In studying for the instrument rating written exam, I realized that it was going to be more difficult than I’d anticipated before I started studying. I figured it wouldn’t be that much harder than the private written. I scheduled the Exam last week for today. I spent all of last week studying in general, reading the Instrument Flying Handbook, and large portions of the Airman’s Information Manual, and thought I knew plenty. It wasn’t until Monday that I started studying specifically for this exam. And that’s when I realized that I didn’t know the answers to all too many of the 895 possible questions.

I studied all day yesterday when I wasn’t in ground school and wasn’t in the simulator. The test was scheduled for immediately after groundschool because the lady in charge of the testing can be really annoying.

The test was about as hard as I expected, and I had to guess at a couple of the questions. I got a 90% in spite of it all though, which is far better than I’d expected or hoped for. In addition to the Instrument written, I had to take the Certified Flight Instrument Instructor exam as well. They have us do them both at once because they questions come from the same pool. It turned out that the instructor exam was a piece of cake compared to the instrument exam. I ended up with a 96% on the instructor exam.

I’m glad that’s over with. Now I just have to get through a stage check in the simulator before I can go on to finishing this thing up.

I’m really, really hating the simulator. It’s nothing like flying an airplane, and they’re old and crappy. The one I flew today constantly tried to bank to the left, which made doing anything impossible. And it’s not impossible to get them to climb, descend or to stay fairly level, but it’s an absolute impossibility to establish a constant rate of descent at a specific airspeed. They’re just too finicky. You nudge the trimwheel the smallest amount possible, and the stupid thing reacts with 10 degrees of nose up or down. The joys of getting your ratings at the cheapest flight school in the country:)