This becomes a hot button topic around here pretty fast, but it's one of the reasons many CFIIs recommend NOT putting an instrument *student* and a non-instrument rated pilot together for safety pilot duty unless a CFI or preferrably a CFII have talked with the *student* about it and how to brief a training flight properly.
They don't always know what and why they're going to do stuff, the non-Instrument rated pilot certainly doesn't know why they're doing stuff, and the whole thing can put bad habits in the head of the student that can be a bear to break.
Further along / sharp instrument students will brief the entire flight to their safety pilot including duties and responsibilities, and how they'd prefer stuff like traffic be communicated to them, etc. and of course any rated instrument pilot also would/should.
I have heard, but haven't experienced yet, that
@TangoWhiskey does this extremely well -- and hope to sit in his right seat sometime to see it. If nothing else to gain some more ideas for my own flying.
Another tip: If you both have Foreflight, the "send flightplan" function is quite useful for pre-briefing. I've even had one DPE do it. No confusion between him and me as to what I had planned to fly, and he had his own copy of it so he could piddle around if he wanted to on his iPad looking for airfields or whatever he wanted to do over there, without having to have mine where he could see it.
Another tip for EFB tools: Mount them and lock them down. I personally like Ram Mounts with suction cups but kneeboards or whatever are fine too... then treat them as just another instrument in your scan. Don't fixate on them. I've done the "Foreflight in my lap" thing and it's fine VMC, but if it's weather flying, it's locked down somewhere in a mount or secured where it'll be there when my eyes need to go to it for a quick situational awareness look at the moving map, or more details like an approach plate for a briefing.
And that leads to approaches with them: Put the plates you'll most likely use in a folder pre-flight. Touchscreens suck in turbulence. Make finding the plates and taxi diagrams for departure and arrival airports as easy as possible by doing a little pre-flight prep. Only takes a few minutes. Pre-set the Plates screen on that folder. Now all you need are two pokes (I call the touchscreen UI "target practice" in turbulence) to get to the plate you need. Less work, more time to pay attention to primary instruments.)
Anyway, not to go too far off topic here, but your post reminded me of some early safety pilot flights that I did for somewhat disorganized instrument pilots. If their pre-flight plan consists of "Let's to shoot some approaches - hop in!", stop and have them consider that it's better if they tell you a bit more of their plan. Sure, it can change... wind shift, runway change, etc... but have at least an idea what they're planning to do and see it on a chart before offering to assist.
Also definitely go over how they want you to handle traffic lookout and confirmation that you're doing it. Here's how I brief that:
- If either one of us knows about traffic from a radio call or from the traffic system we will acknowledge it, out loud to each other, and remember only you can see it. If you have it in sight let me know. If you are comfortable with the radios, and the controller is expecting an "in sight" call, you make it. If you'd rather I say it, tell me.
- If a collision risk is forming, tell me a heading and whether you want a climb or descent.
- If it's looking real close, don't hesitate to tell me to go Visual immediately. I'll probably do this anyway if your voice is going up an octave. Ha
- Use standard phraseology to point out traffic to me if you need to. "2 o'clock, three miles" just like a controller. Same with avoidance commands, "Turn right heading 180, climb and maintain X".
- Don't worry about interrupting me or breaking off an approach. I'll make the radio call if that happened and this is VFR flight. Training. You need me away from another airplane just make me do it. You're simulating ATC. We can always fly back out and set it up again, no problem. If you think ANYTHING is wrong, just tell me to go visual and we'll figure it out.
We could probably make a whole thread on how to "manage" safety pilots and a two pilot cockpit. This is just some pointers from flights where I've seen confusion set in instead of having fun doing it.
I think there's great benefit from even non-rated safety pilots seeing someone fly the IFR system and fly like a real IMC plan, but both the rated pilot and the non-rated need to set some ground rules before the prop turns. Students sometimes are not yet to a point where they remember to communicate this sort of stuff to a safety pilot. Usually it's better if they use an instrument rated safety pilot early on, and discuss doing so with their instructor. I get that it's cheaper to grab anyone and "just go", but it can end up "not fun" fairly quick.
Safety pilot volunteers also play a part. Make the pilot tell you where obstacles are, where's the terrain, what is our expected course (even if it's radar vectors to final you can look over the chart in that area for things to watch out for), etc.
And there's an experience piece. If the student went 50' low at decision height and didn't go missed, would you know what DH was and notice they did it? There's a lot of stuff to hit down that low... (typically 150' AGL). How about if they really blew it and they're 100' low? (100' AGL) Would you call out "missed approach, climb immediately!" or not know it doesn't normally look that way? They're just sitting over there looking at the instruments like they have been for the past hour and might look completely calm like everything is normal...
Students try to kill CFIs all the time. LOL. Be very careful helping instrument students out as safety pilot if not rated. Make sure you know when they're trying to kill you. Ha.
