"three-eight-hotel" wrote in message
oups.com...
So... having no actual time, under my belt, how would you typically go
out and practice your approaches? Would you file an IFR flight plan to
SAC or MHR and request multiple approaches in the air, or would you
popup out of O61 and contact NORCAL requesting "practice?" approaches
into MHR/SAC?

Stupid question, but I've never been completely clear on this... In
the case where you are flying from clear to "over" a fog layer, with
intentions of shooting "practice" approaches at the airports under IMC,
when would you actually be considered in "actual" conditions, and when
would you actually be considered cleared under IFR? I'm thrown off by
the word "practice", and probably because that's all I've ever done?
I've been on a filed IFR flight plan, but have never requested a pop-up
clearance or flown into actual IMC. If you request "practice"
approaches in the described conditions, you will actually be in IMC at
some point, so does your "practice" clearance now grant you the
privileges to fly into IMC?

I'm curious about this, not only for legal reasons, but I'm also
curious as to how you would log your time... At what point can you
start logging "actual"?

Thanks and best regards,
Todd


If you're going to want to fly through any actual IMC you need the IFR clearance. The way I would usually
request this is "Approach, N123, on the ramp at KXYZ, request IFR clearance for multiple approaches into KXYZ".
Note there is no "practise" in there-- but even if you said " request IFR clearance for practice approaches",
it's still clear that you want the IFR clearance. He'll ask which approach you want to start with, etc, and
then your clearance will begin "N123 is cleared to KXYZ via radar vectors, climb and maintain 3000, ...".

If I intend to stay VFR and wish "practice" handling by ATC it would be more like this: "Approach, N123, 3 S of
KXYZ, request practice approaches into KXYZ". In such a case you would not hear "cleared to" ( though you
prbably would hear "cleared approach"), but you would probably hear "maintain VFR" sprinkled in with the ATC
instructions...

Cheers,
John Clonts
Temple, Texas
N7NZ