Just a Couple of replies,
150Areobat, my comments are aimed at or relate to Helicopters, I'm not an aeroplane pilot to speak of, only PPL. I hope that explains something, I don't rotate, for me it's just "positive rate of climb, positive increase in AIS" (much bigger windows in a helicopter) and keep looking outside most of the time. cjam, hope that also helps you.
helmet fire, please disagree, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but being the coward I am, if it is not a great night for NVFR you will find me tucked up in bed. Also the regs mention that if you operate the aircraft soley by instruments, you are operating by IFR, not VFR.
Basic instrument flight is demonstrated and practiced by day under a hood during training for a NVFR rating. You might also notice that the basic IF stuff does NOT count to your rating. When training someone, unfortunately they usually don't have endless money, so you give them as much practicle knowledge as possible for the dollar (yes I know, it all comes down to the dollar). While doing that you try to explain how extremely hard it is to fly IFR in a small single with no stability augmentation of any kind and how very, very easy it is to get yourself and whoever is with you into neck deep trouble because you are not trained for IFR...........