Motivation to get an instrument rating.

TMetzinger

TMetzinger

Final Approach
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Tim
I suspect many folks have had either VFR-into-IMC experiences, or came close enough to them, to motivate them into getting an instrument rating. Here's my story.

October 2, 1997. I'm a private pilot for 22 months, with 149 hours, 87 X/C, and 21 at night. I'm taking my wife from Frederick, Maryland, to Laconia, NH, in N2820S, a Socata Tobago (180 HP, Fixed Gear, CS prop, 115 KTAS) with a VFR GPS and an STec autopilot.

Weather at the time of our departure is CAVU, with a forecast for scattered clouds over NH around the time of our arrival. So we launch, heading over to College Park (CGS) for brunch, then heading north mover Lancaster, keeping west of Philly and NY Bravo space, and crossing the Hudson south of Albany near the Chester VOR, with flight following on the way. As we cross the Hudson at 5500, I see thicker than expected cloud cover ahead and below us. By the time we're in Massachusetts and nearing Chester, there's a 3/4 broken deck below us. We're on top, great visibility, no danger. We've also got enough fuel to go all the way back to FDK if needed, so I'm not scared for my life, but am worried about completing the trip.

Calling up ATC, I tell them I'm worried about the weather, and ask if they know if Laconia is VFR. They report back that Laconia is IFR, and ask if the airplane and I are capable of instrument flight. I tell them the airplane is but I'm not, and tell them we'll want to divert, and ask if there are any fields reporting VFR. They give us a vector to Orange (KORE), and ask if I'm having trouble maintaining VFR. I tell them no, we're on top and fat with fuel, and just need a place to land and wait for better weather.

As we approach Orange, I can see the cloud deck thickening, but it's still scattered and I can make out the airport and make a visual pattern. A cloud gets in the way on final so I go around and try again on a crossing runway, and land fine. I call up FSS on the ground and close my VFR flight plan, and get the weather - Laconia is expected to improve in a couple of hours. About 20 minutes later the entire ocean rained down on Orange - it just POURED for about 30 minutes. My wife and I found a diner nearby, with velvet paintings on the walls, and terrific food. Perhaps the slight sense of danger helped our appetites a bit.

In a couple of hours, it was VFR again at Orange, Laconia was the same, and we completed our trip.

In my case, I was never scared - we always had lots of safe options. But I was certainly annoyed, and vowed that I'd get the instrument rating soon so that benign weather changes wouldn't delay or cancel flying in the future.
 
I have my own twist on the tale. I was flying from Orlando to Boca Raton to help my parents clean out their vacation house. Orlando was good VFR but Boca was IFR due to light morning fog, but it was forecast to improve soon. We took off and faced an broken/scattered overcast at about 2000 feet, so I headed a mile offshore where the ceilings were higher. As we neared the Fort Pierce area (about halfway there) the ceilings lowered considerably. There was a lot of IFR traffic inbound to the coastal airports, so I kept a close ear on the approach and tower frequencies. Soon I was down to 1000 feet and trying to stay high for a jet that was coming into the Stuart airport, when the world went white. I was instrument rated -- though out of currency -- but I was flying in a Citabria with no gyros except a turn coordinator. As I made a partial-panel 180, it became clear that the weather behind me had gotten worse along the way and I stayed in the soup for longer than I'd expected. (I was getting flight following from one of the towers in the area.) I descended to about 800 feet and broke out, then ran the scud to Fort Pierce where we landed and had breakfast. The local weather improved, but the Boca weather got worse, so we turned around and went home.

So my moral is don't just GET the instrument rating, USE it. Even in a VFR airplane, instrument skills are something you will really like to have when the chips are down.
 
When first studying for my IR, I had an "ah-hah!" moment when reading the introduction of "Instrument Flight Training Manual" by Peter Dogan. He relates an anecdote of two pilots flying separately on a trip, one with an IR, and one without. The guy without the IR is the typical "over-experienced VFR-only pilot" who jumps through lots of hoops, has lots of close calls, etc, to get where he's going, leaving himself and his passenger somewhat frazzled. The guy with the IR makes the same trip, but fairly routinely.

The lesson, of course, is that the secret purpose of an IR is to reduce the stress level of traveling by little plane. We think it's about the ability to fly in bad to marginal weather, to increase our "on time percentage", but as we know, when a pilot has too much VFR-only experience, he figures out how to launch in marginal weather just fine, albeit becoming far too comfortable with the associated excitement that this often entails.

My experience backs this up, big time. As a student, you think that IFR flight will be stressful, because it seems like hard work, and the stakes are high, but once you've become proficient, you realize that it's way easier than the insanity of scud-running down below. There's nothing more peaceful than gliding along, skimming the tops of the clouds, in the sunshine, knowing that you've got mist and fog and low ceilings and poor visibility and lots of VFR "excitement" down below.
-harry
 
In my case, I don't know if I was scared or just anxious. It was pretty calming to be talking with ZMP and with airliners above. That proves communication goes a long ways in keeping a difficult situation from becoming an emergency.

As far as the instrument rating, that was started just two months after getting my ticket back. My own experience has convinced me of the importance of instrument skills. Should I ever have a student (PP or SP) who tells me there won't be any plans to move up in ratings, I'll be a lot more demanding on hood time. Just a few hours under the hood is not enough.
 
I had planned to get mine at some point was having a fine old time flying VFR and wanted to build up the ole savings account again. Then 9/11 came and the only was to fly off of our airport for a while in the enhanced class B was with an IFR rating or do training with a CFI. So I started my IFR rating and got it. I have used it so much that it has more than paid for itself. Now that I own a plane and use it for vacations and other travel I could not imagine not having it. I have never found it a burden to maintain the rating.
 
I spent a week flying a PA-28 from upstate New York to Dayton, Ohio in 1997. That was all the motivation I needed.

As a side benefit, my overall flying skills were vastly improved. If I ever get my medical back, the first thing I'm going to work on, after knocking the cobwebs off, is my instrument currency.
 
Back when I took Army flight training, the rotary wing classes before mine only got what was called a tactical instrument rating. Every month, we would have some accident or incident where instrument flight with a non-instrument rated pilot was involved.

Got stuck on top one day in RVN as a newby; seasoned guy in the back of the cobra wasn't instrument rated. After ducking and dodging a bit, he finally asked me if I was instrument rated and comfortable on them; I said yes. He turned over control to me while we descended through the crud, then, resumed control. Told me he was scared to death of flying when he couldn't see the ground. A very enlightening experience for each of us.

Best,

Dave
 
OK, time to come clean.

Coming home from my first Gastons, Gastons II in June of 05, PP with about 65hrs. If you remember, those travelling east had some pretty poor weather to contend with, as the Bermuda high was pumping all kinds of moisture into the southeast, causing lots of popup storms.

I leave Mountain Home (now ozark regional), skies hazy, but clear, and climb the Archer III to 9000. Flying along, and come up on some large, tall buildups, and start flying a corridor thru them, all along making sure it is clear below for an out. Well, the corridor closes off, and I do a spiral descent to 3500, go underneath the clouds, and it looks clear again, so I climb the Archer back to 9000.

All is pretty good, until I get near the Mississippi, near Arkansas International (BYH). I notice a grey mass, seemlingly starting at the ground, and rising many many 10's of thousands above me. This doesn't look good. I recall looking at the ground directly below, seeing BYH, and thinking to myself, "That airport is your lifeboat, don't leave your lifeboat behind without a plan." I ask center (I was on FF) about the weather, and he says he shows a large area of intense precip over Dryersbug, and asks me my intentions.

I tell him I want to spiral down now, and ask to switch frequencies to speak with flightwatch. I start spiraling down, and as I do, tune flightwatch and start a dialog with them. By now, the haze is very bad, and while I can see the ground, there is no discernable horizion. While talking to flightwatch, I glimpse at the gauges, and notice that I'm at 60 degrees bank and increasing, airspeed in the yellow and increasing, and VSI at over 1000fpm down. I tell flightwatch I'll get back to them, and set to flying the airplane.

I pull power to idle (shock cooling be damned at that point), shallow the turn to standard, then slowly pull back to get the speed under control. Once under control, I continue my spiral at 100kts at idle, watch the gauges like a hawk, and re-contact flightwatch. They confirm a large thunderstorm over Dryersburg, but say if I go direct Jackson (MKL), then direct CHA, I should be OK.

Airplane still under control, I get back with center, he concurs with flightwatch, and sends me towards Jackson, and I proceed at 3500msl. As I leave BYH behind, a big lightning bolt cracks across my nose not too far ahead. I think of landing, but think that being this close to the storm might be bad, with big surface wind and LLWS. So, I press on, especially as my new course is putting distance between me and the grey mass. The airplane has an S-Tec 55x autopilot, and I knew how to use it, and decided that george should fly the plane, and I should watch the gauges and make sure he does a good job. We put distance on the TS, but ceilings and vis continue down.

I continue on towards home, and the ceiling lowers, and I drop to 3000msl to keep the tail out of the clouds. In and out of rainshowers, I keep talking with flightwatch on 15min intervals to keep abreast of the weather situation. About 30 miles west of Winchester, TN, I can no longer reach flightwatch, and see another grey mass ahead of me. Fayetteville is south of me, and I've landed there before, so that could be a good out.

I tell the controller I can't raise flightwatch, can he help me with what I see. He says he shows a large precipitation/TS cell over Winchester, and gives me a vector 30 degrees right, and will call again when I am clear. I fly the vector, and he finally says direct destination, so I resume home.

But, we're not done yet. Ahead is the Cumberland platea, which rises as high as 2400msl between me and home, and I'm still at 3000msl with the tail barely out of the crud. I may still have to turn back to the southwest towards a Huntsville area airport.

But, like magic, just as I need to turn back, I bust out into beautiful CAVU sunshine, and I climb to 4500 to cross the ridges, and land at Chattanooga.

I was whipped dead dog tired.

Never again.

I called Ray, my instructor, the next day, and was in the plane the following week starting my IR training.

Now, I am IR, and fly a plane with stormscope and full XM weather.

Never again.

That flight sucked. Glad I got it under control in the spiral, glad I had george to fly the plane while I watch him and worked the radios for weather. Bad bad bad.
 
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Bill, those are just the kind of stories I want to share with students along with the line... "There not just stories in a magazine. They are real."

I wish I had been reading such stories before I got into my own trouble.
 
I didnt do anything like that until after i got my IR. not that it wouldve helped in the situation, would've become a flying ice cube in about 1 minute if i wouldve tried to go in the clouds. Definitely should've just stayed in Des Moines and give my dad the night off work.
 
I still get the chills thinking about my motivational flight. Last year while flying to Wings for the BBQ, things started to go bad and continued that way.

We planned on landing at Blacksburg, VA for the night. About 75 miles west the ceiling starts falling. For those not familiar with the area, there are a lot of big rocks to be concerned with. I continue on knowing, like Bill, what my outs are.

About 50 miles west things go to he** in a handbasket. My co-pilot, IR, and I discuss options. I tell him to contact center and request a pop up. He is confident we can make it in VFR even though night fall is upon us. We continue dancing around the clouds while I see the big rocks getting closer. At this point I'm soaked in sweat and convinced I should have made the 180 many miles ago. Scud running and mountains don't make a good combination.

We finally clear the last ridge and request a vector to the airport from Roanoke. Roanoke asks if we were VFR and we reply yes (we were at this point). Anway, we get the vector and locate the field. By this point my nerves are shot and my heart is racing like a greyhound on steroids.

For the only time in my flying life I relinquish controls to my co-pilot as I was in no physical or mental shape to make a landing.

That experience still haunts me to this day. Since then I have completed all necessary requirements for the IR and am scheduling my check ride for later this month.
 
Bill Jennings said:
OK, time to come clean.

Coming home from my first Gastons, Gastons II in June of 05, PP with about 65hrs. If you remember, those travelling east had some pretty poor weather to contend with, as the Bermuda high was pumping all kinds of moisture into the southeast, causing lots of popup storms.

I leave Mountain Home (now ozark regional), skies hazy, but clear, and climb the Archer III to 9000. Flying along, and come up on some large, tall buildups, and start flying a corridor thru them, all along making sure it is clear below for an out. Well, the corridor closes off, and I do a spiral descent to 3500, go underneath the clouds, and it looks clear again, so I climb the Archer back to 9000.

All is pretty good, until I get near the Mississippi, near Arkansas International (BYH). I notice a grey mass, seemlingly starting at the ground, and rising many many 10's of thousands above me. This doesn't look good. I recall looking at the ground directly below, seeing BYH, and thinking to myself, "That airport is your lifeboat, don't leave your lifeboat behind without a plan." I ask center (I was on FF) about the weather, and he says he shows a large area of intense precip over Dryersbug, and asks me my intentions.

I tell him I want to spiral down now, and ask to switch frequencies to speak with flightwatch. I start spiraling down, and as I do, tune flightwatch and start a dialog with them. By now, the haze is very bad, and while I can see the ground, there is no discernable horizion. While talking to flightwatch, I glimpse at the gauges, and notice that I'm at 60 degrees bank and increasing, airspeed in the yellow and increasing, and VSI at over 1000fpm down. I tell flightwatch I'll get back to them, and set to flying the airplane.

I pull power to idle (shock cooling be damned at that point), shallow the turn to standard, then slowly pull back to get the speed under control. Once under control, I continue my spiral at 100kts at idle, watch the gauges like a hawk, and re-contact flightwatch. They confirm a large thunderstorm over Dryersburg, but say if I go direct Jackson (MKL), then direct CHA, I should be OK.

Airplane still under control, I get back with center, he concurs with flightwatch, and sends me towards Jackson, and I proceed at 3500msl. As I leave BYH behind, a big lightning bolt cracks across my nose not too far ahead. I think of landing, but think that being this close to the storm might be bad, with big surface wind and LLWS. So, I press on, especially as my new course is putting distance between me and the grey mass. The airplane has an S-Tec 55x autopilot, and I knew how to use it, and decided that george should fly the plane, and I should watch the gauges and make sure he does a good job. We put distance on the TS, but ceilings and vis continue down.

I continue on towards home, and the ceiling lowers, and I drop to 3000msl to keep the tail out of the clouds. In and out of rainshowers, I keep talking with flightwatch on 15min intervals to keep abreast of the weather situation. About 30 miles west of Winchester, TN, I can no longer reach flightwatch, and see another grey mass ahead of me. Fayetteville is south of me, and I've landed there before, so that could be a good out.

I tell the controller I can't raise flightwatch, can he help me with what I see. He says he shows a large precipitation/TS cell over Winchester, and gives me a vector 30 degrees right, and will call again when I am clear. I fly the vector, and he finally says direct destination, so I resume home.

But, we're not done yet. Ahead is the Cumberland platea, which rises as high as 2400msl between me and home, and I'm still at 3000msl with the tail barely out of the crud. I may still have to turn back to the southwest towards a Huntsville area airport.

But, like magic, just as I need to turn back, I bust out into beautiful CAVU sunshine, and I climb to 4500 to cross the ridges, and land at Chattanooga.

I was whipped dead dog tired.

Never again.

I called Ray, my instructor, the next day, and was in the plane the following week starting my IR training.

Now, I am IR, and fly a plane with stormscope and full XM weather.

Never again.

That flight sucked. Glad I got it under control in the spiral, glad I had george to fly the plane while I watch him and worked the radios for weather. Bad bad bad.
Click to expand...

Geesh Bill:lightning: Don't recall you relating this before, or did I just miss it? Glad you're hear to tell us this story!

Best,

Dave
 
KennyFlys said:
Bill, those are just the kind of stories I want to share with students along with the line... "There not just stories in a magazine. They are real."

I wish I had been reading such stories before I got into my own trouble.
Click to expand...

Do a good job with your PP students, and be sure they are really good at the unusual attitude recovery under the hood exercises. I always did well at those, good thing.
 
kevin47881 said:
We planned on landing at Blacksburg, VA for the night. About 75 miles west the ceiling starts falling. For those not familiar with the area, there are a lot of big rocks to be concerned with. I continue on knowing, like Bill, what my outs are.

About 50 miles west things go to he** in a handbasket. My co-pilot, IR, and I discuss options. I tell him to contact center and request a pop up. He is confident we can make it in VFR even though night fall is upon us. We continue dancing around the clouds while I see the big rocks getting closer. At this point I'm soaked in sweat and convinced I should have made the 180 many miles ago. Scud running and mountains don't make a good combination.

We finally clear the last ridge....
Click to expand...

Wow, with the way the ridges run WSW to ENE, approaching from the west you'd have been over them for what must have felt like an eternity. Yikes. Glad you got the IR training, and good luck on the Checkride! Can't wait to read your report.
 
So, you're scud running at legal VFR minimums, 3 miles visibility in light precip. what is the biggest immediate danger in this view?

196384_fsx_chap-13_fig_03.jpg
 
Guess I should have posted over here.

Ah, not that exciting. A case of "get-home-itus" in failing light and misty rain coming out of Vegas class B, followed by a severe case of the leans. After 15 minutes minutes trying to get home in a constant 20-30 degree bank :rolleyes: I diverted to a nearby town navigating by VOR and DME, got a cheap room in a crappy casino with a hot tub, had a good time, and completed the trip next morning. Did I mention my girlfriend was in the plane with me? Could have turned out worse. Much worse. I was an idiot.
 
TangoWhiskey said:
So, you're scud running at legal VFR minimums, 3 miles visibility in light precip. what is the biggest immediate danger in this view?
Click to expand...

I know! I know! I know!

The chimley! There will be blinding a flash there when that other plane hits it!
 
Two incidents, and one hypothetical:
1) Being pretty trapped on Mackinac Island with a low overcast that didn't extend much beyond the borders of the island. Luckily, we had enough instrument-rated pilots with to pair one up with each plane and fly to a VFR airport, where we swapped back to our own planes.
2) Coming back from Gastons III, having to fly "low" (about 2000') from St. Louis to Peoria.
3) And hypothetically being on a decent at night to avoid some clouds discern able ahead, but not having a fast enough decent going and actually winding up in the cloud on the descent. The strobes reflecting back would have confirmed penetration, but the autopilot would have avoided any danger of the leans. :rolleyes:
 
So, you're scud running at legal VFR minimums, 3 miles visibility in light precip. what is the biggest immediate danger in this view?
Click to expand...
Well, if that's FS X, then I'd say the biggest danger is that the PC is about to lock up again.
-harry
 
TangoWhiskey said:
So, you're scud running at legal VFR minimums, 3 miles visibility in light precip. what is the biggest immediate danger in this view?
Click to expand...

That is great vis! What u talking 'bout bad vis willis? :D:D:D

I pretty much will file FR when the vis is below 5 miles. It is so darned hard to see planes when it is CAVU let alone when the vis is not great.
 
No flights have scared me into my current effort to earn my IR. I'm quite conservative in my weather go/no go decisions. That's why my wife finally realized that I need the IR. She agrees that we've skipped one too many flights across the state that could have been easily accomplished with an IR, but were a non-starter VFR. Good enough for me, got to keep my favorite navigator happy.
 
Right after my check ride, I moved to D.C for the summer. Eager to put my newly earned privileges to work, I checked out in a 172 out of Freeway, MD.

Having gotten my rating in California, I hadn't seen much bad weather, especially no widespread haze or TS. For the first half of the summer, the weather was surprisingly good and we had many good VFR days and lots of fun trips.

Toward the end of the summer, the haze got a lot worse. With about 80 hrs total time, I planned a trip to Niagara Falls. We took off into the typical 4 NM visibility with haze. Unfortunately, our trip was cut short by a very large line of TS that was between us and Buffalo. We were also flying a plane that was badly out of rig - instead of flying straight, it would go into a 20 degree bank within 20 seconds or so. Since we had a MX 20 and full ADS-B weather (the FAA has/had a contract with the FBO there that entailed putting ADS-B in all of their 172s), we knew about the TS long before we even got close. As we got close enough to worry about it, we went out of ADS-B range :rolleyes:

After landing at some airport in the middle of nowhere to wait out the storms, getting back into the plane turned out to be quite dangerous. All the rain had made the step very slippery and I suddenly found myself face down on the ground. It didn't knock me out, but it wasn't a pretty picture and I couldn't get up for 10 minutes.

The weather was now much better, but it was also completely dark. Niagara Falls was only 20 minutes away, so we decided to try it. Denny's had never tasted better after that flight.

I decided that I needed an instrument rating when our return flight was delayed for two days due to clouds. Sitting in Buffalo of all places when I could easily have been back in D.C. sealed the deal for me. Getting into clouds on the return flight at night in a badly rigged plane without autopilot helped, too...

-Felix
 
One of my IR students is an IR student because he scared the bejabbers out of himself last winter in northern indiana.

There is an arguement to increase the annual recurrency requirement - say an hour under the hood with CFI for VFRs w/o the rating......
 
My sole motivation to train IFR was the recollection of observations since about the age of 12, that it is not uncommon for weather predictions to be significantly wrong regardless of the source.
 
My flight instructor convinced me on getting an instrument rating with lesson #2 (although I was fairly convinced as it was). My 2nd entry in my log book is a 2.7 hr cross country with 1 hr of real IFR time in a Piper Comanche 180. I have an odd log book. :)

It was a Saturday, my first flight lesson. We'd gone up for a bit, and my instructor was introducing me to things and also understanding what exactly I knew and what I did not know. At the end of the lesson, I asked when we should schedule lesson 2. He said "What're you doing tomorrow?" The answer was driving from Williamsport to the Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT) to pick up my fiancee, who was flying up from Texas for the start of the school year. A 4 hour drive each way. Long day, but no big deal. His response: "Alright, let's fly there!" What an obvious solution! The weather for that day looked fairly rotten, though. Certainly not VFR weather. He volunteered to take his Comanche 180 instead of the 172, since the 172's transponder was broken.

While it was a very unconventional 2nd lesson, it was a great learning experience. We were flying in the clouds for a good portion of the trip there and back. Look out the window and all you see is - cloud! He taught me the basics of flying by the instruments, and trusting the instruments. I did all the flying (except the landings), and that made me a firm believer that an instrument rating is only a "nice to have" if all you ever plan on doing with your pilot's license is flying around locally on perfect days, right around lunch time. It was also a great chance to get my fiancee in one of these planes, and convince her pretty well that not only should I do this, but that we should buy a plane! :)

Another instance a few weeks later hammered it in further. I bought a truck in Connecticut, about 3 miles away from a local airport. A friend of mine (non-instrument rated) had generously agreed to fly me up there. The weather was good for the most part, but 3/4 of the way there the clouds got too low. We had to turn around and come back. Had we an instrument pilot, the trip wouldn't have been an issue.

Thankfully, I haven't been scared into it and I hope that I can prevent that through good judgement. I also have every intention to start work on my IR once I get my PPL, and I want to be as proficient as I can be and use it regularly once I have it.
 
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