In this particular flight school, they combined the Commercial flight training with the Instrument training. I was ready to begin instrument training. I did get some instrument training in spurts, just to become oriented with it and to know what to expect. Looking back, I think that Instrument flight is the funnest part of flying.
I began with a flight simulator, the AST-300 to be exact. I also had a new flight instructor. The old instructor was frustrated with his job and quit. The new guy was easy to get along with but not as aggressive as the old instructor. Sometimes aggressive is good, but you don't have to be an asshole. The first few hours in the flight simulator consisted of climbs, descents and basic A and B patterns. No seat of the pants flying, you become a component of the aircraft. After about ten hours of simulator time I was back in the airplane repeating A and B patterns. In the mean time I did a couple of solo cross country flights to keep up with my commercial training. I also had more wasted time waiting for my student loans to come in. It made it look like I was a slow learner. It's not your fault If the school doesn't allow you to fly until they get their money. I would fly every day if I could.
By this time I had a total of 161 hours. It's now May of 1992. I've been in flight school for almost two years now. I should have decided then to switch schools, but I was determined to finish what I started. We started integrating instrument training with commercial maneuvers. I had a tough time getting used to eights on pylons, like maintaining airspeed. I learned how to watch the wing tips to determine the airspeed. I eventually got it right, but it took some time. We were getting ready for some more night training to prepare for my night cross country. We flew about two hours of night maneuvers and practiced pilotage and dead reckoning for preparation for a VFR night cross country.
