Instrument Training at night? Good Idea or not?

wrote:
I am getting ready to start of Instrument training. I plan on training
during the day on the weekends and 1 or 2 nights during the week.

What are your thoughts on instrument training at night? Personally I
don't fly at night and have only for what was required for my PPSEL.
However my goal is to go on to my Commerical and CFI after the
Instrument.

I know I will have to get proficient at night flying to teach the
PPSEL, but not while IFR.

So, I guess my question comes down to added risk. How much additional
risk am I taking by doing some of my Instrument at night?



I did most of my IFR training at night. As long as the weather is clear
and you have a proficient instructor, the risk is small.

I love flying at night. In fact, night flying is why I got my IFR
ticket to begin with. It is a lot harder to spot clouds over rural
areas at night.

You may be laughing at my "proficient instructor" comment, but there are
a lot of instructors out there who are not proficient at real IFR
flying. Ask your potential instructor if he will do training in actual
IFR conditions. If he says no, then I wouldn't use him. I would
recommend getting some actual IMC during your training. There is a huge
difference between you wearing foggles and being in actual IMC.

Jimmy B. wrote:

I would
recommend getting some actual IMC during your training. There is a huge
difference between you wearing foggles and being in actual IMC.

I would have to concur *strongly*. You don't want your first experience
in actual to with your family in the plane.

In my training, I never experienced any vertigo or disorientation with
the foggles on, but I still experience it to this day in actual. I
learned very quickly to ignore it and trust my instruments.
Fortunately, my first experience in actual was while I was still
training. To make it extra special, it was at night and we departed
with ceilings about 700' AGL. We entered IMC in a climbing left turn
that quickly turned into a descending left turn. Had I not been with an
experienced instructor, I may not have been able to recover as I
wouldn't have realized the problem until I broke out again at 700' in a
1,000 - 1,500 fpm spiral dive. As it was, my instructor made a comment
like "are you going to correct that?" and immediately I realized the
situation and corrected it.

Which is the other thing. You need to have an instructor that is
confident enough and experienced enough to let you get into trouble and
let you get out of it again. If your instructor takes control every
time you get into trouble, you won't learn much. Recognizing that you
are in an unusual attitude and then recovering is, in my mind, the most
important skill in instrument flying. Being able to keep the needles
exactly centered or flying a perfectly wind corrected hold is nice for
showing off, but you have room for error in those operations. You don't
have to fly them with autopilot precision. On the other hand,
recognizing that you're entering a descending left turn instead of the
climbing right turn that you intended or that from straight and level
you have somehow managed to get into an increasingly steep climbing turn
is far more useful. You don't get to learn this properly under the
hood. It takes the real thing to truly learn it. If your instructor
won't do it or your instructor takes control too quickly, you are
missing out on training that could save your life one day.


-m
--
## Mark T. Dame
## VP, Product Development
## MFM Software, Inc. (http://www.mfm.com/)
"I'm a doctor, not a bricklayer."
-- Star Trek: Dr. McCoy, "The Devil In The Dark"

"Mark T. Dame" wrote in :

In my training, I never experienced any vertigo or disorientation with
the foggles on, but I still experience it to this day in actual.

My experience is mostly the opposite - I hate being under the hood, and fly much worse.
Actual IMC is a piece of cake in comparison. YMMV.

I do most of my flying at night, over water, and it's all instrument flying, whether there
are clouds or not. In general, the air is smoother at night, so you'll get much less
turbulence, and thus the aircraft is easier to control. I also find that an ILS approach to
minimums is easier in the dark, because the approach and runway lights are easier to make
out without sunlight scattering everything in the fog. If I have to fly an ILS with 100'
overcast and 1/4 mile vis, I want to do it when it's very dark. I've done it at night and
in the daylight, and I prefer the dark. It does take a different mindset to fly at night,
but that's mostly for takeoff and landing. The enroute flying is pretty much the same, and
I don't think the risk is that much higher at night, disregarding an engine failure. An
engine failure in a single-engine airplane at night is going to be dangerous, no matter
whether you're practicing instruments or just out for fun.

--
Regards,

Stan

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither
liberty nor safety." B. Franklin

"Stan Gosnell" wrote in message
...
In my training, I never experienced any vertigo or disorientation with
the foggles on, but I still experience it to this day in actual.
My experience is mostly the opposite - I hate being under the hood, and
fly much worse.
Actual IMC is a piece of cake in comparison. YMMV.

Whether or not you experience negative feelings such as discomfort or
vertigo in artificial IMC, the fact we all seem to concur on is that there's
nothing quite like real IMC. I've used two types of foggles (both a pain in
the backside, particularly if you have to wear glasses to see correctly) and
I've flown an aircraft with custom-made screens that prevent the pilot (but
not the instructor) from seeing outside. Even with such screens, though, the
fact remains that because there are louvres cut so the instructor can keep a
lookout, if you have half-decent peripheral vision there's a good chance
you'll see a horizon there somewhere, out of the corner of your eye, thus
failing to simulate the whole spatial-disorientation thing you're trying to
achieve.

Don't get me wrong, it's handy to have artificial IMC available - not least
because Sod's law dictates that when you want to do an IMC lesson, there's
never a decent cloud around when you want one. But you absolutely must do
some real IMC, or you stand a good chance of being bitten the first time you
do it for real on your own.

The week before I was to do my IMC test, my instructor sent another student
and me with one of his colleagues (it's good to have a check-ride with
someone independent) to fly from my home airfield to another about 60 miles
away. I flew there and did an NDB approach, the other guy flew back and had
the luxury of an ILS. Cloudbase was 1,200 feet with the tops at about 3,500
feet; we departed, climbed through the cloud, flew on top following the
navaids (just us and something big and grey going into Mildenhall - such a
neat experience), then did the approach through cloud. Not only did it
convince the other instructor that I stood a chance of passing my test, but
more importantly it made me think: "Hey, this stuff really does work - if
you do it like it says on the plate, there's a runway at the end of it".

D.

Stan Gosnell wrote:

"Mark T. Dame" wrote in :


In my training, I never experienced any vertigo or disorientation with
the foggles on, but I still experience it to this day in actual.

My experience is mostly the opposite - I hate being under the hood, and fly much worse.
Actual IMC is a piece of cake in comparison. YMMV.

I fly better in actual than under the hood as well and much prefer it,
but I don't get vertigo under the hood, whereas I will frequently get it
in actual. Maybe that's why I fly better in actual: I'm expecting
vertigo, so I pay more attention. (-:

I have a friend who gets vertigo so bad in actual (but not with the
foggles) that if he flies into IMC, he'll put on his foggles. Everyone
is affected differently. Which is why you want your first experience in
it to be with an experienced instructor.


-m
--
## Mark T. Dame
## VP, Product Development
## MFM Software, Inc. (http://www.mfm.com/)
"We must acknowledge once and for all that the purpose of diplomacy
is to prolong a crisis."
-- Star Trek: Spock, "The Mark of Gideon"

"Mark T. Dame" wrote in :

I have a friend who gets vertigo so bad in actual (but not with the
foggles) that if he flies into IMC, he'll put on his foggles.
Everyone is affected differently. Which is why you want your first
experience in it to be with an experienced instructor.

I certainly agree with this. But the sad fact is that most instructors,
both CFI and CFII, don't have adequate experience. This isn't likely to
change, either, given the economics of the field.

--
Regards,

Stan

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." B. Franklin

Stan Gosnell wrote:

"Mark T. Dame" wrote in :

I certainly agree with this. But the sad fact is that most instructors,
both CFI and CFII, don't have adequate experience. This isn't likely to
change, either, given the economics of the field.

Very true. I was fortunate in that one of the three instructors that I
took instrument training with was experienced and competent flying IMC.
He's the one I flew with the first time I flew in actual IMC.

I had three instructors during my training for exact that reason. My
primary instrument instructor is a very competent pilot and good at
teaching techniques, but he's a "weather wimp". He got a corporate job
and quit after a few months because he wasn't comfortable flying in
actual IMC. (Now he's a dispatcher for a regional airline, so he
doesn't have to worry about it.) Since I knew I wasn't going to get any
quality IMC time with him, I flew with a couple of other guys for that.
I think my primary instructor was secretly relieved that he didn't
have to do that part!


-m
--
## Mark T. Dame
## VP, Product Development
## MFM Software, Inc. (http://www.mfm.com/)
"...he began by assuring me that it was actually pretty simple -- a
promise engineers always make just before they start speaking in
tongues."
-- J. Kluger, Discover, Aug. 1993

You may be laughing at my "proficient instructor" comment, but there are
a lot of instructors out there who are not proficient at real IFR

100% correct. At the FBO I teach at I would argue that I'm the ONLY CFI
who feels safe going into the clouds for anything more than a little
whisp. I usually get a fair amount of actual each year. However, I
don't do instrument training (too busy)

-Robert, CFI