Question to the IFR Pilots Out There

"Matthew S. Whiting" wrote in
:

If you feel that you can fly to the edge of the envelope
(fully utilize everything legally available to you in IMC
conditions) at day one, what is left to gain from
experience? I'm not being facetrious here, I'm really
curious as to what value you feel that experience will
bring? Generally, it brings additional capabilities beyond
what you had at the start. But since you can't legally fly
in worse weather after 500 hours than you can after 0 hours
(I'm talking post rating here), what is left to gain from
your experience?

Judgment. Good judgment comes from exercising bad judgment.
After you fly for awhile, you learn when to go and when not to.
But if you aren't trained to fly an approach to minimums, then
you got cheated in your training.

I don't think anyone is claiming that you need to learn to
do the approach. It is a question of precision,
confidence, and the ability to handle the unforeseen that
comes with experience. I believe any new insrument pilot
should have the knowledge to fly an approach to minimums.
They shouldn't need to learn anything from a "mechanical"
perspective. That isn't what experience usually brings.
It is the ability to recognize and deal with the
non-mechanical aspects (fatique, etc.) that occur in real
flying much more so than during training.

In other words, judgment.

What capbilities will you be able to use after experience
than you could the day you got your rating? You can't
arbitrarily fly to an MDA or DH lower than what is
published, just because you are now a better pilot.

The published DH or MDA is published at that altitude for a
reason. Brand new pilots have to be able to fly to it safely,
as well as experienced pilots who are fatigued to exhaustion,
along with every other instrument pilot.

I keep seeing pilots who say they won't fly approaches to
minimums, but I've never had that luxury. As soon as I finished
flight school, I was expected to fly approaches to minimums,
with the visibility minimums half of published. I still do that
regularly. If you're just out flying for fun, you can set your
own minimums, but if you're going to do it for a living, you'd
better be ready to take off with barely legal weather both at
the destination and the departure point. If you don't think you
can handle weather that's at minimums, then you shouldn't be
flying in weather at all. If your competence is so low that you
can't fly an approach to minimums, then you're likely to kill
yourself before you get there, even if the weather is better
than minimums. Look at the NTSB reports, & you'll see lots of
barely competent instrument pilots who killed themselves and
their friends and families. Instrument flying isn't for
everyone, but if you want to do it, you'd better be good at it,
and if you aren't good enough, you shouldn't have been passed on
the checkride.

--
Regards,

Stan

Stan Gosnell wrote:
"Matthew S. Whiting" wrote in
:


If you feel that you can fly to the edge of the envelope
(fully utilize everything legally available to you in IMC
conditions) at day one, what is left to gain from
experience? I'm not being facetrious here, I'm really
curious as to what value you feel that experience will
bring? Generally, it brings additional capabilities beyond
what you had at the start. But since you can't legally fly
in worse weather after 500 hours than you can after 0 hours
(I'm talking post rating here), what is left to gain from
your experience?


Judgment. Good judgment comes from exercising bad judgment.
After you fly for awhile, you learn when to go and when not to.
But if you aren't trained to fly an approach to minimums, then
you got cheated in your training.

I consider going out on your first solo IFR flight in IMC and flying an
approach to minimums to be a sign of poor judgement. :-)


Matt

Stan,

As soon as I finished flight school, I was expected to fly approaches to
minimums, with the visibility minimums half of published. I still do that
regularly.

Was this done alone or with a copilot? Where you the copilot? Who
"expected" you to do this? That sounds like the external pressure scenario
that we were warned about and the "half of published" visibility sounds
illegal. Asking, not telling.

Kobra


"Stan Gosnell" me@work wrote in message
...
"Matthew S. Whiting" wrote in
:

If you feel that you can fly to the edge of the envelope
(fully utilize everything legally available to you in IMC
conditions) at day one, what is left to gain from
experience? I'm not being facetrious here, I'm really
curious as to what value you feel that experience will
bring? Generally, it brings additional capabilities beyond
what you had at the start. But since you can't legally fly
in worse weather after 500 hours than you can after 0 hours
(I'm talking post rating here), what is left to gain from
your experience?

Judgment. Good judgment comes from exercising bad judgment.
After you fly for awhile, you learn when to go and when not to.
But if you aren't trained to fly an approach to minimums, then
you got cheated in your training.

I don't think anyone is claiming that you need to learn to
do the approach. It is a question of precision,
confidence, and the ability to handle the unforeseen that
comes with experience. I believe any new insrument pilot
should have the knowledge to fly an approach to minimums.
They shouldn't need to learn anything from a "mechanical"
perspective. That isn't what experience usually brings.
It is the ability to recognize and deal with the
non-mechanical aspects (fatique, etc.) that occur in real
flying much more so than during training.

In other words, judgment.

What capbilities will you be able to use after experience
than you could the day you got your rating? You can't
arbitrarily fly to an MDA or DH lower than what is
published, just because you are now a better pilot.

The published DH or MDA is published at that altitude for a
reason. Brand new pilots have to be able to fly to it safely,
as well as experienced pilots who are fatigued to exhaustion,
along with every other instrument pilot.

I keep seeing pilots who say they won't fly approaches to
minimums, but I've never had that luxury. As soon as I finished
flight school, I was expected to fly approaches to minimums,
with the visibility minimums half of published. I still do that
regularly. If you're just out flying for fun, you can set your
own minimums, but if you're going to do it for a living, you'd
better be ready to take off with barely legal weather both at
the destination and the departure point. If you don't think you
can handle weather that's at minimums, then you shouldn't be
flying in weather at all. If your competence is so low that you
can't fly an approach to minimums, then you're likely to kill
yourself before you get there, even if the weather is better
than minimums. Look at the NTSB reports, & you'll see lots of
barely competent instrument pilots who killed themselves and
their friends and families. Instrument flying isn't for
everyone, but if you want to do it, you'd better be good at it,
and if you aren't good enough, you shouldn't have been passed on
the checkride.

--
Regards,

Stan

"Kobra" wrote in
:

Stan,

As soon as I finished flight school, I was expected to fly
approaches to
minimums, with the visibility minimums half of published.
I still do that regularly.

Was this done alone or with a copilot? Where you the
copilot? Who "expected" you to do this? That sounds like
the external pressure scenario that we were warned about
and the "half of published" visibility sounds illegal.
Asking, not telling.

Usually with a copilot, but not necessarily. The U.S. Army was
who was expecting me to do it. Now it's my employer.
Helicopters can usually cut the published visibility in half,
and it's completely legal. My ops specs permit reducing the
published visibility by half, but never below 1/4 mile. Same
thing for the military, IIRC, although it's been a long time
since I wore a green uniform. In a pinch, we did GCA's to very
little visibility.

--
Regards,

Stan

Usually with a copilot, but not necessarily. The U.S. Army was
who was expecting me to do it.

Ok, this makes more sense. I couldn't imagine a civilian aviation company
to expect this with paying passengers in an airplane.


Now it's my employer.
Helicopters can usually cut the published visibility in half,
and it's completely legal.

Thanks for the info. I didn't know this about rotary wing aircraft. Seems
to make sense though.

Kobra