transitioning from instruments to visual landing on final

Michael wrote:

wrote
But, the single pilot guy in a light aircraft has a whole different set
of issues to deal with.


I learned multiengine flying from an airline captain, and he taught me
to fly as much like the airlines as possible. I suppose that wasn't a
bad thing, but I also wound up carrying a copilot around for many of
my early IFR flights, until I developed the proficiency AND altered my
procedures to where I could handle the workload single-pilot.

That's sort of like teaching someone to be a cop without the benefit of the
support of the resources of the police department.



Then again, only the most current and proficient pilot should be flying
an approach to RVR 2400, or so, where often no "break out" ever occurs.

I've done it a few times (my lowest to 2000 RVR). Frankly, it's a
cakewalk compared to a circling-only NDB approach at night to a poorly
lit runway in 2 miles vis. Then again, it may have been the
airline-quality training I got that made it a cakewalk...

No doubt that an ILS is far safer than circle-to-land under almost any
conceivable circumstances.

David Megginson wrote
Still, if you're not a freight dog struggling to survive at the bottom of
the aviation food chain, a medevac pilot with a dying patient, or a pilot in
an emergency with flames shooting out from under the cowling, why push down
below minima when you cannot see the runway clearly even if it is
technically legal (say, because you made out a few of the approach lights)?

Because it's not just technically legal - it's entirely acceptable if
you use the right techniques - exactly the techniques you claim are a
bad idea. Also because diverting to the alternate means you didn't
get where you wanted to go when you wanted to be there. I think it
makes sense to maximize the utility of the airplane by flying to
published minima, rather than some higher minima required to
accomodate substandard flying technique.

We seem to lose a lot of good, experienced IFR pilots to approaches in IMC,
both in Canada and the U.S., and I suspect that one of the reasons is
pushing too far when there's not a clear visual transition available.

I don't buy that in the least. I suspect the real reason we lose so
many is the abysmal quality of initial training and the almost
non-existent recurrent training, combined with a real lack of
understanding of what you can and can't do. Lack of a clear visual
transition is a fact of life when shooting approaches to visibility
minima.

Michael

"John R Weiss" wrote
There may be a lot of differences between single-pilot and 2-pilot
operations, but a lot of "airline" concepts are very applicable/adaptable to
current "typical" GA equipment... I've flown IFR in GA, single- and
multi-pilot military, and [currently] airline aircraft; the basics remain
the same regardless of individual procedures.

Well, when you get down to it the basics are always the same.
However, procedures optimized for a well-equipped crew-operated
aircraft may well be suboptimal for a single pilot private aircraft.

These days, GPS is more typical than strange in GA, especially among
IFR-equipped airplanes, and most of them have more capability than airliner
installations! Once you get away from the very low end (IFR-equipped 172s
and 182s), you're likely to see a 2-axis autopilot as well.

I don't have two-axis autopilot (no altitude hold), and neither do
most of my friends. BTW, I fly a twin and so do most of them.

There's also a huge difference between a copilot and an autopilot. A
copilot can be given the plane; an autopilot can't. GA autopilots are
all single-gyro dependent; none of them are immune from going hard
over on the controls in seconds if a gyro or an associated
curcuit/connection fails. I consider my autopilot to be the most
dangerous piece of equipment in the airplane, and normally will not
even turn it on in IMC. Mostly it's just a way to reduce workload and
let me rest on long boring segments.

Further, those who have an IFR-certified GPS NEED to be "geared towards"
their equipment

I agree. This is a big problem with IFR-certified GPS. The user
interfaces are highly constrained by FAA regulation. If one of my
programmers turned out something as klunky as a KLN-94 user interface,
I would fire him. Even the GNS-430 has more quirks than I am
comfortable with.

On the other hand, lots of handheld GPS units offer great
functionality with a user-friendly and pilot-intuitive user interface.

Michael

Roy Smith wrote
Most of the guys I fly with want to just get in and go. I think we've
got a lot to learn from airline pilots. Maybe the specific procedures
don't translate well to spam cans, but the attitude should.

It's the specific procedures I referred to - especially the handoff of
the airplane on an instrument approach that precipitated this. My
specific procedures for operating my airplane have evolved
substantially since I was trained in it. The operating philosophy has
remianed largely the same.

What you describe in terms of pretakeoff briefings and such is
contingency planning. It's not really so much a skill as it is an
attitude. I guess I don't recognize it as an airline attitude because
I was quite familiar with it long before I ever met any airline
pilots.

My first introduction to aviation was skydiving. My first 'flight'
was about four minutes - and was preceded by over five hours of ground
training. Most of that was emergency preparation, but a good chunk of
it was the plan for my flight under canopy - really a very low
performance glider - because that first flight would be solo.

In skydiving it is quite common to spend thirty minutes planning a
flight that might only take thirty seconds. It is equally common (or
was) to sit around at the end of the day, discuss the 'what might have
beens' and analyze the safety issues. This is largely absent from GA
flight training, and that's not a good thing, but I would hardly call
that 'airline procedure.'

Michael

Roy Smith wrote:
(Michael) wrote:

Yup. In fact, I've started to believe that what we (private operators
of IFR-capable airplanes) do is so different from what the airlines
do, that there is precious little for us to learn from the airline
procedures.


I don't know about that. I had the pleasure a while ago of checking out
a 737 pilot in our club's Archers. Not surprisingly, I learned a lot
more from him than he did from me.

The most illuminating thing was his attitude towards safety. Before our
first takeoff, he gave me a CRM briefing, including procedures for
positive exchange of controls. He told me that even though he had many
more hours and ratings than I did, I was more current in Archers and
more familiar with the local area, and thus if we had an emergency, he
would expect me to take charge.

Before each and every takeoff, he gave me a full briefing about what we
were about to do. This didn't just include procedures and airspeeds,
but a summary of wind conditions, nearby terrain, and a plan for
emergencies immediately after takeoff (taking wind and terrain into
account). Then he would ask me, "Do you have anything to add?"

Most of the guys I fly with want to just get in and go. I think we've
got a lot to learn from airline pilots. Maybe the specific procedures
don't translate well to spam cans, but the attitude should.

I learned to fly from an old-timer, but he did much the same thing. I
learned to fly at an airport that is surrounded by mostly unfriendly
terrain (N38, Grand Canyon State). Early on we discussed the "what
would you do if the engine failed RIGHT NOW" question at many stages of
departure and arrival. We didn't verbally brief it after a few hours of
instruction, but he expected me to have mentally briefed it and to have
the answer at hand as he quite often asked the "your engine just failed"
question, or pulled the throttle if we had safe altitude to do so.

To the best of my knowledge, he never flew anything larger than a light
twin, but he'd made something like 11 emergency landings after real
engine failures, and walked away from every one so I figured he knew
what he was talking about. If you wonder how he was so unlucky to have
had so many engine failures, I'd say it was two reasons:

1. He has something north of 50,000 hours of flight time and,
2. He delivered a lot of new airplanes (the most dangerous kind, he said)

Matt