metaruss

Today we practiced an in-flight diversion and lost procedures.  We set off for a nearby airport and then he diverted me to DeKalb Taylor Municipal Airport (DKB).  The diversion procedure itself went fine and we arrived at the airport as expected.  For some reason (mainly because I’ve never done it before), what to do at an unfamiliar airport fell out of my brain.  You’re supposed to overfly the airport and check the sock…duh.  He was purposely not helping me, which definitely drove the point home.  Eventually I figured it out and landed on the active runway.  That was learning moment one.

Learning moment two happened immediately afterwards.  I have a habit of rushing myself to get out of other people’s hair.  In this case, another plane was taxiing along the runway as I exited.  They had the right of way, but they radioed and let me go first.  With them behind me, I felt rushed to get off the ground and out of their way.  We took off and headed back east when he “diverted” me to 3CK (our original destination before diverting to DKB).  What he knew and what I didn’t know was that I forgot to realign my heading indicator and so it was about 20 degrees off.  I ended up flying too far south and actually thought everything was OK until I cross-checked my position with a VOR.  Once that was fixed, we got to practice lost procedures and got back to 3CK.

Getting burned like that definitely drives the point home.  I was always a bit lazy about realigning the heading indicator.  Hopefully that habit is broken.