Jay Honeck must get an instrument rating

Jay Honeck wrote:
3. Instrument Flying Sucks. This is something I've rarely seen
discussed here (maybe never?), but instrument flying is one of the most
boring things I've done.

I just have to comment on this. I think most VFR flying is incredibly
boring. In the clouds? I love it. I love having to pay attention
every second. I love talking to ATC. Call me strange, but I don't
think it's boring at all.

Well, okay -- "boring" may be the wrong term for instrument flight.
How about "long periods of monotony (hopefully) broken by short periods
of fulfillment"?

;-)
Well I will have to disagree with the boring and monotonous at least in
a single engine aircraft such as yours. In a properly equipped
instrument aircraft cerified for known icing then yes it is boring and
monotonous. In your aircraft if you are going to go into the clouds it
probably should not be for more than 30 minutes in most cases and most
of the time 10 minutes would probably be the max. There are exceptions
but the possiblity of icing simply restricts most single engine
aircraft to limited amount of IMC. Like take off and climb throught the
fog to VMC or flying on top to your destination to shoot an approach
through the cloud layer to a landing.

The biggest down side to the Instrument rating is that you need to
spend about 30 or 40 minutes a month to shoot a couple approaches to
keep current so that you can fly IMC for 5 minutes to get out of the
airport you are fogged into. On the other handing knowing a good
instrument rated pilot that you can have fly in and fly your airplane
out is much more economical. I have seen airplanes parked at the
airport for over 2 weeks while the pilot waited for a low fog layer to
burn off and watch the IFR pilots leave and arrive at will.

Brian
CFIIG/ASEL