Roger Halstead wrote
I would agree only in that he had a lot of hours which does not
necessarily mean he was well on his way.

Well, an examination of his logbooks showed him making progress.

Also the reported flight path would be pretty much typical of some one
turning the autopilot off and discovering they needed to watch the
instruments, but kept looking for the surface.

Maybe. If you try to fly visually instead of using the instruments,
no amount of instrument training will help you.

But that still doesn't exaplain why he didn't use the autopilot until
he was close to the airport and had lots of lights and a solid horizon
reference.

Being rated does not mean the pilot is proficient, or even current.

True, but you would think that being rated would mean enough
proficiency to reasonably hold heading and altitude (say +/- 30 deg
and 500 ft). Plenty of instrument rated pilots encounter IMC and fail
to do that.


"To me" it is not staying proficient. The 3 hours of hood time
required for the PPL is woefully inadequate to save the pilot's butt,

I had much less than 3 (my logbook shows 1.1) and it was plenty
adequate to save my butt, even when I had to fly an emergency ASR.

something else entirely. Some people panic, and some don't. The
actual skill required to keep the shiny side up is pretty minimal.

Here we disagree, but it may be semantics. Even without panic, a
pilot who is not proficient is going to have a devil of a time keeping
the shiny side up.

I don't think it's semantics. I think that just keeping the shiny
side up is really pretty trivial, and something that requires very,
very little training in the average trainer. Now I will admit that
for a higher performance airplane that's not the case, and I suspect
that it goes double for rotorcraft.

I also think some pilots are just very reluctant to let go of visual
references and trust the gauges. When they lose visual references,
they panic. It takes some serious habituation to get them to fly on
the gauges, and for them that ability is very perishable.

I suspect early training is a big factor. There are still instructors
out there who insist that the integrated method of instruction (where
visual and instrument references are blended for aircraft control from
day one) is garbage, and that primary students should be taught to fly
by the seat of the pants - meaning by purely visual and somatic
references. These are the kinds of guys who will cover the panel with
a handkerchief if they catch the student looking at instruments. I
suspect that people trained that way will inevitably go to outside
references under stress, and will be forever at risk for loss of
control if they unexpectedly encounter conditions where visual control
is impossible, unless they practice instrument flight a lot and often.
On the other hand, I suspect those trained by the integrated method
are a lot more comfortable with using the instruments, and will not
revert to purely visual flight under stress.

Michael