How often to do you use your IMC ?

[buzzc152]

FI's

I'll shortly be starting on my FI course and have been weighing the pro's and con's of getting an IMC rating first. Setting aside for the moment the opportunities to teach the IMC once the restriction is lifted, 100 hrs instruction gained and Applied Instruments gained etc.... how often do you use your IMC to teach PPL ?

I suppose there's little benefit to the student to fly in reduced viz so I'm thinking the only time an FI would use an IMC rating is to climb up to the nice weather and back again ? If this is the case, how often would you say you do this ?

I'd really appreciate your feedback.

Many thanks.

[DB6]

Depends on where you are and if your airfield has an instrument approach or letdown procedure (and your aircraft is equipped to fly them). Some of the best conditions for teaching the early exercises can be found on top of cloud with a perfect horizon and smooth air, added to which it is sometimes beneficial to be able to fly through some crap to get to an area of clear weather with some confidence. Again, depends on where you are - some areas suffer more than others from that sort of weather. The other advantage is that you will be much more conversant with radio nav so can use beacons to keep tabs of where you are during some of the more protracted lessons - it's sometimes easy to forget if you're really getting into teaching something and it's all falling into place for the student!

[Gertrude the Wombat]

I suppose there's little benefit to the student to fly in reduced viz As a PPL student I thought I derived benefit from doing some of the instrument flying in real cloud, as the foggles couldn't really stop me being able to get cues about where the horizon was.

[Hare O Plane]

I very rarely use my IR at all whilst I'm teaching PPL. I've used it twice in anger whilst teaching because the weather caught me out and VFR was not an option to get back.

Occasionally if I can't get a good horizon I'll try and pop out on top for training purposes such as S&L, turning etc where I need a good horizon to conduct a decent lesson.

Right from the outset of their training they need to start learning the local area, so that by the time solos are looming, they are happy with where features are in relation to each other in order to rejoin successfully.

IMHO Flying in 5k and accepting vectors is great practice for the rating but not beneficial to the student.

Even the circuit can be disorientating in that low viz.