Instrument Rating Archives - Golf Hotel Whiskey

Why you need an instrument rating

Jason Schappert of MzeroA.com has created a short video listing three good reasons why you need and should seek an instrument rating. The reasons Jason listed included:

Lower insurance costs. Having an instrument rating will help you save money on insurance. Moreover and if you plan on buying an aircraft, the savings on insurance from having an instrument rating will be considerable.
Increased safety. Having an instrument rating will increase both your safety as a solo pilot and the safety of any passengers you take onboard.
More flying days. Having an instrument rating means that you will not have to delay your flying due to morning fog that will eventually burn off or have to wait for perfect flying conditions.

Jason concluded that getting an instrument rating will be a pilot’s most difficult and yet most rewarding rating to pursue during your flight training.

What questions should you ask your prospective instrument instructor?

If you plan on pursuing an instrument rating, a VFR pilot named George has posted a great question on the Ask a Flight instructor website about what questions you should ask a prospective instrument flight instructor:

I am a 275 hour vfr pilot and want to pursue my instrument rating. I plan to interview several instructors. What are the key things to ask?

Commenter Andy Neumann posted that he would look for an instrument flight instructor who had plenty of IFR experience outside of the local training area. However, Andy added that real world experience alone will not make a good instrument flight instructor and that you should look for an instructor will emphasize precision aircraft control plus has a good method for teaching it. Andy noted that the most common problem he sees with instrument pilots is centered around basic instrument scan, interpretation and control and that there is a temptation to just start shooting approaches.

Reader Brian then posted a list of questions that should be asked but he also added that it will be critical to find an organized flight instructor who will diligently record your progress and can also present an instrument curriculum with attainable goals. Brian pointed out that he has seen too many flight instructors decide on the day of the student’s flight about what should be done and he then added that he has never seen this habit in “any other form of formal education” in his life. Brian concluded by writing:

Taking them to lunch to discuss these things might save you some money and help to build a friendship with your prospective instructor. We rarely say no to being taken out to eat.

Finally, JamesCFI wrote that you should do an instrument rating in a steam gauge aircraft rather than one with a glass cockpit – unless you plan to fly mostly glass cockpit equipped aircraft. James then added that you don’t want a instrument flight instructor who just teaches and does not do any real hard IFR flying plus you should ask your prospective flight instructor what he or she includes in his or her scan. If the instrument flight instructor responds with the “standard FAA six pack answer,” you should instead find one who answers like someone who flies IFR for a living.

Hence and if you plan on pursuing your instrument rating, the entire thread is well worth reading.

Radio navigation iPhone app

I remember doing my IMC training and struggling hard to get my head around VORs and NDBs and how to interpret the instruments to figure out where I was in relation to them. I used a program called RANT to try to figure it out and it help a bit. Now there’s an app for it – Radionav Sim - written by a friend of mine, Vincent Lambercy. It’s pretty cool and much cheaper than RANT. Well worth getting if you’re studying for an IMC or IR or just trying to learn radio navigation.

iPhone Screenshot 1

Four checkrides in one

Checkrides happen. It’s an inevitable part of being a pilot. But knowing that doesn’t make them easier or more fun. On Saturday, I had to do four:

JAR Single Engine Piston rating renewal. Somehow, stupidly, I had let this lapse. I can still fly N-reg aircraft on my FAA CPL but I like to keep all my ratings current so I decided to renew it.
JAR IMC rating. This rating lets me fly G-reg aircraft in clouds in the UK. It has to be renewed with a flight test every couple of years and my rating was due to expire later this year but it made sense to renew it now because it doubles up with some of the FAA tests.
FAA Instrument Proficiency Check. You can keep an FAA instrument rating current by performing six approaches, some holds and some tracking in actual IMC (or under the hood or in a sim) within the past six months. However, this is a pretty low standard of currency. You could fly them all in January and then do nothing until July. I don’t think you’d be very current at the end of it. My preference is to fly with an instructor or do an IPC every three to six months. That way I know I’m legal and current.
FAA Biannual Flight Review. I passed my CPL in October 2007 so I didn’t need to do a BFR until later this year but it seemed to make sense to wrap it up with the other stuff because so much of it overlaps.

So off I went with John Page from TAA UK in N147GT to do some holds, tracking and approaches at Southend. The sneaky so-and-so had fixed it with the controllers to switch of the glideslope on my second approach so I had to revert to a localiser-only approach. It wasn’t elegant at first as I had to check the plate for the heights and so on but I made a good recovery and would have landed safely.

This is why I prefer doing checkrides with instructors because you learn something each time. Left to my own devices, I would have done a radar-vectored, auto-coupled ILS approaches and it would have been a cake walk.

Then we went off to the local area for the dreaded compass turns. I can master computers and GPS systems with manuals 500 pages thick. But a simple magnetic compass, a stopwatch and some schoolboy maths does my head in every time. Then some other VFR SEP/BFR type stuff: practice forced landings, stalls, steep turns etc.

After that, recovery from unusual attitudes. With foggles. On the back up instruments. In turbulence. My gyros toppled completely and I was nearly sick but this is good practice. It was a pleasure to get the circuit portion of the checkride over and land after nearly two hours aloft.

Then the paperwork. As Wernher von Braun said “Going to the moon is easy but the paperwork is very difficult.” (His biography was called “I aim for the stars” but some wag suggested that the subtitle should be “…but sometimes I hit London.”) Anyway, I’m back on the top line now and good to fly.

IR training – day six

Written by Alan Hoffler

Awakened at 0630 local time to the statement “it’s nice out”. Finally. So I’m up, eat my Raisin Bran, and confirm via Internet that it is indeed nice, and especially cool. Weather forecast is better than 4000 scattered along the entire route, so I’m not going to have to implement Plan C, which is so far below Plans A & B that we don’t even want to have to think about invoking it. It’s a go, and I may even be on time for once.

Get a clearance out of TIX with my “special” squawk code, vector myself over mom & dad’s house (which I can’t find because I’m too busy flying), and I’m up and gone on my way to 4500 at a soaring 750 fpm, departing 0902 local. Enjoying the fact that the sun is behind me, I spot several traffic alerts even before I get them, and also see a 360 degree “rainbow” below me with the plane’s shadow at the center. Camera won’t focus on the blur, unfortunately. Fly right over DAY and the speedway, and I follow the coast north. Seeing no clouds inland, I climb to 6500 and I’m solo, On Top. Jax ATC is by far the most impressive along my route so far. A couple of interchanges are worth sharing:

JAX: N12345, if you don’t have the traffic (same altitude and opposite direction, unconfirmed), suggest you deviate.

N12345: we’ll do that.

JAX: N12345, did you get the type and altitude of the traffic?

N12345: we’re looking… couldn’t tell the type, but he was black and white

and they call me…

JAX: Skipper 1819R, traffic 1 o’clock and two miles, indicates same altitude and direction…

N1819R: looking, no joy

JAX, a few minutes later: Skipper 1819R, traffic appears faster than you and is now no factor

N1819R: Everyone is faster than me.

JAX: Roger that.

One aircraft repeats back 1600 when cleared to 16000, and I fondly recall the first clearance I ever asked for from RDU, for two-five thousand (in a Cessna 152). I thought my CFI would fall out of the plane from laughter. They never corrected me.

I see billows from the flat layer of clouds, and see the power plant causing the ripples below the broken layer. OAT is a cool 50 degrees, a nice break from the weather I’ve had which is most un-Novemberlike. I mistake a rest area for an airport that I spent 90 seconds trying to find on my chart. JAX is broken, but I get a nice sightseeing tour, overflying the Class C at 6500. Even with a rising pressure situation, I decide to deviate to Jekyll Island to do a fly-by of our family’s next vacation destination. I find a hole and just make it through after the TFR at St. Mary’s, turn up the coast at Jekyll and fly up the beach at 1000. A big billow at the end of the island allows me to turn inland and another hole gets me on top at 4500. I am a little nervous that I won’t find one back down, but 8 miles out of JES, I am in the clear and do a 360 to let a Lear get off and have a nice crosswind landing. Call my cousin and he’s at the airport before I clear the unfueling facilities. Back with them and eat lunch, hold their boy (who is the second cutest boy I’ve seen this month), and have a nice visit. Take both flying over their house and quaint Southern genteel town, both are smitten with the flying bug, and I must depart. JES is not what I’d call a high-traffic airport. Guy greets me with great interest in where I’m from. Didn’t appear to be interested in my fine story, and I note he logs me in as “Orlando”. I am the 13th transient traffic for the month of November. Guess they’ll not get much FAA money. But fuel is only a $1.99/gallon, and I top off and get ready to go.

Get off JES at about 2:30 local time, perhaps even a little ahead of schedule. And so begins the toughest stretch of the entire journey with perhaps my worst decisions of the trip(s). First, I decided to skirt a bunch of MOAs to the south, and my route takes me over the Okefenokee Swamp. I realize about 10 minutes out that this may as well be the Sahara desert for lack of landmarks. Makes North Florida look like an urban area. I go for the better part of an hour with no buildings, roads, airports, lakes, rivers, or landmarks of any kind. I spend most of the time praying. If the engine fails here, it’ll be weeks before they find me. I make a mental note not to ever route over such terrain again, especially not with clouds that force me to fly 2500 MSL. JAX center hasn’t had me on radar the whole way, so I really have been out of the loop. Plane runs like a top, though, and when I spot the metropolis of Jasper (FL), I feel like I’m back on planet earth. Finally pick up TLH approach, and I may as well be home. See the geese going south over a lake, and I continue my own migration west. One more hurdle and poor decision to go, however. I’m now in the clear at 4500 with a tailwind giving me 100+ groundspeed, but over Lake Seminole I spot haze at my level I can’t see through. I debate briefly going on top, but weather indicates I might not be able to get back down, and even though I think I can get back to Quincy if need be, I decide to duck down. I go lower… and lower… Down to 1500 and vis would probably be reported at 6 if the MAI AWOS was working, but it’s not. Flying westward at 3:30 pm local in vis6 may as well be IFR. I can hardly see the ground. When I turn around and look behind me, vis is great, but looking ahead, I can see nothing. I am nervous and consider turning back, but recall that if I can make MAI, then I can get back at 1000 (or lower), and I’m only 5 out from MAI. Then the vis starts to improve — moisture off Lake Seminole seemed to be contributing — and even though it’s still poor, I breathe a little easier. Probably wasn’t 5 minutes, but it had me nervous. I’m leaning hard on the GPS and getting there with all 115 horses.

Cairns clears me to 1J0 advisory and cuts me loose, and I finally spot 1J0 just 5 miles out and announce downwind and land. The ground never felt so good. I stop and call my nephew with the plane running and he informs me they’re all gone and en route to me. I do another lap, and see them kicking up dust down airport road as I’m on final. After I grease on my best landing to date, I taxi over and hope Clint can take some video of a takeoff and landing, but he’s already late for kid #1’s dance practice. Sun is now peeking through clouds and spraying color of every imaginable shade my way. I take another lap and end by putting my previous landing into second place, even stopping with no harm to the brakes, tires, or plane at the one (and only) turnoff of Alpha (why do they need to name the 20 foot long and only “taxiway” on the airport?). I must hover over to fill up the gas — life is good, and I’m on cloud nine, even as the clouds are probably closing in around me at about 9 (hundred).

With a spring to my step, I start to clean up the plane, a little sad to see one-eight-one-niner-Romeo go. It’s dusk and I need the lights in the hangar, but can’t find the switch. Guy wandering the airport is no help, but says there is a guy in the other hangar who would know. I wander to find him, he tells me where the lights are, and follows that with “Who are you and why should you care?” I explain and he smiles. Got to go get the truck to get my stuff toted off and I meet the poster child for Bonifay International. A guy in a blaze orange vest walking across the tarmac with a gun slung under his arm. I am only mildly afraid, but the events of the day have prepared me well.

Back at the homestead, I’m the only adult around, so I try to interest kids in games. Kid #5 pulls our her favorite: Candyland, and when I tell her I don’t know how to play, she becomes exasperated and tells me, “you don’t know how to play ANYTHING”. Yeah, but I can fly a plane, and that’s what matters, kid.

Kid #2 forgets the dishes and restriction is moved out to age 25, kid #3 falls asleep in the floor and when he awakes at midnight, he heads for his desk to do schoolwork. I teach sis and Clint lesson one of bridge (cards), and we all hope to learn more at the vacation. In the sack at about 1, and completely wiped. 6.3 in the books.