Flying w/ one out of two engines

Instead of flying, my crew found it necessary to begin single engine (one engine out / one engine operating) instrument approaches on the simulator. Being one lesson behind in the plane side of things and the day being a bit crummy from yet another onslaught of hurricane madness (this one is named Rita) it seemed like a brilliant idea anyways. Manoj flew first even though there was a preemptive notion that I might have a possibility at flying in the evening because I just wanted to observe the lesson. I did get a little bit of a cheat sheet, but when it was my turn at the controls, things were a little different.

I got various situations like an overspeed propeller and just a few other scenarios that weren't proposed earlier. I knew when the RPMs gauge was reading high that something was out. I didn't react right away because it felt like a different situation was at hand rather than just an engine out. It was in fact different in all aspects of recovery. I mean, I wasn't suppose to speed up the propellers like you do in an engine failure. Instead, retarding both the throttle and the propeller of the good engine to match the current amount of thrust was what was suppose to be done. I did it and we moved on to he single engine ILS approach into KDAB 7L. I have to admit that I did pretty well and was able to stay within 10 degrees of the localizer. I tracked it inbound and was able to land on the first shot. We then took off again and executed the NDB 29 approach into KEVB and then the back course back into KDAB. The last approach caught me off guard because I didn't wasn't 100% in front of the aircraft. I was put back a little bit not descending at my points right away at the radial intersections. I did get the plane down, but I would have probably ended up really long. I did lose the glideslope, but I wasn't suppose to be using it anyways. That threw me off a little bit. But all in all, I look forward to doubling up tomorrow to finish lesson 7 and 9.

Come to think of it, the class ahead of us who are in the commercial multi-engine phase of things are finishing up with their Designated Examiner checkrides this week. Today, a fellow student took up N208CA from which we failed the attitude indicator yesterday and on their run-up they noticed that it didn't spin up. So once again, it caused the plane to be returned to maintenance and the student now has to wait till tomorrow for the ride. That must have been a little scary.