In article .com,
"Dan" wrote:

On Feb 25, 6:14 am, Roy Smith wrote:

Pointless? No. I do agree with you that's it's a little vague....

My point here was that if I can control the plane by reference to
instruments while doing approaches, I sure as heck must be able to do
it while remaining straight and level. What additional experience am
I gaining by simply being in cruise flight for that long?

You get the experience of going someplace that's outside of your familiar
area, where you actually have to think about how to get where you're going,
look things up because you don't already have them memorized.

You can spend the cruise time (if you can count 15 minutes as "cruise
time") doing things like getting a weather update, reviewing your fuel
status, planning your descent profile, etc. These are all things you
should be doing on normal IFR flights anyway.

Even better, put your safety pilot to good use and have him give you a
diversion to someplace you haven't planned. Pull out the charts, figure
out a route, air-file a flight plan, pick up your clearance, and program
the GPS with the new route. That'll keep you busy during the en-route
segment.

Anybody who's flying real IFR on a regular basis will meet these
requirements as part of his or her normal flying. Even if you need to go
out and fly a bunch of approaches just to get current, going to someplace
that's 50 miles away just shouldn't be a hardship. Most places, there's
enough approaches around that without much effort, you can put together a
loop where the missed approach from one puts you to the general vicinity of
the IAF of the next.