wrote:
Not all of IFR flying is about the little fiddly bits. It takes a very
short period of time to learn to do all the approaches into your home
airport. My partner and I averaged 3 approaches a day during the
course, and found that just getting the airplane from point A to point B
requires some thought as well.

Good point. Witness the recent thread about the guy who's handoff to
Potomac Approach got refused. A lot of people on this group were acting
like being asked to "say intentions" when their flight-planned route turned
out to be unavailable was a major crisis.

Tooling around at 120 kts and 3000 AGL from one approach to another doesn't
involve much in the way of descent planning. Being at 8000 AGL (or more)
in a 180 kt airplane means if you're not thinking about the descent when
you're 50 miles out from your destination, you're already behind the
airplane.

Two hours of flying local approaches with 4 or 5 hours of fuel when you
took off doesn't make you think about performance much. Flying legs near
the endurance limit of the airplane (maybe to destinations where no fuel is
available) forces you to actually pay attention to power settings and
leaning and stuff like that, not to mention having to make real decisions
about accepting holds and reroutes.