VFR pilots taking off into IMC??

[rv8ch]

It's not just IMC that can get you - severe clear at night over sparsely
lit terrain has caused many spatial disorientation crashes, even in airliners. Throw in a bit of water and it can get worse. The Gulf Air 072 crash in
Bahrain in 2000 is but one example.

http://www.iasa.com.au/folders/Safet...rs/helpout.htm

[f1rocket]

That's a great point Mickey. My first experience with this phenomenon took me by surprise and scared the bejabbers out of me. I was taking my Long-EZ to Oshkosh (because that's what they called it back then) and I wanted to arrive over Ripon right at 7:00 AM. So I left Indy at 5:00 AM in the morning. Everything started out great until I got out over the countryside and the horizon of lights disappeared. The Long-EZ did not have a very effective aileron trim so the airplane would continually fall off to the left or the right. I had to fight to keep the canard level for about 45 minutes until the sun started to rise. I learned a very important lesson that day.

[gmcjetpilot]

To stay on point: VFR pilots taking off into IMC? It's a real bad idea; airplanes can kill you. How to protect your self: Training, skill, experience, currency, knowledge, operation within the regulations/operating limitations/ personal limitations and Judgment.

The last item, judgment, is hard to teach, the other parameters help form good decision-making but can't completely compensate for judgment. Good or bad judgment is not exclusively related to pilot time.

Yes, a VFR rated pilot taking off into IMC, who has developed a good instrument scan and is current might survive. Also a rusty, not current IFR pilot might not fair so well. It is a moot point, both are un-safe and illegal. However an IFR rating is a great rating. Your chance of survival from an inadvertent IMC encounter is better if you have more experience and training. Yes, you get rusty, but if you really have developed a good scan (cross check, interpret, control) from say 100 hours of IMC you will have more skill and control than a typical VFR pilot, who may have 1-5 hours total VFR "hood" time years ago. BTW, hood time and real IMC is different, there is no cheating in solid IMC. An IFR rating will make you a better pilot overall.

True Story: My first real IFR flight, post instrument check ride, I took off right into IMC after rotation. It was interesting. Even though I was current, well trained and a good amount of actual IMC time, I experienced "the leans" almost immediately. I trusted my instruments and climbed out without any problem. That was a real eye opener.

True Story two: Two friends, both VFR rated, who co-owned a Piper Colt. It was a nice clean plane and had a VFR panel with a T&B. One needed a BFR (now just called flight review). I have CFI ratings and on occasion do BFR's/Inst comp checks for friends. He was a good stick, glider pilot and wanted to do some instrument training on his BFR, so I obliged him. After getting the required T&G's and air-work out of the way, I gave him 2 hours under the hood. I would normally not train a pilot much more than an hour at a time, to avoid fatiguing them too much, especially early in the game. (If your CFI exhausts you, you are wasting your time and money. More short sessions are better than marathons. This applies to student pilots or private pilots starting inst training.) However he was a natural and flew "partial panel" very well. We did every maneuver in the book and covered all the basic inst skills (we could with needle-ball-airspeed), errors, unusual attitudes, wet compass lead/lag, VOR navigation. We did not do approach procedures but did talk "him down" on some simulated GCR/ASR approaches. It was night over sparsely populated areas, so this helped make the training closer to real IMC. The kicker, a few months later my two Colt friends told me of how they flew into solid IMC over the Cascade Mountains! The cloud layer they were over-flying climbed and closed in faster than they could climb. After entering IMC, they initially lost some control. They recovered and he got it straight and level. After getting their wits, they started a 180-timed turn, in IMC. Several minutes they flew out of it. The other pilot called out heading after rolling out, and they made short timed turns to get to the desired 180 heading. Having the other pilot call out heading helped the other concentrate on flying the plane and not having to move his head. I taught him not to move his head too much. Figuring out your heading with a wet compass in a turn is almost impossible. The trick is to estimate the change of heading, do timed turns (3deg/sec) and roll out level, wait, than check. Like the RV, the Piper Colt/Pacer is not a real stable plane. RV?s have near neutral roll stability and will build speed up REAL fast in an unusual attitude. After they told me the whole story, they thanked me for saving their lives. Well I was both happy it turned out well and pissed they got into the spot in the first place. In this case a little training, calm recovery and control of the plane saved their lives. The outcome could have not been so good. They were lucky. Cheers George

[hngrflyr]

Getting somewhat competent at needle, ball and airspeed can save your bacon someday. About 30 years ago, I came out of a three or four minute incident a **** of lot smarter than I had been about 5 minutes before. I can't overstate the difficulty of overcoming the panic that's trying take away your ability to think and fly the airplane, when you know if you don't perform you're going to die. I had been doing spins in the airplane and had removed the gyros so I would'nt break them. The electric turn and bank was still in the plane and working. That's all the gory details I'll give here, but a lesson was learned I've never forgotten.

[atreff]

The 178 seconds to live article is an eye opener. My CFII spoke about that article a ton while we were motoring around for my 40 hours under the hood.

All good points in this thread. There are two issues at play for rated and non-rated instrument pilots venturing into IMC:

1)Hand/eye coordination and instrument interpretation skills.

The first can kill me if my skills are not up to snuff. I'll get behind, my scan can break down, I might miss something like engine gages, or miss a radio call. This is the first area where a VFR-only pilot can get into trouble. His/her scan is not tuned up, nor are the hands coordinated with what the eye is seeing. I remember my first attempts to fly under the hood: I was all over the sky, I was hyperventilating and overcontrolling. I did get it, eventually but the effort to keep it upright and navigate was very large. Once a pilot 'gets it', flying by the gages becomes as natural as flying is. This can (and does) get rusty, so profiency is key. Based on my performance during the first 5 hours of instrument instruction, makes me realize that if I had wandered into IMC before I had my instrument rating, I would have had a very difficult time keeping it upright AND navigating at the same time.

2)Spatial disorientation
This bad boy can trap any pilot any time, Inst rated or not. My Dad called it having "The Leans". I caught the leans three times. The first was during my first 100 hrs as a pilot. It was night, I was heading towards land over a dark ocean. It was CAVU. The lights on the shore were a brilliant line. All of a sudden, I blinked and they were travelling sideways. I did not have the feeling of leaning, the ship was straight and level, the shore was straight and level, but each time I blinked, the lights on the shore appeard to be travelling laterally to the side. My pulse raced, I sweated, but talked myself thru it. The second time I got the leans was during hood time with my inst instructor. I told him I had vertigo and he said, "Keep scanning, keep flying." It was hard, I complained, told him I felt sick, etc, but he never took the controls to allow me a reprieve, his theory was right on: Train the way you fly. I always fly alone, so fly myself out of it. The third time was in IMC, daytime. I was being vectored by approach control for the ILS. It was a bumpy ride due to mountainous terrain nearby, and for a split second during a long std rate turn to the left, I looked out the pilot's side window and spotted the ground thru a hole. When I looked forward into the milky white out the windshield, then back to the insts, it hit me Bam! The instruments said I was turning and getting tighter, by my mind said, "No way! You're level!. Keep it level or you'll die!" The nausea was overwhelming, I had an instant cold sweat and my heart rate went thru the roof. It took a herculean effort to believe the gages and roll level. I remember I shouted something out loud and forced myself to believe my attitude indicator. The Leans (or Vertigo) did not leave me instantly. Rather, it depleted slowly over time. By the time I was on the ILS, it was all gone. Until you've gone thru it, it's hard to describe. I've done tons of upset recovery and unusual attitude training, but I have never had vertigo in the process, in other words, the instruments always make sense to me, so I found it easy to right the ship. But with The Leans, the pilot must force himself to believe the gages or die.

I guess what I'm saying is there are two dark corners that will trick a VFR only pilot: knowing how to stay on the gages cold, and recognizing vertigo at it's onset and knowing how to escape it's grip (which, or course brings us back to Skill 1: knowing how to stay on the gages.)

So, heck yes, to be safe, train under the hood with a safety pilot. Not just for a few minutes 'till you're tired, but a 3 hour flight will all the radio calls, climbs and descents. And do it more than once. Or, you could do the same thing, the only exception is the safety pilot is a CFII and s/he signs your logbook, throw in some studying and a test. Bingo: you're IFR certified. Then you're legal to fly when all your mates are grounded by an overcast. You'll arrive to SnF or OSH days ahead of them.....

BTW, I forgot to mention: your insurance rates will go down.
Oh, and one more thing, achieving my instrument rating is way up there on the list of 'highs' in my life. But it isn't a one time deal: It gets repeated every flight I use it to get me from here to there. Staying safe and flying myself in weather to a destination give me a deep sense of satisfaction. Just like flying the perfect formation or the perfect loop or aileron roll.

Art

[szicree]

My eyebrows are at my hairline! The amount of hood time required for the private is absolutely minimal, and nowhere near enough to produce the instinctive, ingrained response you want in IMC. I'm strictly VFR and spend all my time in a decathlon these days. This aircraft has no gyros at all so my familiarity with them has faded considerably. I am CERTAIN that I would ball up a gyro equipped spam can in short order if I got into hard IMC. My personal rule for flying the decath is don't go unless the chance of encountering IMC is ZERO. I'd hate to think that having gyros would make me relax this rule.

Incidently, on the issue of simulators: A neighbor recently asked me to take him up for some acro. I explained to him that motion sickness and fear sometimes get in the way of the fun, but he insisted that he was a regular Tom Cruise on the PC flight simulator. Well, long story short, Maverick barfed.

Modern flight simulators are amazing at what they do, but they don't yet simulate the physical sensations (or lack thereof) and the brain freeze that a good dose of terror can cause.

[atreff]

Good observation, Szicree. Simulators are great training tools, but nothing prepares you for rockin and rollin in IMC, nor the fear that creeps into the picture at times.

I'm a staunch advocate of pilots getting their IFR ticket, especially for faster planes like RV's. Our planes can fly 200mph for over 3 hours. In traversing 600 miles, there's a good chance you can encounter some Wx. And yes, most times that Wx can be avoided. For those of us not yet retired, the pressures to get home after a weekend trip are pretty high. Before I had my inst rating, I remember that when I went anywhere, I would be continually checking Wx, wondering how easy it would be for me to get home. It made longer trips agonizing, and would distract me from the fun I was supposed to be having on the ground.

To me, it's getting maximum utility out of my ship by being able to switch from VFR flight to IFR. I will admit that most "IFR trips" I take are VFR for most of the enroute portion, but having the capability to fly IMC is a great asset. Scud running in a ship as quick as an RV is not a good idea, IMO, and I think that the pressure of getting back home to family and jobs can lure many of us down that dark alley.

[robertahegy]

Lots of good opinions and advice and experiences in this thread. Bottom line is get enough hood time to at least get you comfy and remain comfy with controlling your plane via instruments, should you inadvertantly get caught in IMC. If instrument flying is your goal, properly equip your plane and know how to use the stuff and stay proficient in the system.

I had two friends who's only real instrument time, after they got their ratings, was the comp check. A comp check requires less time under the hood than remaining current through actual IFR flight or hood time with a safety pilot. They are both dead now. One flew into a mountain in Pennsylvania and the other hit trees scrudding into an uncontrolled airport after breaking off an approach to a controlled airport.

Know your limitations and competence. It's better to be on the ground, wishing you were in the air, than to be in the air, wishing you were on the ground. Your wish will come true, either way.

Roberta