"Guy Elden Jr." wrote in message ...
Just got back from a good proficiency practice flight. This was the first
time I'd flown single pilot IFR at night with conditions that could
potentially deteriorate to actual instrument. (cloudy, rain developing as
the flight progressed, visibility dropping somewhat)

....

So to sum up: I had 1 VOR, 1 COM, and no backups in the plane for this trip.
And the COM was flaky toward the end. Methinks this plane is about to be
decommissioned from the flight line, because the owner refuses to put any
more money into it. It also just came out of 100 hour, so should (in theory)
be at its best operating capacity. I know I won't be trying any more trips
at night or IFR in it anytime soon, but I'm glad I had the chance to push
the boundaries a bit with the bare minimums for night IFR flight.

Given that you suspected the flight might turn into actual, did you
examine the
VOR checks done by other pilots in the last 30 days? I'd suspect if
the owner was an aircraft slumlord, that they weren't done... I got
bit by this once (second IFR solo flight after getting ticket), I
rented a plane where the VOR check was done, but only on one radio,
the other radio was off by about 13' and determining location by
station cross-reference put me into a confusing quandry where my time
based location wasn't matching the VOR cross reference location. Of
course I didn't realize that the second radio was bum or which VOR was
actually checked because it just said VOR check good +1', so It took
me another 20 minutes of sweating in hard actual to sluth out which
one was bad. I had to wait until an NDB passage to eliminate the bad
one. This was all over territory
which was outside ATC radar coverage, and when I did come into
coverage I was barked at because I had reported my position in the
wrong location (30 miles wrong). I informed them of electronics
problems and asked them to keep an eye on me. To compound my stress
levels, ATC later in the flight kept calling me asking my altitude and
telling me I was in a steep decent. This was due to a fresh and
faulty encoder install two days prior to me renting this plane.. No
idea why it kept doing that, but it sure freaked me out. Constantly
running through my mind were all the failure modes, blocked static,
failing gyros, etc etc.... I think I lost 40 pounds of weight and all
in perspiration on that trip. This stress could have all been avoided
if the log clearly stated which VOR was checked, and if the second one
wasn't checked I could have checked it myself before departing. (More
importantly, I should have realized that the entry was incorrect or
incomplete) The VOR problem combined with the fear of diving into the
ground due to some instrumentation failure were over the top
stressfull. The encoder by itself wouldn't have been so bad, but I
was already doubting the aircraft's quality before that happened due
to the VOR issue, so I started assuming everything was going to hell
in a handbasket... I learned more about troubleshooting problems on
that one trip than 90 hours of classroom lecture could ever be taught.