How long does it take to get competent under the hood?

Rykymus

Rykymus

Line Up and Wait
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Rykymus
Between my CFII and a safety pilot (also a CFII), I've got about 17hrs of hood time over the last few weeks. I'm flying every morning, Mon-Fri, 2 hr lesson followed by 1 hour of practice. (The practice isn't always under the hood, as my safety pilot isn't always available.) I can hold course, heading and altitude fine, do climbs, turns, descents. And I can shoot approaches visually without problem. But whenever my attention is distracted from my scan, like when tuning the radio, or setting up the GPS, or briefing for an approach, I get off course, and then end up chasing the needle for what seems like forever just to get back on course/speed/heading. My safety pilot says I need to concentrate on making tiny corrections, and concentration more on the attitude indicator. He also says it just takes time and practice. They both think I'm doing fine, but I feel like I suck.

So, does this skill just come with time? Am I just being too impatient?
 
It all depends on the individual.

What do you mean by "shoot approaches visually" ??

Tuning a radio shouldn't take so much time that things go to pot. Especially if you have the next dialed in and just flip.

Sounds like you may have a heavy hand and are over controlling (a problem I have had all my career).
 
I am at 11 hours under the hood and on the 1.5 hour flight today I felt (for the first time) like I really had the airplane trimmed and under control so that tuning a radio didn't send me way off course. I think it just takes time. Get the airplane trimmed as best you can so that letting go of the yoke results in nothing happening. Also my CFII has said to never stop the scan for more than 3 seconds... tune the radio a bit, back to the scan, tune the radio, back to the scan.
 
Yup, trim, trim, trim, trim. Try letting go of the yoke to test it. Being slightly out of trim will screw you up very quickly.

Also, you might be spending too much time on the radio.

Honestly, diagnosing problems like this is what CFIIs are for. Really good safety pilots can help, too. Why limit yourself to one? The more experienced, the better.
 
I am taking my check ride today, so take it with a gain of salt, but I didn't find that flying under the hood "clicked" until I had some 30-35 hours at it.

Before that, it was like a wrestling match, where I was struggling to keep up with the plane and do all the other things I had to do and at any moment the plane might (and would) just slip away from me and start doing its own thing.

Best I can describe, it is just learning to get your scan to be automatic and reflexive so you can think about the approach, getting Wx, etc.

Don't know why it clicked when it did, other than practice.
 
As others have said, probably you are over-controlling the plane, which is a symptom of over-reacting to the needle. Even half-scale deflection doesn't take much of an adjustment to fix. One lesson, my CFII had me do our last approach with the hood off and look up before making corrections, which showed me just how minute of a correction is really necessary most of the time. It's also a symptom of not trimming the plane. If you are always having to apply control pressure because the plane is not trimmed for what you want it to do, then it's hard to have a soft touch for small changes. It's like the difference between the dynamic range you can use when speaking at a rock concert versus in a quiet meadow. Your ability to make a small, precise correction goes away with every bit of force you are already applying as a baseline.

You can also practice with the radios on the ground or in VFR flight, until they become second nature and take no time to adjust. That way you can set the GPS and VHF radios up for your approach with a minimum amount of time away from your instrument scan, whether you are straight and level or in a timed hold. And you can get a computer-based simulator for many GPSes that will also help you learn where everything (not just the things you currently know and think constitute everything) is. I'm doing that literally right now because you reminded me that my CFII (who flies professionally behind a pair of 430s) seems to magically know what to turn and how far to find all sorts of useful things and I want to get to that level, too.
 
Well, today things were different. My CFII did two things that seemed to solve my problem. First, he had me put my left arm on my knee, and hold the yoke with my fingertips on the bottom left corner of the yoke. This forced me to use only the strength in my wrist to fly the plane, instead of the greater strength in my arm. It made it very difficult to make anything but tiny corrections. Second, he first covered up the attitude indicator, then after 10 minutes, covered up the directional indicator as well. This seemed to do the trick. I still have a ways to go, but at least now I feel like there is hope, as I managed to fly 3 approaches today, all of them within limits.

Oh, and by visual approaches, I mean flying an instrument approach with ATC, but no hood, VFR.

Thanks all.
 
You did partial panel approaches like that, too? Great. That's a real test of your control.

A "visual approach" is an IFR approach clearance to approach to land as though you were VFR, except with cloud clearance requirements relaxed (it's clear of clouds in all airspace). More or less the opposite of what you used it for. It's how most good-weather IFR flights terminate, unless you've asked for something else. See AIM 5-4-23.
 
Somewhere between 1 hour and infinity hours. Everyone is different.
 
MAKG1 said:
Yup, trim, trim, trim, trim. Try letting go of the yoke to test it. Being slightly out of trim will screw you up very quickly.

Also, you might be spending too much time on the radio.

Honestly, diagnosing problems like this is what CFIIs are for. Really good safety pilots can help, too. Why limit yourself to one? The more experienced, the better.
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You're not actually letting go of the yoke to "test" your trim are you?

Just trim the pressure off
 
Rykymus said:
But whenever my attention is distracted from my scan, like when tuning the radio, or setting up the GPS, or briefing for an approach, I get off course, and then end up chasing the needle for what seems like forever just to get back on course/speed/heading.
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You've gotten some good advice here and elsewhere. I'll just add two more cents.

1¢ -I teach a "3-second rule". Do not leave the primary flight instruments for more than 3 seconds at a time. That can sometimes mean putting one character at a time in the GPS but that's better than putting yourself in a chase the needles situation.

2¢ - As a corollary to the heavy-hand/light-touch already mentioned, when you do a task like changing frequencies or waypoints, let go of the yoke entirely. Just hover your hand there. So many of us (me included) have a tendency to pressure the yoke or stick unconsciously, especially when out attention is drawn elsewhere. Let go and, even in turbulence, the inherent stability of a trimmed airplane will usually do a better job than us.
 
midlifeflyer said:
Why not?
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Just bad form, and pointless, like going left, both, right, both on a mag check, also doesn't feel really good, or look very professional, for the pax when you try that trick and the plane isn't in trim.
 
To each their own, on this side I've always had great luck just asking my students not to white knuckle the yoke in the first place, then just trim the pressure off, keep the plane level, but you shouldn't need a death grip to simply put forward OR reward pressure on to keep her level till you trim said pressure off.

If I take my hands off the yoke it's because the other guy up front, or George, has control.
 
Rykymus said:
First, he had me put my left arm on my knee, and hold the yoke with my fingertips on the bottom left corner of the yoke. This forced me to use only the strength in my wrist to fly the plane, instead of the greater strength in my arm. It made it very difficult to make anything but tiny corrections. Second, he first covered up the attitude indicator, then after 10 minutes, covered up the directional indicator as well. This seemed to do the trick. I still have a ways to go, but at least now I feel like there is hope, as I managed to fly 3 approaches today, all of them within limits.

Oh, and by visual approaches, I mean flying an instrument approach with ATC, but no hood, VFR.

Thanks all.
Click to expand...

Sounds like you are getting it, Rykymus. Sometimes it is easy to forget that the airplane wants to fly. We just have to learn to let it do its job. :)
 
I really do think that I was inadvertently pushing the plane into a turn when I was turning my attention to the GPS. Then, I was in that dreaded "chasing the needle" scenario. What was really shocking was that I flew the approach better with the AI and DI covered, than I had in the past with all instruments available to me.

I really wish I would have practiced that "fingertip flying" thing before I started IFR training.
 
There is no set number of hours. It depends on the person, and how fast you connect with the concepts. I began to feel proficient before 20 hours or so, but I didn't REALLY get proficient until well later.
 
from my observation people are not being tought to properly trim aircraft. It makes it very hard to fly on the gauges when the aircraft is trying to go off of the flight path you want. When a plane is properly trimmed it should not take more than fingertips to fly on instuments. Sounds like you are getting the hang of it.

Bob
 
MAKG1 said:
Not anymore. But to learn the kind of touch it took to do so, it was quite useful.
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That was my thought also. Some folks take to trimming easily; others need a little help. Letting go is like covering the instruments for visual maneuvers. A temporary training aid in a CFI's bag of tricks for those who need it.
 
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