Jay Honeck must get an instrument rating

3. Instrument Flying Sucks. [...] Neither of us learned
to fly so that we could
stare at what amounts to a computer screen for hours on end.

Well, there you're way wrong. Instrument flight can be the most
beautiful, transcendental experience in the air. Flitting in and out of
the tops of a broken or overcast layer, or even just getting =that=
close to clouds as you brush by (which you can't legally do in most VFR
situations) is also fun.

Most IFR flying is visual, which was frustrating in the days when you
needed six hours and six approaches (now the hours don't matter).

Further, flying the airways can truly ruin a flight, IMHO. Doing so
absolutely sucked the life out of the experience of flying past the
Grand Canyon last spring -- we simply couldn't see it because our
Victor airway didn't go that way, despite being in severe clear
weather.

Ask for a diversion, especially if you are severe clear (why were you
IFR at that point anyway?)

Jose
--
"Never trust anything that can think for itself, if you can't see where
it keeps its brain." (chapter 10 of book 3 - Harry Potter).
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

Jay,

My opinion of instrument flight agrees with what Jose, Emily, and Dylan
wrote:

Jose wrote
... Instrument flight can be the most beautiful, transcendental experience
in the air. Flitting in and out of the tops of a broken or overcast
layer, or even just getting =that= close to clouds as you brush by (which
you can't legally do in most VFR situations) is also fun.

Emily wrote
... In the clouds? I love it. I love having to pay attention every
second. I love talking to ATC. Call me strange, but I don't think it's
boring at all.

Dylan wrote
... if you're flying IFR, generally (or at least in my
experience) you don't tend to spend all that much time inside a cloud.
Quite a lot of it between them, above them, flying in and out of them.
Some of the most beautiful flights I've had have been IFR - bursting
from a wall of cloud into majestic canyons and mountains of cloud, all
patterned dappled by the overhead altocumulus. It was almost like being
on another planet.

I am confident that operating in benign IFR will greatly add to your
enjoyment of flying.

Jon