Attitude indicator out..

forsonsinc

forsonsinc

Pre-takeoff checklist
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student did his lessons with the attitude indicator inop and covered

He related to me that,"it wasn't bad til working under the foggles."
I was thinking he's kinda crazy, but he had an instructor for safety and I guess that they wouldn't have let him fly if it was unsafe.
Is that something that cfi's do often or is he being unsafe to get his training done?
And is that go or no go the students call or the instructors?
 
Assuming you're VFR - VISUAL flight rules that is no problem because you should be looking outside. If you were IFR it would have been illegal. For IR training you'll be doing a lot of partial panel climbs, turns, descents, approaches, etc to prep you for vacuum failures. If I catch my students routinely fixating on the instrument panel I'll take my sectional and cover everything and tell them to look outside. I also tell them if they'd like to stare at the instruments I'd buy them a cockpit poster for their room!
 
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So it's quite a normal occurrence?
 
forsonsinc said:
So it's quite a normal occurrence?
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An AI dying for real?

It's abnormal, but it's not rare.

Partial panel IMC happens IRL, and it simply must not be fatal. Training is almost always done under VFR in simulated instrument conditions, or else on a simulator. It's a bit different in IMC when it happens for real, but that's an essential starting point.

It's kinda weird for a student pilot to do partial panel training with foggles. I wouldn't think he'd stand a chance. But it's a standard thing to do as an instrument student. Maybe the instructor was trying to make a point to a student overconfident in his IMC abilities?

Without the foggles, in VMC, the AI is totally unnecessary. Who needs an artificial horizon when you can see the real one?
 
MAKG1 said:
It's kinda weird for a student pilot to do partial panel training with foggles. I wouldn't think he'd stand a chance.
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It's like teaching taildraggers or NDBs to people who haven't been exposed to them before...it's amazing what you can teach someone who hasn't been told it's supposed to be difficult.

I know quite a few pilots who did their flight by reference to instruments as student pilots with just needle, ball, and airspeed. If that's what you've got, that's what you work with.
 
I never used an attitude indicator in my life. I land everything I've flown pretty much like a taildragger. Works very well . If the Mooneys I flew had one I never used it.
 
Had the gyros start going bad during a flight a couple of years ago, AI started dancing all over the place and became inop. Put a post it note over it and all was well. Like others have said, the AI is not a required instrument for VFR flight. If it fails while IMC then it's a different story. Consider it a vacuum failure and put the turn coordinator and VVI together, to mentally make an AI in your head. Partial panel is tricky stuff.
 
Lost the AI in one of my airplanes years ago. The new one was expensive too, so I wasn't in too big a hurry to get it fixed. Its absence did not cause me undue consternation.
 
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