From crwdog69@hotmail.com Tue Dec 11 19:04:32 2001 Path: cygnus.com!enews.sgi.com!news-hog.berkeley.edu!ucberkeley!newsfeed.stanford.edu!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail From: crwdog69@hotmail.com (Michael) Newsgroups: rec.aviation.student Subject: Re: Flying In The Clouds Date: 11 Dec 2001 15:15:50 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Lines: 164 Message-ID: <449a3d6e.0112111515.734c9c1d@posting.google.com> References: <_3VQ7.22359$wL4.55546@rwcrnsc51> <917fe384.0112101438.1d48ef68@posting.google.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 63.149.180.194 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1008112550 7793 127.0.0.1 (11 Dec 2001 23:15:50 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 11 Dec 2001 23:15:50 GMT Xref: cygnus.com rec.aviation.student:196992 awnews@electradigital.com (Alex Weeks) wrote > At an AOPA safety seminar I heard that a significant number of the > pilots who continue VFR into IMC and have trouble are actually > instrument rated pilots but not on instrument flight plans. Last I heard, they were the majority as of a couple of years ago. This is particularly disturbing since most of them were private pilots, and less than 20% of private pilots are instrument rated in the first place. One might even be tempted to believe that having an instrument rating puts you at higher risk of dying in an inadvertent VFR-into-IMC incident. I will attempt to explain why I believe this is absolutely true. > So that makes it even harder to figure out why they get into trouble. No, I think it helps explain the situation much better. Let's face facts - basic attitude instrument flying proficiency has been required at the private pilot level for well over a decade now. A few years ago the FAA started mandating three hours of instrument training. Before that, it was possible to go to a private checkride with as little as one hour of instrument time (I did) but the maneuvers you had to demonstrate were exactly the same - climbs, descents, turns to headings, and unusual attitude recoveries. In a RADAR environment, these skills are sufficient to save your ass and get you down even in some really scuzzy conditions if you do what you are supposed to - climb, communicate, confess, and comply. I know this from personal experience, because I once had to do it. At the time, I had less than three hours of total instrument time, was low time, and was not very current or experienced in the airplane I was flying. I did not even know what an ASR was, but I asked for a RADAR guided approach and I got one. I believe that the key to surviving the experience is realizing that you indeed have an emergency situation, staying calm, and carrying out your plan of action for the emergency. If you do that, you will most likely (but not certainly) come out alive. If you ask around, very few pilots out there have not had an inadvertent VFR into IMC encounter. The vast majority of those who have one do survive, by using the skills they were taught in preparation for the private pilot checkride. Some few even become comfortable with the process and start flying IMC whenever it is convenient. Recently, I asked a few of the high time instrument rated pilots around my home field about their instrument experiences prior to obtaining the instrument rating. The consensus seems to be that 2-6 hours of solo actual is typical before STARTING work on the instrument rating. There's a lot of IMC flying by unrated people going on out there. Some are just punching layers to get up or down, and some have actully graduated all the way up to filing IFR illegally and flying full approaches. While this is grossly illegal, I don't think this is what really causes the accidents. These people know that they are doing something illegal and dangerous, and they treat the operation with all the respect it deserves. The reality is that an instrument rating does not really prepare the average pilot for the sort of instrument flying he really wants to do. How many of us know an instrument rated pilot (or a pilot working on an instrument rating) who owns a light single (or typically rents light singles) and just wants the rating as a 'safety net?' I see a lot of these guys. They fly less than 100 hours a year, they mostly fly VFR, and unless they have a real reason to go somewhere (which they rarely do) they don't intentionally fly in scuzzy weather. Their thinking is that if they are flying along and the weather goes bad, they can just file IFR to get down and out of the weather. I believe that kind of thinking is going to kill quite a few of them. See, flying IFR is a hassle, and the less performance your airplane has, the more of a hassle it is. Unless you have IFR RNAV (and sometimes even if you do) you get routed out of your way along airways. You lose a lot of time climbing, and because you don't really get to do a shallow descent a lot of times, you don't get it back on the descent. It's not so bad enroute, but it's really bad on the departure and in the terminal environment. If your airplane has short legs and poor climb (and most of the GA fleet does), you can increase your trip time by 50%. Flying IFR is fun (in a twisted sort of way) if you can cruise 150+ kts, carry 5+ hours of fuel, and climb 1000 fpm. Otherwise it's just a pain in the ass. As a result, most instrument rated private pilots are actually flying very little actual - and most of their instrument time is in the training environment. Unfortunately, the training environment is rather unrealistic. Real IFR flying involves very little actual airmanship most of the time. You plod along, mostly straight and level, in and out of the soup for three hours, and at the end you maybe get one approach out of it (if that). Most of what you are doing is monitoring weather and systems. Mostly navigation is just not a major concern - you have multiple redundant systems and aids to situational awareness. Sure, you CAN fly with just a single Nav/Com, but outside the training environment nobody does. In the training environment, you spend so much time flying with just the bare minimum that you can easily begin to think that's normal. So here we have our statistic waiting to happen. He is in your average minimally equipped airplane, which means he has maybe a couple of NavComs (or just one) and maybe an ADF, and probably a decent portable GPS with a yoke mount. If he is a renter he might be in the instrument trainer, which probably has DME, but probably doesn't have a decent mount for the GPS. He is instrument rated and technically current - he just had an ICC three months ago. He has an ICC every six months - it's cheap insurance. He is making a routine VFR XC flight. The weather shows a chance of marginal VFR, and even a remote chance of patchy IFR, but mostly it's supposed to be decent enough VFR. Our friend even filed an IFR flight plan, just in case. He has a book of approach plates and a low altitude chart in the back seat. The weather is deteriorating, but he is undeterred. It is still technically VFR, and anyway he has a flight plan on file, he is legal and current. He knows all about air filing - he did it a couple of times while working on his rating, on a clear blue sky day. Now the weather has gotten marginal. He contacts center, but everyone else wants to talk to them too. On a blue sky VFR day, center is mostly handling the turbine traffic. Everyone else is VFR. Now the weather is deteriorating, and the system is full of guys in Bonanzas, 210's, and Barons who all filed 20 minutes ago. The controllers are talking a mile a minute and our friend can't get a word in edgewise. When the controller finally acknowledges him, he tells the guy to file with FSS - he can't find the flight plan. See, it was never opened on takeoff and it's with a different center. Now our friend has his hands full. He's hand flying the airplane in scuzzy weather, fumbling for maps, trying to find the right frequency, tuning radios, and pretty soon he's in the soup. He should now declare an emergency (because that is exactly what he has on his hands) but he is instrument rated and current and he knows that declaring an emergency now might mean a violation and a 609, but if he only files normally and flies his clearance all will be fine. In the meantime, he lets his scan slip. He notices that all of a sudden, the airspeed is way too high and the descent rate is way too low, or worse that tower comes out of the mist... My experience is that the most difficult part of the IFR in IMC flight is the transition to instruments, not the approach. Approaches are standardized, they are charted, and the portion flown past the final approach fix is absolutely invariant. Instrument departures are worse - you are maneuvering down low, with the airplane not squared away yet. But by far the most difficult kind of instrument flying is making the transition from VFR to IFR in scuzzy weather in an unplanned manner. I'm not saying it can't be done, and I certainly have done it, but these are the times when my workload is highest. This is also something that is not evaluated on the instrument checkride in any realistic way, and as a result most instrument instructors do not teach it. Sometimes the most comforting words you can hear are "Cleared to ABC via..., descend and maintain 5000, fly heading 200 direct XYZ when able." I have had experiences where it took 20 minutes from when I first contacted ATC to the time I heard those magic words. The weather can deteriorate A LOT in 20 minutes. Some people just don't live long enough. Unfortunately, the instrument rating is now being recommended to everyone for the sake of safety. I suspect that when it comes to the VFR-into-IMC fatality statistics, this is doing more harm than good. There was a time when scud running was considered a skill, and the realistic way to get to an airport in a 100 mph airplane when weather deteriorated. Instrument flying in a 100 mph airplane was considered insanity. Today scud running is considered insanity, and instrument flying is considered a reasonable way to get to an airport when weather deteriorates. I don't think this is progress. Michael