Touch Drills

Well, that's the Indian Summer over with... :-(
Cloudbase only a few hundred feet and an earlier IFR flight didn't punch through the tops of the clouds, so no flying today.

Now that I'm flying on the twin there is so much more to do and many new checklists to learn. At this early stage when I'm grounded due to the weather, I can use this time by just sitting in the cockpit of an aircraft, or in this case a simulator, and practicing flying as I would for real. I move the controls as I would for real, call out the checklists, the speeds and pitches I should be maintaining and the radio calls I would be making. For now I'm just practicing climbing and descending (turning has no relevance here) to memorise the power settings required for each stage of flight, and drills for flying the circuit. Subsequently I'll use these techniques to practice drills and checklists for engine failure emergency drills and asymmetric flight.

The instructors have said that you can see the people who have spent time practicing the touch drills as they have the checklists, speeds, power settings etc. available to recite at will. This makes for a more rapid progress and a more professional pilot and at the end of the day will hopefully reduce the number of hours I need to spend in the aircraft for real. And you really don't want to know how much it costs per hour, or even per minute!!

So I spent about an hour and a half practicing mostly circuit drills until I started going bug eyed (even practicing with my eyes closed)! But the checklists are starting to come more freely and accurately and I can recite most of the checks without pause and do the control actions with my eyes closed. So another few days should hopefully have things down to a T.