I do use this practice in benign IMC conditions. Because the compass is a
very important instrument under these conditions, doing partial panel in
IMC allows you to use the compass in a much more realistic manner. Under
the hood it is almost impossible to use the compass without seeing the
outside. However, a real vaccuum failure in IMC is an emergency, so one
must exercise good judgement in simulating this emergency. I don't do
this if it is bumpy in the clouds. Also, I inform ATC and request a block
altitude and a clearance to do some maneuvering. That way even if I get
off course or lose altitude no one is going to get upset.




Roy Smith wrote in
:

"Brad Z" wrote:
Out of curiousity, do any of you conduct partial panel training in
actual instrument conditions? When I did my training, my instructor
elected not to cover instruments in the soup. Do you do this? Why
or why not?

I think it's a bad idea. It's one thing to practice partial-panel
unusual attitude recoveries, it's another thing to trust your life to
being able to do one for real in IMC (especially considering that in
most planes, the person sitting in the right seat can barely see the
TC).

Even if you recovered fine, you'd probably still have a clearance bust
to explain away.

What would you do if your TC died on you? Without the DG and AI for
cross-check, by the time you figured out something was wrong, it could
well be too late to recover.