Jay Honeck must get an instrument rating

Excuses, excuses...

Just do it.



"Jay Honeck" wrote in news:1159364308.741905.17580
@e3g2000cwe.googlegroups.com:

The subject line says it all. I declare from this moment on all
rec.aviators should, on all possible occasions, pick on Jay Honeck for
not having an instrument rating.

Wait a minute...this seems a bit odd, coming from a pilot who *also*
doesn't have an instrument rating.

;-)

I know your post is tongue-in-cheek, but in the spirit of Usenet, I
will response in a semi-serious way. (Besides, Steven would be
disappointed if I didn't take this matter with the utmost
seriousness...)

I've been over this many times, here, internally, and with Mary, and my
reasons for not pursuing the rating at this time always come back to
the same four points:

1. Time. In 2002 I trained right up to the point where I was to be
signed off to take the IR flight test. Then we bought the hotel. It
just ain't gonna happen now, and never will until we get out of the
business we're in.

2. Utility. For giggles, we tracked our flying pattern for a year, and
kept track of the number of flights that we could have made with the
IR, that we didn't make VFR. In other words, how many flights were
cancelled because we didnt't have the rating.

The answer was amazing, to me. There were just a handfull -- three --
times that we would have flown with the IR, that we didn't fly. This
out of over 100 flights.

The reasons are simple: Most of our instrument weather in the upper
Midwest is of the kind that you would need a Pilatus (or better) to fly
in. Since we don't have icing capability, that essentially eliminates
flying in clouds from now through next March. And then the
thunderstorms start.

Now, if we lived in an area with lots of coastal fog, or high terrain,
things would be dramatically different. But we don't.

3. Instrument Flying Sucks. This is something I've rarely seen
discussed here (maybe never?), but instrument flying is one of the most
boring things I've done. Neither of us learned to fly so that we could
stare at what amounts to a computer screen for hours on end. In fact,
we learned to fly for the freedom of flight, and the sheer beauty of
the experience.

In other words, getting there -- not being there -- is the reason.

In the instrument flights I've flown, the flying experience has been
much closer to Microsoft Flight Simulator than any sort of a real
flying experience -- except that you actually ended up in Kansas City
at the end of the day. While there is a lot to be said for that, we
fly because we love to fly -- not simply to end up somewhere.

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.

THAT is not why I fly.

4. Safety. This may sound counter-intuitive, but of all the instrument
pilots I know -- and I know a LOT of pilots -- there is only ONE that I
would fly with in the soup. The rest are technically instrument
pilots, but they fly instruments so infrequently that I know -- and
they do, too -- that they are not proficient.

Why is this? Go back and read #3. Even pilots with the rating who fly
often report that maintaining proficiency is difficult, because it
means droning along under the foggles while everyone else is ooo-ing
and ah-ing about the fantastic fall colors. My basic fear is that I
would not maintain my instrument skills at a level high enough to
ensure that our flight safety would actually be enhanced by having the
rating.

In other words, I -- like so many before me -- would spend many hours
(and thousands of dollars) to end up an instrument pilot in name only.

Now, does all this mean that the rating isn't worth getting? Nope.
The instrument training made me a MUCH more precise and better pilot,
and I'm glad I went through it, even though I've not yet finished up.

In closing, getting the rating has long been a goal of mine, not unlike
touring Europe, or teaching myself HTML, or opening a restaurant. When
I get the time to do it right, it will happen, and it, too, will be
checked off my list of "Life Goals", just as I've ticked off all the
others.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

OK. I'm going to take a different approach to this whole thing...

As a business man, I'm sure you can appreciate ROI...

You say you had gotten all the way to the point where you were about to
take the test. The implication is that you have already met all the
requirements to take the test and just need to get back to a level of
proficiency and knowledge to actually be qualified to take the test.

As you have already seen, the rules and technology change, so keeping up is
hard to do on a long-term basis. And every day that you are away from
working on your IFR skills and knowledge adds to the amount of time (and
money) you will need to spend in order to get the rating. Sure you can
continue to control your plane precisely, but can you still make heads or
tails of an approach plate and fly the approach?

I contend that it's costing you money to not get your rating as quickly as
possible. Every day that goes by is adding time and money to your ability
to achieve your goal.

As far as Safety goes, you are still the PIC, responsible for safety of the
flight. Sure, once you have gotten your rating, there may be things that
you "forget" over time (don't ask me to do an NDB approach...). But you are
the one who will need to decide the safest way to get to your destination.
You are the one who will be most clear of your capabilities and the
capabilities required to complete your flight using the tools at your
disposal. If you are not feeling completely confident, you certainly would
not be using good judgement to fly in conditions where it was Hard IFR for
hundreds of miles in every direction.

However, would you think it's more safe to scud run under a 2000' ceiling
into a front where the ceiling was sinking, or to fly boringly through the
soup for a while, get up on top of it, and fly VFR on top at 8000'?

As far as utility, I wonder how many times you cancelled flying plans in
advance of the actual flight because the forecast was not looking good...
ie: "Hey - wanna fly out to xyz this weekend? Oh, never mind, weather will
be lousy." If getting where you planned to go to is a priority, the
instrument rating will certainly improve your odds. Admittedly, I fly
mostly for my business (meetings, conferences, installations, etc.), so
this is a bigger deal for me than perhaps for the people who fly just for
recreation. My scrubbed-flight ratio pre-IR was much higher than the 9%
that someone else here posted, but I'm pretty conservative when it comes to
MVFR flying. I'm probably not as low as 1% with the IR, either.

Before the IR, I was probably scrubbing 1 out of every 4 or 5 flights. And
if there was any chance of weather, I was making alternate plans way in
advance. I still do that, but my guess is that my decisions affect less
than 1 in 10 flights.

My biggest problem now is that we have recently gotten a lot of business in
areas where it's either too cheap to fly commercially or too far to fly GA
- like Chicago. I can get to Chicago on 2 days notice for like $200 round
trip commercially. Takes 4 hours each way in the Bonanza.

I need to convince the club to buy an Eclipse.

Anyway, having the ability to recover from a scrubbed mission by changing
your family vacation plans is great. But isn't life easier when you get
where you were supposed to and have the family vacation you originally
planned?


More importantly, though, when are you opening the restuarant?


"Jay Honeck" wrote in news:1159364308.741905.17580
@e3g2000cwe.googlegroups.com:

The subject line says it all. I declare from this moment on all
rec.aviators should, on all possible occasions, pick on Jay Honeck for
not having an instrument rating.

Wait a minute...this seems a bit odd, coming from a pilot who *also*
doesn't have an instrument rating.

;-)

I know your post is tongue-in-cheek, but in the spirit of Usenet, I
will response in a semi-serious way. (Besides, Steven would be
disappointed if I didn't take this matter with the utmost
seriousness...)

I've been over this many times, here, internally, and with Mary, and my
reasons for not pursuing the rating at this time always come back to
the same four points:

1. Time. In 2002 I trained right up to the point where I was to be
signed off to take the IR flight test. Then we bought the hotel. It
just ain't gonna happen now, and never will until we get out of the
business we're in.

2. Utility. For giggles, we tracked our flying pattern for a year, and
kept track of the number of flights that we could have made with the
IR, that we didn't make VFR. In other words, how many flights were
cancelled because we didnt't have the rating.

The answer was amazing, to me. There were just a handfull -- three --
times that we would have flown with the IR, that we didn't fly. This
out of over 100 flights.

The reasons are simple: Most of our instrument weather in the upper
Midwest is of the kind that you would need a Pilatus (or better) to fly
in. Since we don't have icing capability, that essentially eliminates
flying in clouds from now through next March. And then the
thunderstorms start.

Now, if we lived in an area with lots of coastal fog, or high terrain,
things would be dramatically different. But we don't.

3. Instrument Flying Sucks. This is something I've rarely seen
discussed here (maybe never?), but instrument flying is one of the most
boring things I've done. Neither of us learned to fly so that we could
stare at what amounts to a computer screen for hours on end. In fact,
we learned to fly for the freedom of flight, and the sheer beauty of
the experience.

In other words, getting there -- not being there -- is the reason.

In the instrument flights I've flown, the flying experience has been
much closer to Microsoft Flight Simulator than any sort of a real
flying experience -- except that you actually ended up in Kansas City
at the end of the day. While there is a lot to be said for that, we
fly because we love to fly -- not simply to end up somewhere.

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.

THAT is not why I fly.

4. Safety. This may sound counter-intuitive, but of all the instrument
pilots I know -- and I know a LOT of pilots -- there is only ONE that I
would fly with in the soup. The rest are technically instrument
pilots, but they fly instruments so infrequently that I know -- and
they do, too -- that they are not proficient.

Why is this? Go back and read #3. Even pilots with the rating who fly
often report that maintaining proficiency is difficult, because it
means droning along under the foggles while everyone else is ooo-ing
and ah-ing about the fantastic fall colors. My basic fear is that I
would not maintain my instrument skills at a level high enough to
ensure that our flight safety would actually be enhanced by having the
rating.

In other words, I -- like so many before me -- would spend many hours
(and thousands of dollars) to end up an instrument pilot in name only.

Now, does all this mean that the rating isn't worth getting? Nope.
The instrument training made me a MUCH more precise and better pilot,
and I'm glad I went through it, even though I've not yet finished up.

In closing, getting the rating has long been a goal of mine, not unlike
touring Europe, or teaching myself HTML, or opening a restaurant. When
I get the time to do it right, it will happen, and it, too, will be
checked off my list of "Life Goals", just as I've ticked off all the
others.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Margy Natalie wrote:
The subject line says it all. I declare from this moment on all
rec.aviators should, on all possible occasions, pick on Jay Honeck for
not having an instrument rating.

Margy

I declare all that declare one should get an instrument rating should
get or already have one in their possession.

Margy?

Michelle P (Yeah I already have one)