Your flight test was similar to my first night lesson. I was told it was to
be "an appreciation of instruments" refresher. My instructor is an IR rated
737 pilot, so we took off in iffy weather, entered cloud at 600ft and didn't
see anything but the wings until we popped out of cloud at 700ft on
approach! My first instrument flight for ten years and I did quite well.

John

"Jeb" wrote in message
om...
"John Bishop" wrote in message
...
Interested to hear you are doing the IMC and FAA IR. After getting my
FAA
licence revalidated recently at Luton, I decided to carry on with some
training. I am now three hours into my night rating and then will finish
the
IMC I started ten years ago and move on to the FAA IR. My instructor
says
that I could even go for a FAA commercial licence, as I have enough
hours,
but I'll leave that for now, sounds like hard work. Circuit bashing at
Luton
is hard enough already, imagine Easyjet and Ryanair being told they are
number 2 to the cherokee on base!

The interesting thing I found out is that if you get the IMC and then
the
FAA IR, if you fly in a "G" plane, you can use the IR rating once you
leave
the UK FIR. If it's a "N" reg, then obviously no problem the whole time.

Regards
John


Got the night qualification at Christmas when in the USA. I used to
have the IMC which I git straight after the PPL but decided that IMC
and my level of experience were not to be mixed.

Now a bit older and wiser Ihope, I can make better use of both
especially when going to the US. Having the night qualification
releases me to fly at night there. Getting the IR will complete the
set.

The advantage of having the IMC rating is that I can shoot the various
instrument procedures with that to satisfy the IR currency even if I
dont exercise the privileges of the FAA/IR. after all the book only
requires that instrument approaches are carried out, and they will be
in my logbook. With the number of approaches available at airports not
in controlled airspace it becomes even easier.

I reckon I could do 6 different types of approaches from within an
hour of where I fly from. The RAF can help out as well. With our
weather, then it makes sense to practice them anyway.

When I did my IMC, the let down I had to do on the flight test was a
VDF/DME in real IMC at Swansea (always was IMC in Swansea as well as
very windy). That was fun and required a lot of work as I remember
having to continually transmit for the QDM and QDR.