Practice Asymmetric Circuits at altitude

***WARNING***
This entry contains quite a lot of swearing as I quote pretty much verbatim what I said in the aircraft. People easily offended should stop reading now - you have been warned!
***WARNING***

The morning was all fogged in, so after a few errands I took the opportunity to go into the sim again and practice engine failure and asymmetric circuit touch drills for about an hour and a half. Hopefully that will put me in a better position for the real flight once the fog has (hopefully) lifted.

The fog had burnt off/lifted and the vis was ok in the afternoon so up we went. For the first engine failure the drills went ok and I didn't freeze with a mental blank or get too tongue-tied. When all the engine failure drills were done i was quite happy with things until the instructor said, "What have you forgotten?". I drew a blank and he pointed out the power/props/mixture that I should have pushed all forwards as my first action. "Fuck!".

The second I remembered to do the power and got things all more or less ok again. Or so I though... "You forgot to bring the gear and flaps up this time". "FUCK!!".

Third attempt was a right engine failure. Shoved the levers forward and remembered the the gear & flaps. Did the rest of the drills ok. "Why aren't we climbing?" the instructor asked. I looked at the controls and remembered what I'd done and couldn't figure it out. "Because you didn't push the throttle forward when you pushed the rest of the levers forward". Because the right engine was the failed one I'd not collected the left throttle lever with those to it's right when i pushed the forward. "FUCK FUCK FUCK!!!". Cue gales of laughter from the instructor and Dave in the back.

All of these were followed by simulated asymmetric circuits which went more or less ok apart from having difficulty maintaining my "runway" heading on the go around as before.

The final engine failure in the climb of the day before we headed back to Leeds. Did all the checklists and drills real punchy like and I was certain I didn;t forget anything. "What did you think of that Dave?" the instructor asked. I'm thinking smugly to myself, "Nowt wrong with that". "Pretty good" said Dave. "Except that he just shut down the good engine". "FUUUUUUUCCCCKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!". Cue more laughter from the instructor and Dave. I did everything right but after shutting down all the failed engine's systems (left) I'd then gone back over the good engine and done something like touched the right levers and switches but repeated the shutdown drills instead of the on drills. I don't think I actually did that, but in the test if you say something like "right fuel off" and touch the left lever, or touch the right level and say "left fuel off" when you meant to say "right fuel off", you fail - simple as that. So it's academic what I actually said/did - the fact that I got it wrong is all that counts! :-(

We then went back to Leeds, did a touch and go followed by an engine failure in the climb into an asymmetric circuit into a low approach and go-around, into another asymmetric circuit and a real asymmetric landing. And it all went pretty well as far as I remember. Didn't get anything wrong in the engine failure drills, the go-around went well and I nailed 85kts on the runway heading all the way and the real landing went well too! :-)

Despite the mishaps earlier in the lesson, I really enjoyed that trip - perhaps the most of any trip in the twin so far. And it's done a lot for my confidence, even though I know there is still room for a lot of improvement. I can't help laughing about the swearing in the trip, and I was still laughing about it quite a long time afterwards in a helpless kind of fashion. And I'm chuckling to myself on the train writing this now :-) That's what flying should be about - having fun, even if there is a more serious CPL underlying it all. Long may the fun continue!