ME IFR training: My pet peeves

[Big Pistons Forever]

Weather is crap, my trip is cancelled and I am bored.......what to do......I know I can inflict my pain on all my avcanada brethren

RANT WARNING: If you are easily offended stop reading now !

Things about ME IFR flight training that just make my head explode (in no particular order);

1) Stupidly long complicated FTU checklists. The current winner is Kawartha flight Centre. Their Seneca 1 checklist requires 147 checks from start up to shut down including checking the alternate static source 3 times and my personal all time favorite (in the runway line up check) Brakes ....... Release The next time you are at the airport on an IFR day watch the next Ho or small T - prop. The amount of time from door closed to max power is how long you will have on your first job. You will notice that this amount of time is probably about 10 % of the amount of time you are using on your training flight. Part of this is due to the overly long checklists many schools use, but part of this is also due to the fact that most instructors don't push students to be efficient about getting the aircraft ready, either because an arbitrary amount of ground time is tacked on to the airtime anyway or because the hobbs is running and it is all billable time.

2) IFR instructing's fetish with holds. In the real world a hold is an admission of failure. I say failure because going around in circles is pure waste when the aircraft is being billed by the mile (the norm for charter ops). The ideal solution when been given a hold clearance is to adjust the speed so that your arrival over the holding point coincides with what you estimate will be your EFC time and will obviously be situation dependent. As for IFR trainings fascination with complicated short notice hold entries. Well guess what there are two kinds of real world holds "hold as published" or a hold clearance where the in bound track is the same as the direct track to the station. ATC has no desire to screw you up with some bizarro hold entry, especially when you are close to the holding point. As for entries; well the only thing that really matters is that you hold on the right side of the fix and stay in protected airspace. I remember overhearing one IFR training debrief. The instructor told the student he had "failed" the VOR hold because he had done an offset entry, when he was 8 degrees in the parallel sector . I would have given him bonus point because an offset entry is easier to fly and you get track guidance as soon as you turn inbound with out having to fiddle with the track bar And all that work to perfect the perfect 1 minute inbound timing......an utterly useless skill because if you actually have to hold the first thing you want to do is ask for 10 mile legs, which you will almost always get. So if you are droning around in the hold while paying 6 dollars a minute trying to nail down the last few degrees of outbound correction or fly an exact 1 minute inbound leg......the instructor is wasting your money. As soon as you have entered the hold the instructor should be pestering ATC for the approach clearance so that you can practice what you do on every IFR flight.

3) The idea that "real" IFR pilots don't use the GPS. Most IFR trainers have a GPS now and it's use should be incorporated into every flight. In particular you should never be doing any NDB tracking without having the NDB set as the waypoint in order to get distance information and using the map function to maintain situational awareness is a key real world skill that should treated as a foundation training requirement

4) The plate briefing as a "short story". There seems to be a propensity in FTU's' to have a huge elaborate protocol for plate briefings with arcane mnemonics and much ritual. The problem is the only reasons this can be made to work is because in the training environment after you have practiced the same 2 approaches to the same 2 or 3 airports 15 times in the sim you have basically memorized everything and can rattle it all off with out even looking at the plate. OK if you never want to fly to any other airports but you will find that the first time you try to fly to a strange airport you will waste so much time on the briefing you will probably screw up the approach. I prefer the real world single pilot brief. 50 miles from the airport while you are cruising along on autopilot, study the plate for the gotchya's, like all the little notes on the side and any weird circling procedures, missed approach procedures etc. When the approach is confirmed rebrief the killer items to yourself (eg for an ILS):
- I am looking at the right plate
- how am I getting to the approach
- what is the inbound track (so the track bar is properly set)
- what is the GP check altitude
- what is DH
- what is the first leg an altitude of the MAP
Done right this will take 15 seconds and put all the important information in the front of the brain

5) That enduring piece of FTU folk lore "on an ILS take the timing from the FAF in case the Glide Path fails so you can continue on the Loc only approach" IMO this is stupid for 3 reasons
a) There is basically no way for the ground station to have a unexpected GP failure and still have a useable localizer. The most likely cause will be a power failure at the airport in which case the localizer will also obviously not be working
b) If the glideslope has failed in the aircraft what is to say that the localizer is still working or in fact is this the first indication of a bigger problem? In any case the airspace between the FAF and the DH is not the place to be trouble shooting an aircraft problem
c) a central flight safety principal is you fly the approach which you have planned and briefed
IMO the only acceptable action in the event of a GP failure is to initiate a missed approach.

6) Schools that won't teach IFR in actual IFR conditions. This is silly at so many levels that words fail me

7) Why students accept instructors who have no actual line flying experience and in many cases have only just got an IFR rating themselves. There are schools that have instructors who have real world experience, so it is a mystery to me why all the students don't flock to them, especially because in most cases it doesn't cost any more to fly with a veteran instructor.

WHEW I feel much better......OH OH I feel like a seal pup who sees the masts of the Newfoundland sealing ship approaching.....time to duck and cover

[Bede]

Great post. Agree with all of the above.

The only thing I say is that I usually have students practise the NDB, just so they can master it. After they've mastered it, GPS every time. Also, it allows the student to tell the younger generation in 50 years, "when I was your age..."

[FlaplessDork]

Stupidly long complicated FTU checklists.

So if you are droning around in the hold while paying 6 dollars a minute trying to nail down the last few degrees of outbound correction or fly an exact 1 minute inbound leg......the instructor is wasting your money

As for entries; well the only thing that really matters is that you hold on the right side of the fix and stay in protected airspace

All bang on.

[PunkStarStudios]

Bravo.

There are two things that always struck a nerve with me and schools...
IFR training in VFR conditions. Luckily my school (Brampton) didn't have that hang up. I insisted on getting IFR in the muck and I got it... I had to be selective with the instructor but I got it never the less.

The other is no operational experience. And honestly - I can't fault the average instructor because the average instructor doesn't have that. I remember a few months out of a fresh CPL and IFR I was doing SPIFR from Ontario to the maritimes. That gave me the operational experience so when I transitioned to SP MIFR operations I was flying Pearson, Chicago, Florida, Montreal you name it.

On one flight (SPMIFR) I took a former instructor (who was probably of the the best instructors at the club if not the best) on some legs which included YYZ and night IMC; and another time a very high time instructor around the montreal area (winter IMC). In both cases they were "blown away" by the workload that's involved and how operationally things are different when you're not doing holds in the middle of a round robin. By then I was uber comfortable with the workload so I like to think I made it look easy. It was crystallized when I overhead that high time instructor (who had more than 5x my hours) telling someone that he was getting training from me.

So....
To all IFR students out there.
Break away from doing the endless holds and approaches into the same airport. Keep your regular working stiff instructor but supplement your training by finding operational pilots/instructors who'll take you up in IMC on a real trip that looks like you'll be going down to minimums and pay attention to all the operational stuff.

And one more note.... In one year I only had to do a full procedure once... before that I would have said "bah... you never have to do those"... but we were in Northern Manitoba, no radar and it dawned on me that everyone up there is doing full procedures... so yeah - it's actually applicable. If for nothing else you get real practice with situational awareness and you're doing all sorts of stuff condensed down into a few minutes - so they are good training scenarios (so long as you don't always do it at the same airport all the time). And if you're proficient in operations - you should have no problem doing a full procedure even if it's been a year or more.

[Slappy the Squirrel]

One of the best posts I have read in a long time, BPF, well done.

[Hedley]

rebrief:
- I am looking at the right plate
- how am I getting to the approach
- what is the inbound track (so the track bar is properly set)
- what is the GP check altitude
- what is DH
- what is the first leg an altitude of the MAP

One more: frequencies. Some plates have nasty traps where
there is a VOR freq as well as an ILS freq. If you have DME,
is it off the VOR or ILS freq? Also, punch in the NDB freq into
the ADF.

The worst approaches in the world, IMHO are the non-precision
with all those stupid stepdowns. You must ensure that you are
at the right altitude at the right DME, and make sure the DME
or GPS is set to the right station!

If it's night, and you're tired, and you're flying an unfamiliar
stepdown approach, look out! CFIT. All too many times,
people hit something 8 miles from the airport and everyone
wonders, "Gee, how did he do something so stupid as to
get his altitude wrong? I would never do that!"

Altitude is king. Lots of other stuff to distract you, but
that's what will kill you: CFIT.

[iflyforpie]

The more and more training rants I see, the more I think that 'teaching to pass the test' and 'teaching for the real world' are becoming more and more divergent.

To be fair to the FTUs, the flight test they are preparing the students for is not a milk run in a 'Ho that you've done 1000 times before. It pretty much sums up the worst flight you could ever have in an IFR twin without crashing the aircraft. Fly a departure, fly an approach to minimums, fly a missed approach, get a retarded hold, lose an engine, lose your autopilot, and then do a non-precision to minimums.

Just like doing VFR nav, my head was on fire at the end of it and I wondered what kind of superheros regular Joe pilots were. But soon you learn secrets and I don't see anything wrong with doing that when you get your first job.




The rest of the rant I totally agree with.

[Cat Driver]

Flight training in IMC is far more valuable than using a vision limiting device.

However the use of two stage amber is basically the same as flight in IMC except for the color of everything inside the airplane.

[AuxBatOn]

1) Stupidly long complicated FTU checklists. The current winner is Kawartha flight Centre. Their Seneca 1 checklist requires 147 checks from start up to shut down

Checks are not that bad. Once you get used to doing them and know where to look, it takes no time. I think our checklist has 200 checks from the time I sit in the aircraft to the time I take off. I can fire up the old bird in 5 minutes and be airborne 5 minutes later, from cold start, on a non-tactical mission. Yes, I check everything that is on the checklist.

2) In the real world a hold is an admission of failure. I say failure because going around in circles is pure waste when the aircraft is being billed by the mile (the norm for charter ops). The ideal solution when been given a hold clearance is to adjust the speed so that your arrival over the holding point coincides with what you estimate will be your EFC time and will obviously be situation dependent.

I don't agree. You will get your clearance at the same time, regardless of how fast you are going or what path you are taking. Yes, slowing down to best range as soon as you are told to expect a hold clearance is good. But less than that and you are wasting fuel. Holds are not an admission of failure. It's a sequencing problem on the part of the ATC. How do you sequence 2 airplanes 5 minutes apart to the same uncontrolled aerodrome?

And all that work to perfect the perfect 1 minute inbound timing......an utterly useless skill because if you actually have to hold the first thing you want to do is ask for 10 mile legs, which you will almost always get. So if you are droning around in the hold while paying 6 dollars a minute trying to nail down the last few degrees of outbound correction or fly an exact 1 minute inbound leg......the instructor is wasting your money. As soon as you have entered the hold the instructor should be pestering ATC for the approach clearance so that you can practice what you do on every IFR flight.

I agree that in the real world, who f'in cares. However, in a training environment, it teaches the student to be precise with everything. It's easily achievable in a simulator or even MS Flight Simulator.

to yourself (eg for an ILS):
- I am looking at the right plate
- how am I getting to the approach
- what is the inbound track (so the track bar is properly set)
- what is the GP check altitude
- what is DH
- what is the first leg an altitude of the MAP
Done right this will take 15 seconds and put all the important information in the front of the brain

Don't forget temperature correction (and mountaineous regions!). That's why I still use, to this day, the mnemonic: WRAMORTS. I quickly go through it to make sure I didn't forget anything and it also takes me 15 seconds.

5) That enduring piece of FTU folk lore "on an ILS take the timing from the FAF in case the Glide Path fails so you can continue on the Loc only approach" IMO this is stupid for 3 reasons
a) There is basically no way for the ground station to have a unexpected GP failure and still have a useable localizer. The most likely cause will be a power failure at the airport in which case the localizer will also obviously not be working

False. The Glide Path failed on me 3 times during my career and it wasn't the airplane. Luckily, I had a back up approach briefed and set up (the LOC in all 3 cases). My timer was started at the FAF. I shot the approach, went to LOC mins and landed unevenfully.

The LOC and the Glide Path antenna are 2 distinct pieces of equipment. The GP antenna is at the 1000' marker (or around there) on the approach end, on one side. The LOC antenna is past the departure end of the runway, centered with the width of the runway. Did you know the frequencies for both antennas are different? The frequency you dial into your ILS receiver is the frequency for the LOC. There is a conversion made in the box to tune the paired GP frequency. Same with your DME when you dial up a VOR/DME.

c) a central flight safety principal is you fly the approach which you have planned and briefed
IMO the only acceptable action in the event of a GP failure is to initiate a missed approach.

That's why you brief a back up approach. I always do. On a PAR, I have the ILS as a back up, on the ILS I have the LOC, on the TACAN I have the ILS.

[Big Pistons Forever]

The more and more training rants I see, the more I think that 'teaching to pass the test' and 'teaching for the real world' are becoming more and more divergent.

To be fair to the FTUs, the flight test they are preparing the students for is not a milk run in a 'Ho that you've done 1000 times before. It pretty much sums up the worst flight you could ever have in an IFR twin without crashing the aircraft. Fly a departure, fly an approach to minimums, fly a missed approach, get a retarded hold, lose an engine, lose your autopilot, and then do a non-precision to minimums.

Just like doing VFR nav, my head was on fire at the end of it and I wondered what kind of superheros regular Joe pilots were. But soon you learn secrets and I don't see anything wrong with doing that when you get your first job.

The rest of the rant I totally agree with.

I do not think training to pass the test and training for the real world have to be completely different. The biggest failing in MEIFR training IMO is that all the various IFR exercises are usually taught in a disconnected and stand alone way. The most important part of IFR competence IMO is understanding the rhythm of IFR flight so that you are doing the right thing at the right time and the heart of which is situational awareness. This can and should be taught from the beginning and is equally applicable to the flight test from hell as it is to the IFR "milkrun". The problem is to teach it you need to know what matters in every IFR flight and what doesn't......and that only comes from experience flying real world IFR.

[AuxBatOn]

If it's night, and you're tired, and you're flying an unfamiliar
stepdown approach, look out! CFIT. All too many times,
people hit something 8 miles from the airport and everyone
wonders, "Gee, how did he do something so stupid as to
get his altitude wrong? I would never do that!"

Same could be said about leaving the gear up, right Hedley?

[Big Pistons Forever]

Aux, you said "Don't forget temperature correction (and mountaineous regions!). That's why I still use, to this day, the mnemonic: WRAMORTS. I quickly go through it to make sure I didn't forget anything and it also takes me 15 seconds."

5) That enduring piece of FTU folk lore "on an ILS take the timing from the FAF in case the Glide Path fails so you can continue on the Loc only approach" IMO this is stupid for 3 reasons

The purpose of the brief is to review the killer items. Cold weather corrections should be done when you are cruising 50 miles from the airport as part what I called the Gotchya elements of the approach. If you are doing cold weather corrections while flying the approach procedure you are IMO doing it wrong.

c) a central flight safety principal is you fly the approach which you have planned and briefed
IMO the only acceptable action in the event of a GP failure is to initiate a missed approach.

You said :That's why you brief a back up approach. I always do. On a PAR, I have the ILS as a back up, on the ILS I have the LOC, on the TACAN I have the ILS.[/quote]

Every 705 operator that I know of has a SOP that requires a missed approach in the event an abnormality precluding the approach from being completed as briefed. This is so that the situation can be properly assesed including the posssibility of an aircraft fault which may jeopordize localizer performance. If the crew elects to try again than the "localizer only" approach will be briefed and all the "so whats" of that can be identified and dealt with. The bottom line is Civilian Operators are not willing to accept the level risk that are normal and appropriate for Military fast air. There is a reason that No airliner from a 1st world nation has had a fatal accident in all of 2010.

[AuxBatOn]

The purpose of the brief is to review the killer items. Cold weather corrections should be done when you are cruising 50 miles from the airport as part what I called the Gotchya elements of the approach. If you are doing cold weather corrections while flying the approach procedure you are IMO doing it wrong.

I still review the temp correction, make sure I applied them to the appropriate altitudes.

Every 705 operator that I know of has a SOP that requires a missed approach in the event an abnormality precluding the approach from being completed as briefed. This is so that the situation can be properly assesed including the posssibility of an aircraft fault which may jeopordize localizer performance. If the crew elects to try again than the "localizer only" approach will be briefed and all the "so whats" of that can be identified and dealt with. The bottom line is Civilian Operators are not willing to accept the level risk that are normal and appropriate for Military fast air. There is a reason that No airliner from a 1st world nation has had a fatal accident in all of 2010.

Unfortunately, not every CPL has a 705 job with a fresh license. I don't understand how risky it is to have 1 more altitude briefed. But I disgress.

[Big Pistons Forever]

Unfortunately, not every CPL has a 705 job with a fresh license. I don't understand how risky it is to have 1 more altitude briefed. But I disgress.

Frankly I am disappointed in your response. It can be a lot more than "one more altitude" unless you can maintain the existing rate of descent to the MAP and the missed approach procedure is the same. Many approaches in mountainous regions have step downs that only apply to the LOC procedure or require a dive and drive if you have are to have any hope going visual in a position that will allow a landing and/or differences in the missed approach.

So in the unlikely event of a GP outage why are you so hostile to the idea that you should not take the extra 10 to 15 minutes to overshoot and fly around to set yourself up for another fully briefed approach using a different procedure ?

[AuxBatOn]

Frankly I am disappointed in your response. It can be a lot more than "one more altitude" unless you can maintain the existing rate of descent to the MAP and the missed approach procedure is the same. Many approaches in mountainous regions have step downs that only apply to the LOC procedure or require a dive and drive if you have are to have any hope going visual in a position that will allow a landing and/or differences in the missed approach.

So in the unlikely event of a GP outage why are you so hostile to the idea that you should not take the extra 10 to 15 minutes to overshoot and fly around to set yourself up for another fully briefed approach using a different procedure ?

Obviously, you plan your back up appropriately. If it's not practical, like the case you mentionned, don't do it. However, you cannot simply state that it shouldn't be done. It is safe to do it, if you have prepared to the eventuality. Every solution should be tailored to the problem. No blanket statements.

[trey kule]

Actually, I thought that was a pretty good rank. Wx down and you emptied the coffee pot?
Some of the responses were pretty good too.
I too, had an actual ILS failure. It was interesting.
there used to be people on here who actually did a nice summary (serious one). Might be a good idea to do that in a day or two. Maybe we can all see a little more efficient way to do this type of training.

[Big Pistons Forever]

I guess Aux and I will just have to agree to disgree on this one

I actually had a GS failure once. It was an interesting scenario that occured during an IFR training flight in IMC conditions. We were on vectors to CYXX and were told it would be a short gate. By the time we intercepted the loc the GS needle was almost full down, so I gave a mental "thanks for nothing" to ATC and told the student to get on down. He pitched over into a pretty aggressive nose down attitude and the aircraft soon had a pretty high rate of descent. By the time this got sorted out I realized that we were only 150 feet above the glide path check altitude and the ADF needle which was on the XX beacon (the FAF) was still pointing straight ahead and wasn't twitching and the GS needle had not moved from three dots down. At this point I thought something isn't right and ordered the student to level out NOW. By the time he had stopped the descent we were 100 feet below the GP check altitude and still no GS movement and then the ADF swung around. At this point I said screw it and called for the missed approach. We went back to home base, briefed the Loc approach but flew the GP needle which appeared to work normally. At no time did the unit have a GS flag. The nav head was removed and bench tested and proved to have a intermittent fault that froze both the GS and Loc needles, but without the flags coming down.

The part that really hit home for me was how fast everything happened. We were being vectored at 2500 feet and the GP check altitude at the XX beacon is 1600 feet. There was maybe a minute and a half between intercepting the loc and crossing the FAF and then going missed. I think that event is what has made me so hard over about when in doubt about what is happening just go missed and get yourself sorted out at altitude.

[PunkStarStudios]

The more and more training rants I see, the more I think that 'teaching to pass the test' and 'teaching for the real world' are becoming more and more divergent.

To be fair to the FTUs, the flight test they are preparing the students for is not a milk run in a 'Ho that you've done 1000 times before. It pretty much sums up the worst flight you could ever have in an IFR twin without crashing the aircraft. Fly a departure, fly an approach to minimums, fly a missed approach, get a retarded hold, lose an engine, lose your autopilot, and then do a non-precision to minimums.

Just like doing VFR nav, my head was on fire at the end of it and I wondered what kind of superheros regular Joe pilots were. But soon you learn secrets and I don't see anything wrong with doing that when you get your first job.

The rest of the rant I totally agree with.

I see your point.
But try this (negative RNAV to boot) as SPMIFR :

Depart Waterloo into IMC and land at YYZ 10 minutes later.
Or depart CYUL IMC and in Mirabel 10 minutes later.
Or on wheels up, get an amended clearance coming out of YYZ or YUL.

Or better yet (and this was a personal favorite of mine)
Plan VFR, departing Toronto Island for Buttonville. After the engines are running and you're good to taxi - the snow squal hits. Now go file IFR, get the clearance and then actually get out of there (taking off towards the smoke stakes that you know you saw there moments before the snow hit) and get down on the ground in Buttonville on the NDB approach - oh yeah - and fly over the crash site where you lost a pal a month previous in the same conditions.

Don't skip corners (get the ATIS, tune and identify - remember negative rnav - etc.)

I thought CYKF to CYYZ was busy for SPMIFR - but that last one had me giving myself a pat on the back.

My point is a nice leisurely 45 minute round robin with some approaches and a hold is all nice and dandy - but you earn your chops when you taxi from the south end of YYZ up to the north end at night in low vis by yourself.

[PunkStarStudios]

5) That enduring piece of FTU folk lore "on an ILS take the timing from the FAF in case the Glide Path fails so you can continue on the Loc only approach" IMO this is stupid for 3 reasons
a) There is basically no way for the ground station to have a unexpected GP failure and still have a useable localizer. The most likely cause will be a power failure at the airport in which case the localizer will also obviously not be working

False. The Glide Path failed on me 3 times during my career and it wasn't the airplane. Luckily, I had a back up approach briefed and set up (the LOC in all 3 cases). My timer was started at the FAF. I shot the approach, went to LOC mins and landed unevenfully.

I remember one approach where my GS failed. Turned out it was my HSI (figured that out in the air). It was IMC everyone and damn low clouds. Now I've been in several real world emergencies that could have easily gone wrong (G1000 failure flying, other flying stuff, run out of air 80ft down scuba diving, etc.). That was the first time I felt that wave of uncertainly wash over me "Holy crap... how the hell am I going to get down with a pooched HSI?". 5 seconds later I had a plan - but it stuck with me that it could have been bad.

[Bede]

AuxBatOn,

As much as I respect our boys in blue, there is a vast difference between civy flying and military flying with different objectives. Civilian pilots spend 95% of their time flying the line, and 5% training, and I bet in the military it's the exact opposite. If I was in the military, I bet I'd agree with you, but given my experience in the civilian world, I can not agree. In civilian flying, there is something to be said for efficiency; not rushing or being complacent, but being efficient. I think that if you ever retire from the military and come fly for an airline, you will change your mind. Every ex -18 driver I've flown with is virtually indistinguishable from the guy that started in a Beaver.

On another note, I did all my IFR training VMC and VFR. When I pressed my instructor to at least fly IFR, I was told "OK, we can file IFR for your cross country, but if the weather gets bad, we're cancelling IFR and .. running home." Absolutely horrible training; I should have gone elsewhere.

[Hedley]

I did all my IFR training VMC and VFR

Not good.

if the weather gets bad, we're cancelling IFR

Well ... actually ... in a little airplane, sometimes that's the best choice. With no de-icing capability, you can get into a world of trouble in cloud above the freezing level. Not the best choice in winter. It can be a LOT more safe to be underneath the cloud, if the ground is flat.

And in summer, in a little airplane, you simply can't top the wx, or at least get on top enough to see what's going on, and drive around them with a fast cruise speed. Many years ago I was IFR in an Apache in Florida, clouds bubbling up enthusiatically everywhere, and ATC wanted me to go someplace the the stormscope didn't like. Right about then, I flew over a beautiful hole. Cancel IFR, spiral down, scoot along the coast a couple miles and landed at Merritt Island to wait the Cbs out. Am I a pussy when it comes to messing with ice and Cbs in little airplanes? You betcha!

This is why I tell people, when they want to get their instrument rating, to first get some real world VFR x/c experience, because you had better be a good VFR pilot before you try flying IFR. You have to be flexible, and use whichever works in that situation (wx, airspace, etc).

[Shiny Side Up]

This is why I tell people, when they want to get their instrument rating, to first get some real world VFR x/c experience, because you had better be a good VFR pilot before you try flying IFR. You have to be flexible, and use whichever works in that situation (wx, airspace, etc).

+1. It makes me cringe when people say that they want to do IFR so they don't have to worry about VFR stuff anymore. Just because you have a rating doesn't mean you have a go anywhere pass, but then I'm not as brave as some.

I'm of two minds about Real IFR training in cloud. I think everyone should get it if they can, but on the other hand given the training aircraft it often goes on in, there are few "perfect training IFR" days that happen in this country where you have just the right ammount of weather, but not too much if you catch my meaning. You might be working on getting an IFR rating for a long time if you held out only for such days. How many pilots out there never flew in cloud during their training and never got the experience until after they started working commercially? The number is probably pretty high - I can think of at least a couple dozen that I know and I'll even put myself in that category. I don't think because someone's training wasn't ideal that makes them a bad pilot forevermore.

Absolutely horrible training; I should have gone elsewhere.

Did you feel that after said training you were completely incapable of flying IFR? I'm going to assume you met some standard for it by passing a test, did you feel that that standard wasn't enough to prepare you for real in cloud IFR?

[iflyforpie]

I did manage to make it into IFR, which was no mean feat in the Okanagan with the MEAs starting at 9000 and 100NM Safe Altitudes being 11,000.

Was a real eye opener. First time filing, just a departure out of Penticton, published hold, and LOC/DME approach. Well, as soon as we entered the hold, the excrement hit the prop. I could hear it through the comm system zzzzzzzzzzzzzzIP!! SNAP!! A huge cell had decided to form around the airport and now CMA and Navair had to do the approach.

So they sent us off airways on radar vectors to clear the approach (they were lower and doing contact approaches I believe is why we weren't sequenced first) and my instructor, who thankfully had real IFR experience, kept pestering center and kept me on the dials as I wanted to look out the window to see how cool it was.

Anyways, as fast as it started it stopped. Both CMA and Navair cancelled and Center asked us which approach we wanted to do. No thanks, we'll cancel too!

[Big Pistons Forever]

re training in actual IMC.

I did 9.0 hrs of aircraft training time for my MEIFR of which 7.1 was actual IMC. I trained on the West Coast and was working as an Instructor. I waited utill December to start my training and deliberately picked days where we were going to see actual IMC conditions. In the end I did and actual 200 and 1/2 ILS, a night circling approach in rain where we had to go missed on the downwind because we flew into cloud and saw some light icing. At the end of the course I was not freaked out about flying in cloud but I had a healthy respect for the rigours of hardball IFR and a keen appreciation of my limitations.

Bottom line there is a difference between knowing you can take the hood off if it all goes for sh*t, and knowing that you are in the goo for real.

I also think that Hedley makes a very important point. There are lots of days were small airplanes are better off flying under that 2000 ft ceiling than in some nasty cloud.........

[Shiny Side Up]

Bottom line there is a difference between knowing you can take the hood off if it all goes for sh*t, and knowing that you are in the goo for real.

Agreed. Now how do we turn that into a quantifiable training objective to measure that we've given it to someone?