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IFR hesitations

JDRhodes

Well Known Member
I?m wondering about the best way to build my IFR confidence back. I?ve been IFR rated for six or seven years and used to fly a Bonanza and Cirrus (and C-182) ? company owned and rented - fairly frequently for business trips. I?m a pretty decent IFR pilot, I think, in that I have the ability to fly on the gauges and shoot accurate approaches, etc.
About 4 years ago, I had a minor icing encounter while in the clouds in a Cirrus that kind of rattled me. The airplane struggled out of the cloud tops with a good bit of ice and would barely maintain altitude about 200 above the clouds.:eek:
Since then, I have just avoided any IFR operations ? subconsciously, really. I tend to schedule flying trips and then cancel them if the weather?s anything but good VFR in the forecast. I?ve driven a lot of trips where I?ve kicked myself for chickening out of flying because the weather turned out to be perfectly flyable for SE IFR.
I lack confidence in my ability to accurately interpret weather forecasts and evaluate the realistic risk ? be it T-storms in the summer or ice in the winter.
How do I get myself back to the point where I can feel good about my evaluation of the weather situation and make more ?GO? decisions?
 
Seems like a simple solution, to an outsider like me at least. Find a good II and go do a instrument competency flight (s) with him or her..........
 
Set some good personal rules and fly IFR

If the current and forecast freezing level is below the cloud bases don't flight plan through clouds in that area. If you are flying above the freezing level and are going to enter clouds - don't except in an emergency. I have almost never entered a cloud at a temperature lower than freezing and not accumulated ice. Ice in clouds tends to accumulate faster near the top for some reason. I had an experience similar to yours in a Piper Archer off the coast between Morro Bay and Monterey but it carried the ice well as I climbed out of the top and I chalked it up as a learning experience not to be repeated. We who fly and survive seem to accumulate a few of these. Thunderstorms - well just avoid them don't let some avionic box or controller tell you it is OK to go somewhere that your eyes tell you you shouldn't go.

Fly and fly IFR by yourself in VFR conditions to get the routine operations back in your talent box. You don't need anybody else to tell you you are getting things under control.

Bob Axsom
 
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It's really about flexibility...

Cross country in a small plane is more about flexibility in planning, destination, and time to get there rather than IFR vs VFR... I consider IFR as a tool to supplement VFR intentions if needed and go with the flow. With the speed and range of an RV (along with XM weather) you can navigate around most everything without much of an issue.
 
I lack confidence in my ability to accurately interpret weather forecasts and evaluate the realistic risk ? be it T-storms in the summer or ice in the winter.
How do I get myself back to the point where I can feel good about my evaluation of the weather situation and make more ?GO? decisions?

Not having my IFR ticket yet, I'll just throw this out there. Perhaps, as an exercise, you can regularly get the weather reports, make your assessment and then check PIREPs to see what really happened. Do that whether you go flying or not. And then, when you're wrong, spend some time to figure out why.

Cheers,
 
IFR confidence...

Maybe you are just more careful.

I have a friend who is a corporate pilot, and he will not fly a single engine in IFR at all. Personal choices.

For confidence, spend time with an instructor. Find someone you like and trust, and go fly. PPL friends who can fly with you under the hood are great too (I feed mine, and sometimes cost more than an instructor! :rolleyes:

After I crashed a plane, I spent a considerable amount of time with a CFI just to get back to where I was.

Dkb
 
Jeff, I think you might want to analyse your situation in one of two ways:

1. You lack the knowledge to make good weather decisions, or
2. You're afraid of flying in clouds.

If #1 is the case, the solution is straight forward, do some homework, get some instruction, etc. Preparedness is the cure for nervousness.

However, if it's #2 then you have to face the problem head on:

First, accept that the icing incident you described was not minor. You were in danger and could have crashed if conditions were a bit worse. You were barely in control of a bad situation which you allowed yourself to get into. Who wouldn't want to avoid such situations?

Second, find your present confort level (IMC-wise) and begin to push your comfort envelope. If you are only comfortable with only flying VMC, file and fly an IFR flight where you will be in totally safe IMC (such as well away from the freezing level) for a short period to time. An example of this would be an instrument recurrency flight when the weather is low enough to put you in the clouds where you know icing is not a problem. Taking an instructor might be a good idea.

Third, when you are comfortable doing this, step up to the next level, say a short cross country flight in the clouds. Work up in this type of step-by-step fashion until you are comfortable flying IMC at the proper level for your experience and desires.

All that said, don't worry about making the wrong IFR No-Go decisions. What you need to worry about is making the wrong IFR Go decisions. Those are the significant mistakes. Everyone who has been in the flying business has been fooled by the weather. The trick is to be on the ground when you realize that you've goofed. It's no fun to be airborne.

BTW, I believe that I've flown inside every kind of cloud except a tornado, although I did nearly hit a water spout once. I write that just to say that there is nothing inside a cloud that I miss. I'm very happy to keep my IMC time to the absolute minimum. Flying IFR is work. Flying VFR is fun.

After all, you must be doing something right. You're still alive and kicking.

-John Banister
 
Thanks

Thanks for a helpful question and thread. Though I didn't stop flying IFR because of a bad experience, I've been struggling to make myself do the instrument proficiency check and get those skills back. These are helpful insights.
 
Inside the Sky

I would recommend you read William Langewiesche's "Inside the Sky - A Meditation on Flight", especially chapter 5 "Inside an Angry Sky" in which he takes less experienced pilots on trips looking for the worst weather they can find. This may be more worthwhile than just taking some recurrency training with an instrument instructor. Find someone that has flown LOTS of bad weather to show you where the edges are between the possible and not possible.
 
My Solution

I found a local pal who is an 80 year old ex AA pilot who flies a Debonair... I try to find excuses to fly with him a lot in IFR conditions... he swears that I'm fine and don't need a babysitter, but my confidence soars when I have an experienced co-pilot... the two heads is always better than one perspective...

I find that taking trips with him does more to build my confidence in single engine IFR and myself than IPCs with a flight instructor, although I do those too.

This time of year, in the southeast, we get a lot of warm fronts that come with layered stratus, which is a great practice environment...

best of luck.
 
Well it is like anything, if you don't use it you lose it.

As said above, you need to do some with experienced folk for a bit. I do not think you have to do renewals like we do here, but maybe you should self impose a CIR renewal every year with a testing guy. Keeps you on your toes.

As for reading weather....FIX THIS>ASAP. This needs to be learned. I struggled for a while until the IR instructor I had started to break the wx up into each segment and sketched it on a rough hand drawn map. All of a sudden I knew what was applicable to me and what was not.

Last weekend I did a trip that was cloud and moderate to heavy rain, Takeoff and into the soup at 300' with a Vis of just over a mile and a quarter. Flew the RNAV approach (no LOC or ILS at most fields in Oz) and ran along at the minima to the MAP, saw the runway with seconds to spare.

Was this hard work? You betcha....but can you do it? Sure, but be current. we have pretty heavy recency requirements too, so maybe impose these on yourself for a while until you are back in the groove.

My favourite saying is .....Be a LIVE Chicken, not a DEAD Hero. :)
 
There have a been a LOT of great suggestions here.

The one I would think might be very appropriate in your case Jeff is to plan a flight every single day - make it part of your morning routine. Look at the weather, decide if it is Go/NoGo, then don't actually fly it...just watch the weather reports to see how ell they match the forecasts,and see if your Go/NoGo was the right decision. Concentrate on the two big "killer" items that you mentioned - ice and thunderstorms. You can check Pireps (sketchy)/temperatures aloft/precip to see how the icing turned out and NEXRAD to see if you got it right on the T-storms.

You don't learn to read weather instantly. You don't learn it from a book. And you won't learn it in a few hours of instruction, whether it be in a classroom or in a cockpit doing an Instrument Proficiency check. You have to apply yourself to the study of the atmosphere, and it takes time. And...you'll be surprised how many times you still get surprised throughout your life. But it will come if you want it to.

It sounds like you are being a little conservative, and that's the right side of the "error line" to be on...but see if you can move the line a little to give you more flexibility.

Paul
 
There have a been a LOT of great suggestions here.

The one I would think might be very appropriate in your case Jeff is to plan a flight every single day - make it part of your morning routine. Look at the weather, decide if it is Go/NoGo, then don't actually fly it...just watch the weather reports to see how ell they match the forecasts,and see if your Go/NoGo was the right decision.


Paul

I would add that it would be helpful to keep a diary of these exercises so you can try and notice any patterns. If you're having trouble with one particular type of weather, this might help to point it out. If nothing else, it could help to give you confidence when you can look back and see that "hey, I'm right 90% of the time, and the other 10% I was just too cautious".
 
Paul

I often do something similar to this, on my iPhone, look at the area forecast while at the traffic lights say (yes I know a bit naughty :rolleyes:) and look at the sky.

I never really thought of it as a formal exercise.........but yet again, you are on the money with a great suggestion.

On the strength of that we will renew your VAF contributors contract for another year. Keep up the good work.
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There have a been a LOT of great suggestions here.

The one I would think might be very appropriate in your case Jeff is to plan a flight every single day - make it part of your morning routine. Look at the weather, decide if it is Go/NoGo, then don't actually fly it...just watch the weather reports to see how ell they match the forecasts,and see if your Go/NoGo was the right decision. Concentrate on the two big "killer" items that you mentioned - ice and thunderstorms. You can check Pireps (sketchy)/temperatures aloft/precip to see how the icing turned out and NEXRAD to see if you got it right on the T-storms.

This is exactly the trick they taught us in the military - and I still use to this day. Be sure to take your practice-plan just as serious as you would an honest, real flight's plan.
 
www.faasafety.gov

www.faasafety.gov

You find a very good training course on this web.
It is a fantastic lesson to understand where you find ice and how to avoid it.

I fly for a living and that knowledge helps me every day.

Really great inside on this threat. Stay conservative and listen to those great advises I have just read here. Keep talking to other pilots about there experience and share yours, even if it was a bad one. You will learn a lot.

I still learn, just by reading this threat though I been doing it for 15 years. You never stop learning because no weather is ever the same.
 
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