"Stan Gosnell" wrote in message
...
In my training, I never experienced any vertigo or disorientation with
the foggles on, but I still experience it to this day in actual.
My experience is mostly the opposite - I hate being under the hood, and
fly much worse.
Actual IMC is a piece of cake in comparison. YMMV.

Whether or not you experience negative feelings such as discomfort or
vertigo in artificial IMC, the fact we all seem to concur on is that there's
nothing quite like real IMC. I've used two types of foggles (both a pain in
the backside, particularly if you have to wear glasses to see correctly) and
I've flown an aircraft with custom-made screens that prevent the pilot (but
not the instructor) from seeing outside. Even with such screens, though, the
fact remains that because there are louvres cut so the instructor can keep a
lookout, if you have half-decent peripheral vision there's a good chance
you'll see a horizon there somewhere, out of the corner of your eye, thus
failing to simulate the whole spatial-disorientation thing you're trying to
achieve.

Don't get me wrong, it's handy to have artificial IMC available - not least
because Sod's law dictates that when you want to do an IMC lesson, there's
never a decent cloud around when you want one. But you absolutely must do
some real IMC, or you stand a good chance of being bitten the first time you
do it for real on your own.

The week before I was to do my IMC test, my instructor sent another student
and me with one of his colleagues (it's good to have a check-ride with
someone independent) to fly from my home airfield to another about 60 miles
away. I flew there and did an NDB approach, the other guy flew back and had
the luxury of an ILS. Cloudbase was 1,200 feet with the tops at about 3,500
feet; we departed, climbed through the cloud, flew on top following the
navaids (just us and something big and grey going into Mildenhall - such a
neat experience), then did the approach through cloud. Not only did it
convince the other instructor that I stood a chance of passing my test, but
more importantly it made me think: "Hey, this stuff really does work - if
you do it like it says on the plate, there's a runway at the end of it".

D.