On Friday, November 6, 2015 at 2:06:31 PM UTC-5, george wrote:
On 11/7/2015 4:41 AM, Larry Dighera wrote:


Flying in IMC is a great exercise of the brain.


I once wrote in 1998:

"For me, IFR flight is a lot like playing a game of Chess in the
blind while juggling three balls in the air and maintaining a
running conversation at a noisy cocktail party. You have to
mentally visualize the position of the "pieces" on the "board,"
continually monitor and interpret a myriad of arcane instruments
and make corrections to keep the airplane shinny side up, all
while constantly attempting to pick out the ATC communiques
intended for you from the rest of the "guests'" conversations. To
this add the _stress_ of the consequences of losing the game
(death). (Of course, this analogy fails to consider weather,
turbulence, flight planning, interpreting charts and plates,
tuning radios and OBS settings, equipment failures, ....)

Single-pilot IFR aircraft operation in the ATC system in IMC
without the benefit of Global Positioning Satellite receiver,
auto-pilot, and Active Noise Reduction headset, is probably one of
the most demanding things you will ever do."

Good summation.

With the cockpits of today a lot of the small parts are taken away.

But it still demands a high level of discipline

I would only add to what Larry has already said that once a pilot has developed a good instrument scan what actually happens while scanning is that the flying of the aircraft as that relates to subtle corrections actually takes place BETWEEN the time the eye scans the instrument and is in route to the next instrument in the cross check.
In other words, you see what the instrument is asking you to do as you scan it then as you move to the next instrument in your scan you DO what that last instrument told you needed to be done.
So on and so on as your never ending scan progresses.
It takes time and even more importantly CURRENCY to maintain competent scan proficiency.
I liken it very much to a major league baseball hitter reading the stitches on a fastball. Leave the venue for a while and you start losing your ability to read that fastball.
For this exact reason I always encourage pilots with instrument ratings to USE THE RATING !!!!!!!!

Dudley Henriques