On Feb 12, 10:38 am, Mxsmanic wrote:
chris writes:
I would think there's more to it than that.. Just curious, what
exactly do you consider instrument flying??

To me, instrument flight is flight that depends exclusively upon instruments
as the final authority for navigation and determining the aircraft's attitude,
heading, altitude, and so on.

I distinguish this from instrument conditions (IMC), which I consider to be
flight conditions that make any form of flight other than instrument flight
unsafe.

I wonder if there may be a whole lot of stuff you maybe aren't aware
of because you are self-taught.. If so, you would need to learn that
stuff first...

I doubt it. I read the same stuff that people in formal training read.
There's always the question of flight instruction, but the more I read about
flight instructors, the more wary I am of their alleged utility in training
pilots. While some may be very good, it sounds like the majority are rather
mediocre.


I can't do anything other than speculate about IFR flying, as I know
next to nothing about it. So I will refrain from making any further
comments that are little more than guesses..
As for flight instructors, I know a number personally. I think you
might be getting a bad impression because people only write about
instructors when they are bad!!! Of the instructors I know, many are
pretty good, several are excellent, and a couple are bloody legends!!
I don't think I actually know an instructor I would class as
mediocre. For them to get to the stage of being able to instruct, the
training they go through is pretty damn rigorous, and they are
expected to uphold a pretty high standard.

Or maybe it's just our aero club that has all the good instructors??

You still need to get off the ground, and to get the basic license to
let you do that you need to learn how to fly VFR...

Only because that is a legal requirement.

Nahh... You still gotta fly the aeroplane!!! And land it, and stuff
like that...



As I remember, as I was doing my scan, I'd come back to the AH for
instance, and it would be different to how it was a few seconds ago,
and I sure didn't feel the plane move. Then you roll level and you'd
start to lean to one side, and so on...

But was it psychologically difficult to resist the sensations you felt
physically and force yourself to use the instruments, or were the sensations
just an unwanted distraction?

Yeah, it's unbelievably hard to trust the instruments when you are
leaning at 60 degress to the right but the plane aint!!


Pilots who begin real flight training after using a sim are often at a
disadvantage because they learn to look inside the cockpit
excessively.

That's understandable. But pilots who have only known VFR for years would be
at a disadvantage when learning instruments because they look _outside_ the
cockpit excessively, and they depend too much on physical sensations.

I have no idea if that is true or not..

A vfr pilot can tell what the plane is doing without
looking at instruments, by seeing, feeling and hearing.

Yes. But a big problem arises when those sensations become unreliable. And
in fact, they are all unreliable, anyway, except when reinforced by vision. A
pilot may think that he can fly based on sensation, but he can test that very
easily by flying with his eyes shut for a while, and then opening them and
seeing how far off he is from where he thought he would be.


Yeah, we know they are unreliable.. Vision is very important...


We sometimes
fly with all instruments covered up.. Much easier than you would
think, once you get used to looking outside and listening..

I'd consider VFR trivially easy compared to IFR.

There is no way to know unless you were to do it, so I won't tell you
I think it isn't, because then it would just be my word against yours,
so I will just shut up now...


Me too.. Smooth takeoffs, rate 1 turns and nice landings with great
scenery.. Which this country is famous for!

A good flight is one in which the passengers can watch the world go by as if
it were a movie. If they mention sensations after landing, it was too rough.

No argument there..