been using that as a home simulator. A major benefit of the home sim is practicing instrument scans during different phases of flight. I also like practicing VOR work. The home simulator uses a replica of the Garmin 430, which is a standard GPS device in the Cessna 172s I fly.

Over the next few weeks we’ll be flying Standard Instrument Departures (SIDs) and Standard Terminal Arrival Routes (STARs), then begin flying actual approaches at nearby airports.