"Dan Luke" wrote
Ok, so I'm going to take my medicine like a man. When it's over, I'll
report here just how ugly it got. The rest of you folks who may want to
consider if you've been deliberately ignoring that little voice telling
you you're not really as sharp as you ought to be. Might be time to
give your CFII a call.

I have a feeling that the era of staying current and not needing an
IPC is coming to an end, and I for one am not sorry to see it go. At
this point, the only people who can still do that are Part 91 private
light piston operators. Everyone else is already getting at least
annual recurrent training as a condition of insurance if not
regulation. The trend is extending - even in my light piston twin, I
am required to do an IPC in make and model every year, whether I need
it or not. Of course I can get insurance that doesn't require it -
for over $1000 a year more.

In fact the insurance requirement means nothing to me, since I've been
taking at least annual (really more of a 7-10 month irregular cycle)
recurrent training that satisfied the requirements of an IPC for as
long as I've been flying IFR, despite the fact that I fly more IMC
than most non-pro pilots. I think that if you're not doing regular
recurrent training, you're just kidding yourself. Your ability to
handle a routine IFR flight with everything working may be fine (or
not - I've seen pilots do some pretty ugly things on an ICC with
everything working) but when the workload ramps up and stuff starts
failing - well, that's when the rubber meets the road.

Enjoy your recurrent training, and try to use it as more than a check
to make sure you still meet instrument PTS standards. Those are
MINIMUM standards, and I would expect that someone who has been flying
IFR for years ought to be able to do a lot better.

Michael