Well, Zach signed me off for an instrument check ride today. I don’t feel ready, but he thinks I am. I was going to refuse, but if I fly tomorrow, then I probably can’t get a check ride in Before Tuesday, since the flight school is closing down for the weekend. This way, if I get a checkride on Thursday, I’ll see how it goes. If they don’t get to me by then, then I’ll review next week, and take the checkride then.

I’ve been making some pretty darned smooth landings lately. This probably is directly related to the fact that there hasn’t been much wind.

I landed on the big runway at Will Rogers a couple of nights ago. Shot a perfect ILS, pulled the foggles off at 200 feet over the ground to a beautiful view of being situated perfectly over lots and lots of lights, followed by one of the best landings I’ve made yet. It’s enough to make you feel good.

It was pretty turbulent this afternoon, and I had a heck of a time with the ILS, but managed it anyway. After I thought that was bad, a no-gyro VOR approach was miserable. No-gyro means that the Attitude Indicator and and Heading indicator are covered up. Which means that the only way I can tell which way I’m pointed is the magnetic compass, which is a nearly worthless instrument. It was oscillating roughly 60 degrees back and forth today, which makes things very difficult.

When an air traffic controller vectors you for the wrong approach, that doesn’t help either. Here, I’ll provide some dialogue for a nice change.

ATC: Cessna 76067, turn two zero zero to join, maintain three thousand until established, you are cleared the approach.

ME: two zero zero to join, three thousand until established, cleared V-O-R one seven right

ATC: Cessna 76067, contact rogers tower one one nine point three five.

ME: Going to tower, zero six seven.

ME: Rogers tower, cessna seven six zero six seven with you on the V-O-R one seven right.

TOWER: Zero six seven, cleared for the option.

At this point, I realize that I’m never going to intercept the final approach course at my current heading, it’s not even close. Since I was cleared for the approach, I turned to a proper intercept angle.

TOWER: Zero six seven, It looks like you’re on the ILS one seven left.

ME: Negative, zero six seven is flying the VOR one seven right.

TOWER: Uhh. You’re about two miles east of the course, it looks like they had you in here for the wrong approach.

This is a little like being at a restaurant and being told by the guy who brought you the fish sandwich instead of a hamburger that he’s just doing what he was told, the waiter must have punched it into the computer wrong…

ME: We’re trying to intercept the final approach course for VOR one seven right…

TOWER: Uhhh.. You want vectors back around?

At this point, I realized I was past the final approach fix, way wide of the inbound course.

ME: That’d be fine, zero six seven.

TOWER: Roger, zero six seven contact approach, one two four point six.

Back to the controller who screwed it up in the first place, and claims we ordered the fish sandwich in the first place. Yay. And I read back the right approach. We lost a good 10 minutes to that.

I would have figured I must have screwed up somewhere, but Zach is actually the one who requested the approach as we were leaving Norman, and he said my radio calls had been right up until then.

Talking on the radio, and flying, and navigating gets to be a bit much for me. When they start talking at me and I’m not ready for it, I wave at Zach to answer them. It’s weird, I know exactly what I need to say, but I can’t get it out and do everything else. There’s also more pressure than I’m used to, because things downtown are a lot more busy, what with real commercial traffic, and endless military traffic into both tinker and will rogers.

Speaking of military traffic, I was minding my own business in a hold at 3,000 feet as assigned by ATC, when I hear, “Cessna zero six seven, traffic twelve o’clock, C-130 at 3,500, two miles, caution wake turbulence.”

That woke me up. I popped off my foggles, and see very big plane. Headed right at us. Sure, he’s supposedly 500 feet above us, supposedly, but man it looked big. And 500 feet is hard to see a couple miles out.

“Uhh. Traffic in sight, zero six seven.”

“Zero Six Seven, maintain visual separation, caution wake turbulence.”

I wasn’t quite at my fix yet, but I decided that I didn’t really want to have my world rocked. I asked Zach if it was all right if I turned a bit early. He responded with a rather emphatic yes.

I braced myself for the world to end as we passed. Big plane. Guns and stuff. No real wake turbulence though, nothing like I was preparing myself for… Turns out he was going really slowly, which probably minimized any wake turbulence

As we turned 180 for the outbound leg of the hold, albeit early, I got a nice pretty view of it. That was kinda cool.

We were also landing in close quarters with a T-38 on a parallel runway earlier, but I was foggled and never got a chance to look:(

I’m not sure if he ever saw us, since I never heard him call in that he did, but I don’t always hear military planes talk back. The E-3s talk on VHF, at least when talking to approach, but many of the military planes seem to be UHF only. I’m not exactly sure how that works, I think most of them can listen on VHF, but can only transmit UHF.

That’s all for tonight, folks…