Help me clear up my brain fart

The instruments may well be a VFR crutch. This all started by my suggesting
that pilots who are still at the stage where they need a crutch sometimes,
make use of it when they've gotten in a situation where many pilots have
screwed up. Since we are clarifying, I was didn't mean to say (although it
wasn't my best and clearest piece of newsgroup banter) that they should
transition to the instruments and use them to fly through the turn, just
that it would be a good time to check that were still comfortably within the
envelope.

While the underlying cause may well have been lack of proper training or
proficiency, there are certainly a lot of pilots who wish they had checked
their airspeed during their last base to final turn. I wish we could hear
from them but their computer access is kinda blocked right now....

--
Roger Long

Peter Duniho wrote in message
...
"Roger Long" om wrote
in
message .. .
Well, now you're doing it. I never said 50%. Dividing time properly
could
be 5% / 95% or even 1% / 99%

You're right. That figure was simply an example, my interpretation of
more
general and vague comments.

But the actual figure doesn't matter that much. IMHO, any non-zero amount
of time spent watching the instruments while making a downwind-to-base or
base-to-final turn while in the pattern is too much time. That's for any
kind of turn, but becomes especially true in the overshoot case.
Transitioning to instrument flight (as your original post suggested) while
attempting to reintercept final approach in a VFR pattern is just plain
wrong.

Pete