Instrument Current Again!

I got my instrument rating back in 2002, when I was still in Boston, but I haven’t been instrument “current” since 2003. Now that we have an airplane and want to be able to travel more reliably, it makes sense to be able to fly on instruments. Fortunately, one of the guys in my EAA group, Tom Staggs (Long-EZ) is an instrument instructor and was willing to help me get back up to speed.

We flew a couple times in good weather (so I was wearing a “view-limiting device” to prevent me from looking out the window), which was great, but the best experience was a couple weeks ago, when the weather was truly bad.  We flew 5 ILS approaches into Paine Field, but the weather was so bad (less than 200′ ceilings), that we had to divert to Arlington for lunch (with a localizer approach to near minimums there).  After lunch, we made it back to Paine.  I don’t plan on flying into weather that low myself, at least not for a while, but it was a great to have the experience and to know I can do it if necessary.

Here’s the FlightAware record of the major part of our flight the other day.  Practice approaches involves a lot of flying in circles.