single pilot ifr trip tonight

David Megginson wrote in message ...
(Snowbird) writes:

The first point is that you feel very confident in your ability
to continue to aviate, navigate and communicate, while coping
with an emergency or unusual circumstance AND set up a GPS.

No, I don't feel that way at all, but if I do end up in an emergency,
I plan to do my best to aviate, and to worry about navigating and
communicating only when the opportunities present themselves.

I am still a new pilot (220 hours), so I'm very open to learning, but
I'm not doing a good job coming up with use cases where it's a
potential life-or-death issue whether the GPS is already on. Here are
the most likely emergencies I can think of in IMC:

1. Vacuum failure -- no immediate, direct benefit from the handheld
GPS.

I disagree for several reasons. Many GPS models have the ability to
partition the main display and show an 'HSI' and groundspeed in
addition to the moving map. This information is very valuable as a
cross-check to the flight instruments. In IMC - I'll take any clue
available that indicates something is wrong with the gryo instruments.
I'm confident I can fly partial panel, but detecting the failure mode
is the difficult part...

I have flown approaches under the hood with reference to only the GPS
(this is in a PA28 which is a reasonably stable aircraft). While not
easy it is do-able as long as the plane is trimmed before the approach
and control inputs are kept minimal.

Regarding the distraction of setting up a GPS upon the failure. I
think it is significant. I've had a similar situation - an electrical
failure at night (fortunately in MVFR conditions). This was in class
D airspace. Tower called and let me know they lost the transponder.
When I keyed the mic to transmit, the panel went black. This happened
directly over the field. By the time I got the flashlights setup,
grabbed the handheld radio (backseat), plugged in the headset, turned
on, tuned in, and let tower know what was going on - I was 5-6 miles
North (about 3 minutes in the Cherokee).

The workload during these few minutes was relatively high.
Significant enough that I revamped how I approach IFR flying. I do
not fly hard IFR at night, and I always keep the handheld charged and
ready to go in the side pocket.

A bit of a rant, but my point is: After a gyro or electrical failure
in actual IMC - the last thing you want to be doing is digging around
in the flightbag, plugging in, powering up, and navigating menus on a
portable GPS. If you own one - power it up and set it up the
beginning of the flight so it's ready to go when you need it.

-Nathan