Another thing, alot of people wont fly with an instructor after getting their
rating, personally, if I see some good wicked weather, I will call my instructor
and see if he wants to fly. My goal is to get experience in all kinds of
different weather, do all the flying my self, just have him with me incase
things get out of hand.
My commericial instructor right now is the same guy I used for my instrument, I
just got new avionics in my plane (garmin 430,garmin x-ponder and some other
stuff) and am going up with him for some commericial work and instrument work
so can practice doing approaches with the new GPS.

the key to good instrument training is to have a good instructor who is
experienced in hard IFR and knows what you can fly into safely.


Wendy wrote:

I upgraded from my ridiculously cheap and poorly performing Flightline
headset to a DC H20-10 in preparation for my IFR training. I haven't flown
with the DC's yet, but I will Saturday afternoon. My rationale here is
two-fold in that if I am in need of communicating, it would be a good thing
to not only have some equipment I can reliably communicate with, but to
initiate my IFR training at an airport that is controlled (KDWH) rather than
the admittedly fine uncontrolled airport I initially trained at (KCXO); the
choice of which will obviously requires a level of conversation surpassing
simply shooting the breeze.

The FBO where I bought the headset- Mercury Flight Systems- seems to have a
solid, while expensive, approach to the IFR experience. Rather than making
loads of short XC's, they seem to stress longer ones;
Houston-Memphis-Houston being one example. Obviously, there will be a lot
of shorter excursions in the curriculum, but I have to say that the idea of
flying under an instrument flight plan on major excursions is a challenging
surely and valuable experience. These people seem honestly concerned with
making me a proficient IFR pilot rather than simply preparing me for the
checkride, which is the general impression I got from the operation where I
obtained my initial certification. Any comments on this would be greatly
appreciated; being trained to pass the PTS is one thing, and thoroughly
understanding it is another, IMHO.

Apparently the training will be conducted in a C-172 upgraded to 180hp with
a CS prop; since I have some (short) time in a Super Decathlon this won't be
totally new to me. Instrument flying will be new, other than than my brief
exposure required by the Private program, and I am looking forward to it.
This is a challenge I really want to master, and any suggestions you all
might have as concerns beginning training would be greatly appreciated.

Wendy