Actual IFR TRAINING

[fly_high]

Why is actual IFR time not part of the requirements for getting and IFR rating? I think there should be a min number of hours before you are eligable for an IFR ride.

[Hedley]

The old excuse is that sometimes, depending upon the
location and time of year, it may not be possible to find
a cloud in the sky during your IFR training. Or, it may not
be legal to fly in it (eg known icing). Or, it may not be sane
to fly in it (ever seen the inside of a Cb?).

[fly_high]

I think that if someone is being given a rating which allows them to fly in and out of cloud simply training them under the hood and in a very basic simulator just doesnt do the trick.

[Hedley]

Yeah, you're right. What can help a lot is to do hood
work at night, to get rid of the peripheral cues.

Also, it helps if people don't take on hard-core IFR
flights at first. For example, take off, immediately
enter cloud, hand-fly in cloud (single pilot) with no
auto-pilot, in the bumps, dodging Cb's with no
stormscope or radar, and then flying a complicated
non-precision approach to minimums at an unfamiliar
airport.

Good luck.

Instead, fly on a day where you get on top reasonably
quickly, and you go someplace where the vis and cloud
ceilings are ok, and not decreasing, and you get vectors
to an ILS.

Also helps to bring an experienced IFR pilot along in
the right seat, to lend a hand, too.

[SkyWolfe]

For my IFR training, on the wet coast, if it was cloudy, the cold and moisture meant icing... Which meant I could not train. This was about 90% of the time, from October-March... After that, it was blue skies :/

[Hedley]

Q.E.D.

[Big Pistons Forever]

I deliberately waited untill December (West Coast) before I started my IFR training. I also refused to fly with the new guy. I only flew with an X-Military instructor with a ton of transport time and picked the crappy days for my lessons. He wasn't afraid to fly in clouds and so I ended up with almost all of my IFR in actual IMC. I also got to fly a night non precision circle to land which required a missed approach because all lights on the ground suddenly went out on the downwind, and a for real minimums ILS.

I learned 2 things.

1) I could actual fly a whole flight solely with reference to the instruments

2) Real IFR is not something to be taken lightly and I had a whole lot still to learn with respect to actually using my rating.

[fly_high]

thats how i have been feeling all winter either its ICING, LOW CIELINGS, lack of equipment

[fly_high]

I deliberately waited untill December (West Coast) before I started my IFR training. I also refused to fly with the new guy. I only flew with an X-Military instructor with a ton of transport time and picked the crappy days for my lessons. He wasn't afraid to fly in clouds and so I ended up with almost all of my IFR in actual IMC. I also got to fly a night non precision circle to land which required a missed approach because all lights on the ground suddenly went out on the downwind, and a for real minimums ILS.

I learned 2 things.

1) I could actual fly a whole flight solely with reference to the instruments

2) Real IFR is not something to be taken lightly and I had a whole lot still to learn with respect to actually using my rating.

i envy your training because by the looks of it my whole training will be in beautiful sunny days not even close to anything at minimums with a grand total of maybe 15 minutes of actual time and this was high in cruise.

so this means that I will be licenced to take a plane up solo into cielings with 200 ft after I get my rating and that would not even come close to being safe or me being ready for it so wahts the value of the ticket i ask?

[Hedley]

Every licence, endorsement and rating is a LICENCE TO LEARN.

Please don't confuse being legal with being safe. How old are you?

You can do completely legal things in an airplane, which are totally unsafe.

You can do completely safe things in an airplane, which are totally illegal.

Safety is not found in a glued-together stack of paper describing the
law, which changes with time and location. Wait a few minutes, the
law will change. What used to be legal is now illegal. What used to
be illegal is now legal. And, cross an invisible line on the ground, and
a completely different set of laws are in effect, which may conflict
with the previous set of laws.

Got that?

[fly_high]

Q.E.D.

sorry im not familiar with this abreviation can you explain.

[Hedley]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q.E.D.

P.S. Anyone here know the CAR which prohibits IFR flight into Cb's?

[fly_high]

hedley:

I think you misunderstood me,
what i mean is that I think the instruction should include more then just a couple of hours under the hood with minimal time in a low quality sim...

I think that if you are going to train a pilot to fly in an out of cloud it makes much more sense to train them right from the begining and eliminate any possibility that they could get them self into trouble. I think that you would agree that with a freshly printed IFR no pilot is qualified to go fly an approach SPIFR to mins?

[Big Pistons Forever]

I did my rating in 1988 but I still remember the night missed approach off the circling. I broke out of the solid overcast only about 100 feet above circling minimums very quickly coming to the realisation that what looked so simple on the white board was a whole different ball game when all you had for orientation was a patchwork of fuzzy ground lights viewed through a rain smeared windshield. So with my hands full of airplane trying to fly the circling procedure I fumbled over to a half assed downwind ,when suddenly it got way more dark . I blurted out "where did the lights go". "You are in cloud stupid GO AROUND" the instructor replied and then my brain completely seized. The instructor immediately realized my brain had just applied "full into spin inputs", so he gently started talking me through the procedure and after I got the power up, cleaned up the airplane, turned towards the centre of the field, and fought down the vertigo, I finally started to get my act together and completed a reasonable recovery. It was a very humbling night and a lesson about staying in front of the airplane I never forgot.

[SkyWolfe]

Well, I agree 100% that one should fly actual IMC to get the big picture. However, if this was the case, I would still be waiting to complete my IFR rating. As Hedley said, this is a license to LEARN. I would not jump into SPIFR anytime soon. I would rather personally fly FO in an IFR operation and get a good handle on it learning from the real deal, and /then/ look at it as if I "knew" something.

BPF: Great story, thank you for sharing. Those sort of experiences are excellent learning tools, I personally need to be scared shitless to learn, or I just don't reach my goal of fully understanding. I doubt I am the only one.

Wolfie

[fly_high]

THIS is the exact experience that I think every pilot should have before they are permitted to to fly IFR because that is the only way in my opinion a pilot can get find out what its really like to fly IFR. So that would make me think that we are in agreement???

i checked for the reference on flight into CBs in CARS with no luck so if you happen to find it please do share.

[Donald]

P.S. Anyone here know the CAR which prohibits IFR flight into Cb's?

Well I suppose they could get you with your personal favourite: 602.01

[randallg]

I did my multi-ifr at CZBB last March-May. This is a good time and place as I got about 6 hours of actual, which I found very valuable. The worst ice I saw was a very light dusting on the temp probe, while in a hold at YCD. I think my instructor pushed the icing thing a little, though we were never more than a few minutes from VMC and/or an airport. I thought the risk was acceptable.

Since then I have flown IFR to Oshkosh and back, Wichita and back, and a bunch of practice flights around here. I've had maybe 0.5 hours of actual in that time. It's my intention to plan some practice flights here on cloudy days to make sure I can still do it. Oh, and I will not fly IFR unless my autopilot is working!

[ScurvyDog]

I do MIFR instruction. I have flown over 2000 IFR hours. One thing I make sure I pass on to the students is at least a few actual IFR trips into the cloud. I may not take them to minimums, but nothing better than 3-400 ft above min to allow the student to experience what real IFR is like. When I had a twin that was rated for flight into Known Icing I would even take them into conditions that might give light accumulation. This allowed them to learn to use the boots rather than just reading about it.

When I did my IFR back 15years ago, I never did an actual flight. My xcountry was done on a SKC day. Not great training. The first actual trip I was strapped into a twin I had very little experience on and flying into the cloud. It took a lot of courage! I was probably dumb and unprepared to do the flight. I vowed to give all my students "actual" training.

[randallg]

The first few times you go into a cloud are pretty freaky. Best to do that with an instructor.

One flight CZBB - CYXX and back was almost entirely in IMC with CYXX ceiling about 1500 for two approaches and a hold. Of course that was after a failed engine in IMC. Then on the way back to CZBB they put us in a surprise hold at PENIN for about 20 minutes. We broke out on the CZBB RNAV30 at about 400 feet (min is 320). I landed a little hot, and the runway was wet, but we made it. That was a very intense and very instructive flight, and I'm glad an instructor was beside me. Those Duchesses have no autopilot.

I've also found that I can get a bit of vertigo when whizzing by whisps of cloud at 130 knots, and I *never* get motion sickness. Keep your eyes inside.

[AuxBatOn]

The way the CF does it is genius I think.

When you get your initial IFR Rating, you get a "restricted ticket", which means there are different IFR rules for you. For example, you cannot take off if the actual weather at the aerodrome is below the lowest usable minimum at the aerodrome + 300' and 1 NM. So, if there is an ILS where you're taking off from, you cannot take off unless the actual weather when you're on the button of the runway is 500 and 1 1/2. For planning, you cannot plan to a destination unless the weather is at least going to be at the minimums for the usable approach on the TAF. Once you get 25 or 35 hours of Actual (depending on the type you're flying), 100 hours of Instrument time and 500 TT, on your next renewal, you get your Unrestricted Ticket. It gives some safety margins for the guys that do not have much not only IFR experience, but also Actual time.

[Hedley]

Oh God, not that horrible class 1/2 IFR thing again.

Like the Night Of the Living Dead, just when you think
it's gone for good, back to life it comes.

Free advice: no matter what anybody else tells you,
good judgement can be useful when operating any
kind of powered machinery.

For example, does your toaster have a placard on it, saying:

"DO NOT FILL WITH ROCKET FUEL"

In the absence of such a placard, would you fill it with rocket fuel?

Do you have a portable electric drill? Does it have a placard
on it saying:

"DO NOT FIRMLY PRESS DRILL BIT TO FOREHEAD"

In the absence of such a placard, would you put a drill bit
in your portable electric drill, place the tip of the drill bit
onto your forehead, and press as hard as you could?

Back on topic: here some useful free advice for IFR
newbies: at first, fly from crappy wx to good (improving)
wx. Don't fly from good wx to crappy (deteriorating) wx.

Here's another one: One good hole in the overcast is
worth 10 published approaches.

Another one: Don't mess with CB's at night until you
get a lot more experience. DItto for icing.

Another one: watch your dewpoint spread like a hawk
as night falls. Dewpoint spread drops below 3C, get
on the ground.

[Big Pistons Forever]

I would suggest a bit of care with the holes in the overcast, particularly in the mountains.....

A rule of thumb I use is to compare the actual enroute winds with what was forecast. If there is a big difference then forecasts are going to be wrong and you had better start working on plan B.

[Shiny Side Up]

Another one: Don't mess with CB's at night until you
get a lot more experience. DItto for icing.

I think a wise man once said: "Outside of wartime there is no cause to ever fly into a thunderstorm."

Come to think of it, there might be no wartime causes as well.

[precision_approach]

My first experience of actual IFR came on my flight test. Right after takeoff the controller said maintain 4000, turn left heading 270. The second I flew into the clouds during that climbing left hand turn I knew I was going to throw up. But I held it down and just sweated instead and the nausea gradually subsided. It was fine at 4000, just skimming the tops of most of the clouds, but then came the descent for the approaches and it was ROUGH!... We got banged around all the way down and broke out at 1500 feet AGL... The examiner said "Now you have to put on the hood...."