Philosophical question on owning & IFR rating

"Michael" wrote in message
om...
ospam (Rosspilot) wrote
Ok . . . all IFR is *not* conducted in subfreezing weather.

OK, so how much IFR in IMC involves neither subfreezing weather nor
T-storms? In my experience, relatively little.

Here in the UK, I'd say about 80% of it.

Paul

"Michael" wrote:
Important to remember - VFR into IMC fatality is a private pilot kind
of accident. Only about 18% of private pilots are instrument rated,
so they should account for only 18% of those fatalities - less if the
rating offers an advantage. What are the real numbers?

Perhaps, but I think you assume that the other possible influences are
uniformly distributed, which I doubt is true. For example, do the 18% of
IFR rated private pilots have the same level of recent flying experience(*)
as the 72% of non-IFR rated pilots?

Russell Kent

(*) I'm assuming that "recent flying experience" would be a factor in the
survivability of, or probability of encountering, a VFR-into-IMC situation.
I have no evidence to back this claim; it's just a gut feeling.

"Michael" wrote in message
om...
(C Kingsbury) wrote
Important to remember - VFR into IMC fatality is a private pilot kind
of accident. Only about 18% of private pilots are instrument rated,
so they should account for only 18% of those fatalities - less if the
rating offers an advantage. What are the real numbers?
Michael

Where did you get the 18% number?

Mike
MU-2

"Paul Sengupta" wrote
OK, so how much IFR in IMC involves neither subfreezing weather nor
T-storms? In my experience, relatively little.

Here in the UK, I'd say about 80% of it.

And here in Texas, maybe 8% at best.

There is a good reason why the UK has an IMC rating.

Michael

"Michael" wrote:

Ok . . . all IFR is *not* conducted in subfreezing weather.

OK, so how much IFR in IMC involves neither subfreezing weather nor
T-storms? In my experience, relatively little.

Virtually all the IMC I have flown has involved neither, unless you want
to be very liberal about the meaning of "involves."

You seem hell-bent on making the argument that all IFR exceeds the
capacity of
a light single.

It's simply nonsense. You have to know your aircraft's limitations,
and flight
plan properly. Exercizing the "no-go" decision is a big part of
having the
Instrument Rating.

But the issue here is how often the weather is beyond the capacity of
a typical light single VFR yet not beyond the capacity of the same
airplane IFR. I argue that it's relatively rare to have such weather.

Can't agree with you there. I have found it relatively common on the
central Gulf Coast, fall through spring. Most of my trips are morning
departures; in winter both origin and destination airports are often IFR
or very untrustworthy VFR. This weather usually consists of fog or a
low overcast that contains no icing or convective threats.

Even thogh I frequently encounter IMC, my actual IMC time is quite low;
I spend little time enroute in clouds. That's not because I avoid
flying on days when it's solid from 1,500 to 15,000, but because such
days are rare down here. Most of my IMC time is climbing, descending
and approaches. In those circumstances, ice and CBs have seldom been
issues for me, and the instrument rating has been quite useful.

--
Dan
C172RG at BFM

You could say I am losing money in my leaseback, but I see it as a good
value. Not a good investment, a good value.

That pretty well sums up aircraft ownership in general.

You can't define it in terms of "investment," but rather in terms of
"value."
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

That should be "Not all IFR is icing. Not all IFR involves deteriorating
weather."
What you said is that IFR never involves icing or deteriorating weather.


It is my policy to not go to a location unless the weather picture is better
than where I am at. Just because this is my policy doesn't always mean that I
do it.

No reason you can't do both. To do your instrument training all you
need is the pitot/static and transponder check. I did all of my
instrument training in an old Beech Musketeer with only a pair of
KX-170Bs. For your checkride, all you need to do is three types of
approaches (and a hold and some other basic stuff), and if you get a
'VFR' plane with a glideslope (a great many do, even many old 150s),
you'll do a localizer approach, a VOR approach, and an ILS approach.

Would I take in the soup for real? Not for any length of time. But to
earn your rating, you don't need dual Garmin 430s. The hardest thing
about instrument training isn't the approaches. It's developing the
skills that will keep you from killing yourself. It's managing to stay
upside-up. And those skills can certainly be developed in a VFR plane.

Getting your instrument ticket is an excellent idea, even if you
aren't planning on using it much. If you don't stay current, it is
dangerous to be in the clouds, but regaining currency is relatively
easy. It does help make you a better pilot, and it is certainly a very
valuable 'insurance' policy.

Id do both...buy a good VFR plane with enough instrumentation to do
your IFR training (most have it already), and get your rating in it.
If you later find the need to do hard IFR flying on a regular basis,
you can look at other options down the road.

Cheers,

Cap,


TTA Cherokee Driver wrote in message ...
I'm a 160-hour PPL and a club member. My club is great and economical,
but availability and flexibility are becoming big drawbacks, so I'm
toying with the idea of buying a plane.

It's hard to justify on strictly financial terms because the club is
such a good deal, but how many times can you schedule a plane for a
Saturday flight, have to reschedule for Sunday because of wx but whoops,
can't because all the planes are booked for Sunday. Or even schedule a
morning flight, but because of AM fog have to postpone a couple of
hours, but still have to be back by noon because someone else has it
right after you, so you might as well not go since the fog didn't lift
till 11:00. Etc.

So I've been thinking of buying a plane for the sole purpose of
improving my availability & flexibility. Other than that I am delighed
with the club. Because of my job and other responsibilities, if I'm
going to do a significant amount of flying I'm going to need
availability and flexibility without having to plan everyhing way ahead.
Also because of that, and also because of reluctance to get into bed
financially with others, I don't think a partnership is the way to go,
though I haven't ruled it out, but for argument's sake let's say it's
ruled out.

Since this is a philosophical discussion, assume if I buy on my own I
will have to buy a VFR airplane to get a decent one that's affordable.
If I buy a VFR airplane that would rule out getting an instrument rating
because I'm obviously not going to rent airplanes for over 40 hours of
IFR training if I just bought one.

I keep putting off starting my IFR training, so while I think it would
be good to do it's clearly not something I'm burning to do.
Availability and flexiblity has something to do with putting off the IFR
training too, it took me 2 years and 80 hours to get my PPL because of
those kinds of issues and I don't want to repeat that with an IFR rating.

I'd like to hear people's thoughts on having the hypothetical choice of
getting an IFR rating while continuing to rent, versus buying and
committing to being VFR-only for the forseeable future. I'm in North
Carolina, where the weather is VFR reasonably often but not so often
that it's a no-brainer like it would be in AZ or FL or some such place.

TIA

Captain Wubba wrote:
: No reason you can't do both. To do your instrument training all you
: need is the pitot/static and transponder check. I did all of my
: instrument training in an old Beech Musketeer with only a pair of
: KX-170Bs. For your checkride, all you need to do is three types of
: approaches (and a hold and some other basic stuff), and if you get a
: 'VFR' plane with a glideslope (a great many do, even many old 150s),
: you'll do a localizer approach, a VOR approach, and an ILS approach.

: Would I take in the soup for real? Not for any length of time. But to
: earn your rating, you don't need dual Garmin 430s. The hardest thing
: about instrument training isn't the approaches. It's developing the
: skills that will keep you from killing yourself. It's managing to stay
: upside-up. And those skills can certainly be developed in a VFR plane.

Well-said. The term "IFR-Certified" gets thrown around primarily to try to
increase the value of a plane during a sale. Many (most?) VFR planes have IFR
equipment (VOR, LOC, often a GS). All an "IFR-Certified" plane means is one that has
the altimeter checked along with the *required* VFR transponder biannual check.
That's it. No more, no less. Now, to actually fly IFR (i.e. accept an IFR
clearance), it must not only be certified, but equipped to fly the approaches you
intend to use. Having a LOC/VOR/GS is a very reasonable set of equipment for IFR
training. You only need one precision and two non-precision approaches for the
checkride. For actual IFR, having some redundancy built in and maybe a few more
gadgets (digital radios, DME, IFR GPS) would be nice to reduce workload. For
training, dual (or even single) KX-170B's is perfectly fine, and in a lot of ways
better since it's more difficult to triangulate VOR's than read a DME. The biggest
part of the IFR rating (80% or more) isn't flying approaches, but keeping the
shiny-side up and executing precision airwork with minimal concentration required.
Approaches are a natural byproduct of precision airwork, with just a couple more
things thrown in (i.e. convertning the symbols on the plates into the required
precision airwork). It's mostly about constantly cramming more workload onto yourself
until you can function automatically on the basics and have some CPU cycles left over
to do other things.

-Cory

************************************************** ***********************
* Cory Papenfuss *
* Electrical Engineering candidate Ph.D. graduate student *
* Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University *
************************************************** ***********************

wrote:

: shiny-side up and executing precision airwork with minimal concentration required.
: Approaches are a natural byproduct of precision airwork, with just a couple more
: things thrown in (i.e. convertning the symbols on the plates into the required
: precision airwork). It's mostly about constantly cramming more workload onto yourself
: until you can function automatically on the basics and have some CPU cycles left over
: to do other things.

Let me agree with Cory. I started with a pretty basic IFR setup, and I have
added to it as my needs increased. I would say that a marker beacon is
also important, unless you've got some other way to identify the OM for an
ILS approach (VOR triangulation, ADF, whatever).
I found the hardest thing in IFR training was mental prep for approaches
one right after another. We have a VOR that has approaches to quite a few
airports starting over it. Frequently in training we'd start over that vor
and shoot five or six different approaches, each missed approach going back
to the VOR. We'd do six approaches in 1.2 hobbs hours. It sure helped to
get all of your paperwork out of the way and your charts organized
beforehand!
--
Aaron Coolidge