For the first few hours of the IMC course, basic general handling skills on instruments were taught to me by the brilliant team at Cranfield flying School. This included
• Full panel work developing the necessary skills and techniques required for straight and level flight, climbing, descending and turning.
• Limited panel instrument work, simulating the loss of the vacuum pump, which drives the Attitude Indicator and Direction Indicator.
• Recovery from unusual attitudes full panel and limited.
This then moved onto doing a short nav ex using VOR to rack and NDB’s to get QDM’s from our various positions. We did a round robin flying from Cranfield direct to Westcost NDB, then DCT to Bovingdon VOR. We called Luton approach to tell them where we were and what our intentions were. We did not ask for a zone transit and instead navigated between the Luton and Stansted control zones. So, from Bovingdon we tracked to Brookmans Park, then intercepted the Barkway 020 radial and finally tracked back to Cranfield and joined the circuit from Stewartby reporting point.
A taster of what the IMC is about…
