Santa Paula - Big Bear / Piper Dakota (N9704W) / VFR

I've discovered some things about the HSI, but I'm having other trouble with the Dakota.

I tried the flight from Santa Paula again. As before, the HSI was pointing any old way when I climbed into the cockpit. I turned on battery power and the HDG warning flag immediately disappeared, even before the gyros spun up. Still more mysteriously, the HSI failed to align itself automatically, even though the slaving switch was set to slave. This seems to be a possible discrepancy between the sim and real life; I need to investigate more.

I aligned the HSI by hand after switching to free mode, then set it back to slave.

The flight to Big Bear was uneventful. Landing was very smooth. Managed to stay clear of terrain with no problem in the late afternoon, with good visibility.

Another mystery has come up, though. The engine dies after I set it to idle after touchdown. I tried playing with the mixture control but that doesn't seem to help. I'm not sure what the problem is. True, I'm at nearly 7000 feet MSL at Big Bear, but still … I don't have this problem with other aircraft. So I have to look into that, too. I got around it by not setting the throttle to idle, but that wasn't very elegant.