Mom (a private pilot – not current [yet]) writes:

“On lesson 9, M. P. — a. k. a.  Mom — enthusiastically  became a passenger, enjoying the lesson that was built around recovering from emergencies.  Adam responded to the blocked instruments with confidence, and I might add, from my back seat driving perspective, skillfully.  The instructor began to abruptly simulate emergencies; such as ‘blocking the ailerons from moving’, ‘engine out, emergency landings’, ‘stuck throttle’,  and a few other situations that required thought and ingenuity to keep flying the aircraft.  Adam is soaring in this pursuit of flying.

If I have opportunity, I will gladly accompany future flights.  Thank you Adam for inviting me along.”

I did make two errors of ommission on this lesson.  First, I missed turning on the transponder during the pre-takeoff checklist.  Second, I forgot to correct for P-factor during the initial climb to altitude.  I was having trouble maintaining the heading till T pointed out that the ball was not centered.  Then I remembered right rudder.  But I probably won’t forget those two things again.

The simulated emergencies are good for building confidence.  All things considered, the Cessna 172 is a good glider.  The instrument and control outages force you to think about how to gather information about the airplane’s attitude and performance from alternate sources.  In turn, this helps one to understand all of the redundancies that are built in. Again, my landing proficiency advanced as I set up the approach almost entirely on my own, but I made two mistakes: 1. I overcontrolled when slowing the rate of descent and 2. I forgot to correct for wind drift so we landed on the right side of runway 27.