How bout we compromise, it takes months of training. I guess I have the
perspective of my flying club. It gets hard to even schedule an
instructor/airplane more than two times a week in the busy season. I have a
job/family/kids which adds to the scheduling problem. Some parts of the
country have VERY little actual conditions available for logging IMC. After
getting my ticket, there was no way I was going for weather down to
minimums. I've been gradually picking good days where I can bite off more
and more weather.

I suppose you can correctly fly IFR with weeks of training, but I would be
very surprised if that was the national average. The IFR rating is
considered to be one of the harder ratings to obtain. ...Aaron

"Peter Duniho" wrote in message
...
"Aaron Kiley" wrote in message
...
Years of training is abour right. Most of the people I know who have
got
instrument ratings (me included) took at least a year.

And most of the people I know (me included) didn't take nearly a year.
And
yes, I was employed full-time (and then some) throughout my training. As
for "minimal experience in actual IFR conditions", again you need to
define
"minimal". I had twenty hours of actual when I completed my instrument
training, and in my opinion I was "correctly flying IFR" at least from the
time I received my rating. Yes, more experience results in even better
flying. But that's not the question.

In any case, even if you were right, that has nothing to do with the
training itself. It only comments on individual situations. There is
nothing inherent about instrument flying that requires years to obtain
proficiency or "correctness".

[...] To get proficent at IFR also requires you
get your pilots licence first which takes just as long as the instrument
rating.

In the US, you need to be 16 years old before you're permitted to fly
solo.
That doesn't mean it takes 16 years to learn to land a plane. Likewise,
the
prerequisite to have a Private Pilot certificate doesn't mean those years
are to be included when discussing how long it takes to fly *IFR*
correctly.

But again, even if you were right, your point doesn't stand inspection,
since the Private Pilot certificate doesn't take even a year either. It
can
theoretically be completed in a matter of weeks, and many people (even
those
with full-time jobs) finish it up in a few months. Even including ALL of
the training required to be a pilot, one could obtain an instrument rating
in less than six months, never mind a year. While holding down a
full-time
job.

Pete