After several months of intensive training, Chris got his instrument rating in late May!

Karl Liang, the proud CFI, congratulates his student. Note the Orga-knee-zer and clicker, two key tools for proper IFR instruction.

The DPE was Mike Shiflett. Fortunately, it was a nice, sunny day with stable air, which made it much easier to stay within the PTS. Mike made me plan a flight to Red Bluff, which provided a good framework from which to talk about airspace, routing, etc. Icing levels, reporting points, lost communications procedures and airspace were emphasized. Departure procedures from uncontrolled airports were also discussed along with a number of other items.

For the flight portion, Mike chose SCK GPS, SCK ILS, TCY VOR-A partial panel. At SQL, he gave me a clearance on the ground which I flew, and then enroute I started getting set up for the approaches since they'd be coming at me quickly. Mike let me use the autopilot as much as I wanted, which I did to reduce my workload and reduce the chance of accidentally violating the heading requirements of the PTS. I got weather info at both airports, tuned and identified as many of the navaids as possible, and got the approach loaded into the GPS. Mike called approach and got us into the system, and cleared us to start with a hold at the IAF for the SCK GPS.

From there, the radios were my duty. I did a turn in the hold, then got cleared inbound on the second turn. The GPS approach was coupled, and went perfectly. Mike was watching that I didn’t descend below the MDA like a hawk, and I had to fly along for a good 1.5 mi at the MDA, so that was probably the most nerve wracking part. After going missed, we got vectored back around for the ILS, which went fine. After a touch and go, I "lost" my vacuum pump during the missed approach procedure from SCK and I had to do a few compass turns while getting vectored to the VOR-A approach to TCY. After going missed there, we went over the Livermore valley for some unusual attitude recovery. We debriefed on the flight back, and shut down, and that was it: I became an IFR pilot!