Straight-ins at uncontrolled airports?

On Feb 12, 6:41 am, Mxsmanic wrote:
chris writes:
Don't get me wrong, I like the idea, but the common theory here is
that for an average private pilot to keep current with his IFR rating
he or she would have to do every flight IFR, and maybe that would be
good, I just dunno..

I don't know if anyone is advocating that, but it does seem that there's a
strong tendency to get rusty if one doesn't practice IFR regularly, and there
are even some statutory requirements to this effect.


Apparently in this country, to stay current, in the previous 3 months
you need to have completed 3 hours of instrument time and carried out
at least 3 instrument approaches. That's not as bad as I thought, but
you still need to fly IFR often to keep current..



It surprised me to read in another post that it's possible to get an
instrument rating without ever actually flying in IMC. If this is true, then
what separates me, in a simulator, flying by instruments, from an
instrument-rated pilot? It sounds like neither of us has necessarily flown in
IMC. And IMC is the only part I haven't experienced. Maybe I should ask for
a free instrument rating.

I would think there's more to it than that.. Just curious, what
exactly do you consider instrument flying?? I wonder if there may be
a whole lot of stuff you maybe aren't aware of because you are self-
taught.. If so, you would need to learn that stuff first...


The sensation of moment sucks when you're on instruments.

So I've heard.

An open question is whether previous experience with aircraft motion is
preferable to no experience with aircraft motion when learning to fly on
instruments. In instrument flight, you have to ignore motion, because your
sensations are not at all reliable if you cannot correlate them with visual
information. So, is it harder to unlearn the dependence on physical
sensations that you've acquired while flying VFR in a moving aircraft, or is
it harder to ignore unreliable sensations when you simply have never depended
on them at all for flying (as in simulation).

My guess is that they are about equal, and if anything, the simulator pilot is
slightly favored, as he has no bad habits to unlearn.

You still need to get off the ground, and to get the basic license to
let you do that you need to learn how to fly VFR...


I have done
5.4 hours of simulated instrument flying, nothing more than enough to
keep me upright while I get my ass out of the crap I just flew into..
And the leans have to be experienced to be believed! I was told to
put the hood on immediately after takeoff, and by the time I got to
1000 ft I had my head just about in my instructor's lap, the leans
were so severe! It is when your brain decides you're going one way
but the instruments say you're going another way... You don't feel a
gentle right turn, say, but when you look at the AH, you see it's
turning to the right. You correct, and the AH says you're straight
and level but the brain says you're leaning to the left!! It's a real
funny feeling!!!

And did you find it hard to ignore? Was it a struggle to trust the
instruments? Or was it merely a nuisance?

As I remember, as I was doing my scan, I'd come back to the AH for
instance, and it would be different to how it was a few seconds ago,
and I sure didn't feel the plane move. Then you roll level and you'd
start to lean to one side, and so on...

In an elevator, if you go from a low floor to a high floor, you'll experience
a distinct feeling of dropping as the elevator stops at the destination floor.
Do most people jab desperately at the elevator buttons trying to stop it from
falling, or do they ignore the sensation and look at the display in the
elevator to verify that they are indeed stopping at the right floor and not
descending again?

I thus wonder whether the trouble some pilots have with misleading sensations
in instrument flight is not a direct result of learning to depend excessively
on sensations in visual flight (without realizing that the sensations are
useless until visual information constantly corroborates them). If so, then
never having learned to depend on sensation would be a great advantage in
instrument flight.


Pilots who begin real flight training after using a sim are often at a
disadvantage because they learn to look inside the cockpit
excessively. A vfr pilot can tell what the plane is doing without
looking at instruments, by seeing, feeling and hearing. We sometimes
fly with all instruments covered up.. Much easier than you would
think, once you get used to looking outside and listening..

Sounds fine to me.. Nothing wrong with wanting to give passengers a
gentle, smooth ride with rate 1 turns...

For me, that's good piloting. The less passengers feel, the better I'm doing.


Me too.. Smooth takeoffs, rate 1 turns and nice landings with great
scenery.. Which this country is famous for!