"one-week" Instrument Training?

[Rod S]

In the next few months, I may have a couple of weeks I could dedicate
to earning my instrument rating. I am a PP-SEL with about 100 hours,
and my BFR is due in November. Since I'm committed to keeping my
ticket, and the instrument rating would meet the BFR requirement, I'm
considering one of the "one-week" training programs you see in the
flying mags. Does anyone have any experience with them, good or bad?

[Patrick Mayer]

Hi,

I didn't do it in one week, but in 10 days. Did all of the studying before
that and took the written on the morning of Day 1. If you've got all days
and a good CFI, it's doable.

The only thing to think about is: are you able to keep up with your rating?
If you do the IR in 10 days, you really have to keep flying and practising
IFR flying, or your skills will fade pretty fast. I started flying IFR right
after the rating with relatively high personal weather limits which I
lowered with growing confidence. After a long time without flying in the
soup, I'd never fly under minimum conditions - single pilot IFR is just too
dangerous to do it half-confident (well, all flying is, I guess ;-))

But do get the rating! It'll add a lot to your flying skills, you'll love
it!

Happy flying,
Patrick

[Michelle P]

Rod,
I would wait for at least a hundred or more hours before going for your
Instrument rating. You need time to get comfortable with the aircraft
and more ability to tell if it is you or the airplane that is
mis-behaving. Stick with one airplane and get very comfortable with it.
Take your Instrument training in that airplane.

A one week training course is a cram course to pass a test. In my
opinion you will learn little other than how to pass the test. This
makes you less safe once you have the rating than if you take you time
to understand what is going on at each phase of flight. Take you time,
you will retain more in the long run and will be safer after the initial
rating.

Michelle

Rod S wrote:

>In the next few months, I may have a couple of weeks I could dedicate
>to earning my instrument rating. I am a PP-SEL with about 100 hours,
>and my BFR is due in November. Since I'm committed to keeping my
>ticket, and the instrument rating would meet the BFR requirement, I'm
>considering one of the "one-week" training programs you see in the
>flying mags. Does anyone have any experience with them, good or bad?
>
>
>

--

Michelle P ATP-ASEL, CP-AMEL, and AMT-A&P

"Elisabeth" a Maule M-7-235B (no two are alike)

Volunteer Pilot, Angel Flight Mid-Atlantic

Volunteer Builder, Habitat for Humanity

[Ben Jackson]

In article >,
Rod S > wrote:
>and my BFR is due in November. Since I'm committed to keeping my
>ticket, and the instrument rating would meet the BFR requirement,

Most instructors would sign you off for a BFR without much additional
work if you were already working on your instrument rating.

You could also complete a phase of Wings -- I did that and forgot it
counted as a BFR!

--
Ben Jackson
>
http://www.ben.com/

How much PIC cross country time do you have? How much simulated instrument?

You need 50 hours PIC cross country time to get an instrument rating, most
100 hour pilots do not have anywhere close to this. Note PIC, your dual cross
countries while working on your private do not count, but your solo ones do.
The 7 day courses I've seen require you to have the 50 hours CC as a
prerequisite.

You also need 40 hours hood time, of which most people have about 3 when they
are at 100 hours.

I would agree with others, you should wait till you have around 200 hours, at 100
hours you're really still learning how to just fly the airplane. Over the next
100 hours, make 50 of them cross country, and bring along a pilot so you can
chip away at the 40 hours hood time. You'll get a lot of hood time when you
work on your instrument, but doing 40 all at once is going to be hard.



Rod S > wrote:
> In the next few months, I may have a couple of weeks I could dedicate
> to earning my instrument rating. I am a PP-SEL with about 100 hours,
> and my BFR is due in November. Since I'm committed to keeping my
> ticket, and the instrument rating would meet the BFR requirement, I'm
> considering one of the "one-week" training programs you see in the
> flying mags. Does anyone have any experience with them, good or bad?
>

[kontiki]

As others have stated, unless you have most of the 50 hours of X-country
time nailed down I think it would be next to impossible to complete an
instrument rating in a week. I did most of my 50 hour X-country requirement
over several months flying "under the hood" also so as to combine the
hood time and X-country time simultaneously. During most of these flights
we actually filed IFR and so also had the experience of interacting with
ATC which is a big part of the equation.

I think it'e very possible to do an Instrument rating course in a week,
but only if you have the 50 hours X-country time pretty much finished
and have done all of the studying and are ready to pass the witten exam
(if you have not already done it). Then you can totally dedicate that week
to flying approaches and hood time and preparing for the check ride.

[Mike Rapoport]

I didn't do an accelerated course but I got the IR with about 120TT. If the
accelerated method works best with your schedule then by all means do it.
I doubt that motor skills deteriorate any faster if they are aquired quickly
than if they are aquired slowly The best way to learn anything seem to be
total immersion. You should plan on flyng a lot of actual or simulated
instrument time in the 6 months after the checkride. .

Mike
MU-2

"Rod S" > wrote in message
...
> In the next few months, I may have a couple of weeks I could dedicate
> to earning my instrument rating. I am a PP-SEL with about 100 hours,
> and my BFR is due in November. Since I'm committed to keeping my
> ticket, and the instrument rating would meet the BFR requirement, I'm
> considering one of the "one-week" training programs you see in the
> flying mags. Does anyone have any experience with them, good or bad?
>

[Just go look it up!]

On Mon, 23 Aug 2004 18:52:35 GMT, kontiki >
wrote:

>As others have stated, unless you have most of the 50 hours of X-country
>time nailed down I think it would be next to impossible to complete an
>instrument rating in a week. I did most of my 50 hour X-country requirement
>over several months flying "under the hood" also so as to combine the
>hood time and X-country time simultaneously. During most of these flights
>we actually filed IFR and so also had the experience of interacting with
>ATC which is a big part of the equation.

I thought most of the places that do the 10 day IFR courses are part
141 and thus are exempt from the x-c requirement?