Wet ticket personal minima

Friends,
I've got a 1 week old instrument ticket. I can fly approaches to minimums to the satisfaction of the FAA. I must continue to be able to do that, however, I don't want to PLAN to do that at this point in my flying career. So I'm looking for some feedback on my list of personal minimums that I will only revise after experience and while sitting on the couch.

? 2000 ft ceilings
? 3 mile vis
? No flight through yellow or red radar returns
? No flight with sustained surface winds above 15 knots
? No flight with freezing level at or below MEA
? Must have a VFR alternate
? No circling approaches

In the hopes of gaining some of that experience, I went up today with another instrument rated pilot and flew in 700ft ceilings and 3 mile vis. We shot a couple of ILSes and had a great time.

Anyway, I'm trying to cover my bases with my list and I'm comfortable with this level of risk. Perhaps there are other factors for which I'm not accounting? I know that each flight is unique with an infinite number of variables, but anything major I'm forgetting?

Kevin:

Excellent plan to have personal minima; especially if you're not flying IFR full time.

The only nitpicky thing I might comment upon is the "2000-3" coupled with "No Circling Approaches"... I would commend no circling approaches at circling minima for low-time IFR pilots but "2000-3" is VFR. Again, however, you are to be commended for thinking about personal limits based on your experience.

John

PS I may be a little biased... Circling approaches were a way of life in the "Frozen North"... (;>0)

I know that seems quite high. I'm taking the advice of my DPE. His words were, "File for the clouds. Wait a while for the approaches."

To be clear, that list is meant to be changeable as my experience grows.

WRT circling approaches, realize that many GPS only uncontrolled airports have one runway and only one GPS approach to one end. To get to the other end if the winds are appropriate, you have to do a circling approach. My go/nogo as a low time no-hard IFR guy is being able to break to the circling approach by using that airports standard VFR pattern attitude numbers etc with the runway insight all the times to the other end, not the circling mins.

Kevin

If you have not already, I would recommend reading Weather Flying by Robert Buck.

He talks at length about the ways to take small steps to gain experience.

While the book is dated in regards to technology, the basic tenets are still valid. I have read it multiple times in my growth as an instrument pilot. The farther I go, the more relevant his words become.

Congrats on getting your instrument rating, Kevin - quite an accomplishment!! I also commend you on attacking this systematically and safely. I, too, don't quite understand the 2000/3 especially with VFR alternate being on your list, but it's your list. I love instrument flying and do quite a bit. Being from Litiz (I'm originally from Hershey), I imagine you got some actual during training. What I try to pass on is that there is not a foggle, hood, etc that I cannot cheat; that simulated and actual are worlds apart. I recently flew right seat (work plane not RV) with a newly minted IFR pilot on a 200' ILS - vis was good at 5000 RVR. He was so torqued after landing it was awesome to see. He also stated how nervous he was and he knows he is not ready for that solo. I was so glad that I could help to give him that experience. I encourage you to continue to get out, as you stated you just did, with a more experienced pilot and search for conditions to shoot low approaches - isolated crud with plenty of fuel and better weather close by. Eventually your nerves don't get the best of you the lower you get and a 200' ILS becomes the same as a 700' - especially if you're flying a personal plane that you're intimately familiar with. Congrats!

rzbill said:

If you have not already, I would recommend reading Weather Flying by Robert Buck.

He talks at length about the ways to take small steps to gain experience.

Click to expand...

Yep, love that book. I'm on Step 1 of his personal minimums (flying good to good). That's why I gave myself the 2000' ceiling to start. Essentially, at this point, I'm looking to depart with good ceilings, penetrate a layer, cruise on top, descend through a layer, and land VFR. I'll fly the whole approach, but I want that out!

Bob Buck

His final book was North Star Over my Shoulder, in my opinion his best. His first instrument experience was to climb up into the clouds with the Pitcairn Mailwing with just a turn and bank and a compass and fly cross country from Newark area to improving weather to the northeast.
For those who cannot get enough of Bucks writing, Air Facts magazine has dozens of articles by him as well as articles by Leighton Collins about flights with Buck.

Congratulations.
As a few others have mentioned, it seems very conservative to rule out circling in good vfr (2000' and 3, your numbers) and DAY. Circling at night, well some airlines don't allow their ATPs to do that.
My other comment is to try to fly with an experienced ifr pilot when it's down to 1/2 mile, and night. It's nothing like 1+ miles and day.

Congrats on the new ticket! That's probably the hardest one, and a great accomplishment.

One important point is to specify what you mean by personal minimums. It's great to have numbers like this for making the go/no-go decision, but when actually in the air, things change. You will need to decide en route if the metar is reading lower than the forecast whether you are going to go ahead and shoot the published approach to published minimums, or if you are going to go directly to better weather, and what those numbers are. Personally, I have different personal minimums depending on the time of day, my personal condition, the plane I will be flying and who I will be flying with. There are some other pilots who I fly well with and we trust each other and my minimums are much lower with him (them). In my RV-6A with dual Skyview screens with an IFR GPS and full auto pilot my solo minimums are much lower than a less familiar plane with a more dated panel and less capable (or no) auto pilot.

another issue is what happens when you actually get on an approach, do you go ahead and fly to the published minimums, or do you go missed at a higher-than-published number. Personally, this somewhat depends on the plane I am in and who I am with, but that is a decision that should be made ahead of time.

I have shot a lot of approaches in actual, both solo, single pilot, and dual pilot. I use what I think is good cockpit resource management and brief my passenger on what I am going to be doing, what they need to be doing and ask them to hold something and/or read me something when I ask for it (hold the iPad, read my step down altitudes, etc). I also walk myself through the approach at least once or twice before I need to so I am familiar with it (especially when landing away from my home airport). I also talk myself through the published missed approach. All that said, once I am on the approach, I am going to stay on it to non-precision minimums at least, and to precision minimums (if applicable) if I am in a familiar plane with a good auto pilot or second pilot.

If I break out and have the airport in sight, I do what I can to land unless it's a temporary break-out (low broken layer). If that means circling, I circle. If it means landing long (on a long runway), I land long.

Again, the go/no-go decision, IMHO, is the most important one. I have missed parties, meetings, schedules plenty of times because it just didn't feel right. It's much easier to get a hotel room (or impose on a friend) for an extra night than to risk a late flight in bad weather when you are tired, for example. If you add to the mix that, "when there's time to spare, go by air", and expect delays and accept them when it just doesn't feel right, that will make you a safer pilot. My wife will forgive me for missing one of the kids' birthday parties if that means there's a better chance of me making it home in one piece a little later.

One other thing I will add is that it's good to have someone else you trust who you can call or talk to and get his take on the weather forecast. For me, this is my most trusted second pilot.

A final note, don't call your wife and say, "pray for me, the weather isn't looking very good!" She will be praying for you anyway, but she will be worrying if you say the weather is bad.