In article , "bds" wrote:

"Darkwing" theducksmail"AT"yahoo.com wrote in message
...
Well I think I am going to finally put in the time and effort to go for my
Instrument Rating this fall but exactly with what aircraft avionics is my
biggest question. Where I fly they have basically all new 172SP's with
G1000's for rent. Obviously this is the aircraft I prefer to rent for VFR
because of all the cool and nice tools they have on board, I like eye
candy! They also have a couple older 172R's (by older I mean 4 years old)
but they have steam gauges only plus Garmin 430 GPS's. I trained on steam
gauges for my private but not sure which way I should go for my
instrument. As time goes I'm sure the glass cockpit aircraft will be more
and more common but I don't know if that is a crutch for learning IFR with
or not. Any thoughts?

Learn on the equipment that you're likely to be flying.

I have to disagree with this. I'd go for the steam gauges. I think it
will make you a better pilot. When you don't have a moving map, you
have to learn to build and maintain a much more complete mental picture
of your situation in your head. Also, having to tune and ident VORs all
the time adds to the workload and makes it that much harder. If you
learn to do that, switching to a moving map is very easy. But going the
other way is nearly impossible. One day when you're in the soup and you
lose your MFD you will have a much easier time dealing with it if you
got more practice flying VOR needles back in the day.

rg