Instrument Ground : Day 2

As I should have expected, we started the day with a review of the previous day.  Pop Quiz: What does GRAB CARD stand for?  I stumbled through it, missing a few.  Thankfully, it is now more permanently anchored in my mind as I just went through it at the end of the session as well.  For those that would like the review:


Generator (or Alternator)
Radios
Altimeter (adjustable for pressure)
Ball (inclinometer)
Clock (with a seconds indication)
Attitude Indicator
Rate of Turn Indicator
Directional Gyro

Other review items included how the Altimeter works.  Remember the Aneroid Wafer made up of Beryllium and Copper being exposed to static pressure.  Then, through the magical series of gears and linkages displays altitude.  There were also the lovely Compass errors with their mnemonics of ANDS and UNOS as well.

The bulk of the lesson today was spent on weather.  I feel that I did fairly well--I talk about weather a lot at work since my coworker is a meteorologist by training.  The more I can understand the weather, the better decisions I can make regarding it.

There's the different sources of weather, but we mostly focused on the wealth of information to be gleaned from weather.gov.  Outside of that, we also discussed In-Flight Weather Advisory Services--Flight Watch.  I've only had occasion to use Flight Watch once.  I was flying back from SE Texas when I noticed very dark clouds low and starting over the Red River.  Basically, I found out about the Convective Sigmet in place and determined it best if I waited it out in Sulphur Springs, TX.  Luckily, my boss at the time was understanding and allowed me to work at the center there for a couple days.

There was also some time to squeeze in some time looking at the Low En-Route Charts today.  It seems that will be quite a bit of the focus tomorrow.  I do have some homework on those--pretty much trying to understand what all the chart is telling me.  It looks to me that there is quite a great deal of information packed into the charts, so there is much to learn regarding them.