Real-world IFR currency

"Paul Folbrecht" wrote in message
...
What does it take, realistically, for you to feel proficient and safe
flying and shooting approaches in actual? If you don't get actual time,
do you still regularly practice approaches simulated with a safety pilot?

I dislike flying under the hood--I don't find it to be very helpful.
Instead, I use my PC flight simulator at home to maintain proficiency. Even
though it doesn't count toward official currency, I find it much more useful
than "approved flight training devices", which do count officially (with CFI
supervision).

For official currency, I fly approaches in IMC. I don't get many of those in
the course of XC flying, so at least four times a year I try to go shoot a
few approaches on a good LIFR day. Between that, and the PC simulator, and
XC IMC flying (usually just with visual approaches), and filing IFR in VMC
to stay familiar with the ATC interaction, I manage to maintain both
official currency and actual proficiency.

--Gary

I've been flying over 30 years, and I have no problem staying current by FAA
standards. The problem I have with IFR currency is that when I fly my own
plane, it is just too easy to turn on that autopilot. Even though I fly
about 500 hours a year and dozens of actual IMC approaches, my hand-flying
skills are not what they should be. I have to force myself to hand-fly
enough approaches to stay safe even though that's not required by the FAA.
This usually amounts to two or three hand-flown approaches every three
months or so. That's not really enough to stay perfect, but it is enough,
coupled with the ones flown with the autopilot, to stay safe.

Russ


"Paul Folbrecht" wrote in message
...
Anyway, the question I find floating around my head a lot now is just how
much instrument flying, sim or actual, do I need to do to stay current?
Of course I'm not talking about what the regs say - I know what they say
and I know that 6 approaches every 6 months is not likely to keep me at a
level of currency that I'm comfortable with.

I'm looking for input from you guys that have had your rating for awhile
and who do stay current and fly in IMC regularly. What does it take,
realistically, for you to feel proficient and safe flying and shooting
approaches in actual? If you don't get actual time, do you still
regularly practice approaches simulated with a safety pilot? As your
overall time increases, does it take somewhat less flying to maintain that
same level of comfortable currency?

You've gotten responses all over the map, so what's one more...

I fly about 20 hours of actual IMC a year, with a an approach or two
most months. All of this is hand-flown. Because I never turn on the
A/P in IMC, any shortcomings in proficiency are immediately obvious.
Also, I don't really feel like I'm getting enough IMC time to be giving
any away to the autopilot.

I find that this is enough to feel comfortable with the routine tasks
of flying IFR, but no reasonable amount would be enough to be
comfortable with the abnormals - engine failure, GPS failure, gyro
failure, etc. For that reason, I do recurrent training every 6-8
months, and this is typically 5-10 very intense hours.

I used to do more recurrent training (more frequently) but I find that
as the years and the hours accumulate, the skills take longer to
atrophy and less time to rebuild. I'm a firm believer in training to a
higher standard than the worst likely emergency because skills WILL
atrophy some. You probably won't be able to do it right out of the
gate, but you should be aiming for being able to do a night circling
NDB without moving map assist, partial panel, to a short obstructed
poorly lit runway. And if you're in a twin, you should do it single
engine.

My general recommendation is a 3-10 hour recurrent training cycle
(depending on the complexity of your airplane and its systems) on a
regular basis. I think every 6-8 weeks makes sense for a novice IFR
pilot. Once you accumulate your first 25 hours and 25 real approaches,
you can probably back that off to a 3 month cycle. At 50/50, a 6 month
cycle becomes reasonable. And once you pass 100, you will pretty much
know when you need it as long as you are flying IMC regularly. I find
that a year is still too long to go for me. I went 10 months once and
it was too long.

Michael