Skylane 182/RG Turbo Skylane/RG
Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP); Flight Crew Instrument
Flight Crew Last 90 Days 15; Flight Crew Total 19500; Flight Crew Type 100
Confusion
Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Inflight Event / Encounter CFTT / CFIT
Flight Crew Became Reoriented
Human Factors
We were doing practice instrument approaches under the hood for instrument currency.  Both pilots very high time retired airline pilots; but neither of us flies a lot of IFR these days.  We had completed my approaches and other requirements; and I was now the safety pilot for the other guy; and we were doing the last of his approaches.  He was doing a letdown to the last altitude; minimums of 1;500 FT.  I noticed that we looked a bit low for our distance to the airport; and looked at the chart; and saw that he had misread the altitude for that segment; and we were actually supposed to still be at 2;400 FT!  So we were 900 FT low; and neither of us caught it until it was too late.  Awfully close to the houses; and we were sure glad there were no towers out there!  Lessons learned include how easy it is to misread a chart and go down to minimums one intersection early; how even the safety pilot has duties beyond looking for traffic; and how rusty you get just staying current when you don't fly real IFR a lot.  No apparent harm done since we still cleared all the houses by at least 600 FT and  approach never noticed or at least never said anything; but I'm going to try to stay current by doing practice approaches more often than the minimum; and when I'm safety pilot I'm going to spend a lot more time watching the approach plate!
While acting as a safety pilot reporter discovers that his flying partner has descended early to the next step down altitude on a VOR approach.