New IMC benefits

[PRbloke]

Passed my IMC (flying) exam yesterday. Overheard 5 year old daughter earnestly explaining to her 3 year old sister: "It means Daddy can fly on musical instruments."

Really hope we get to keep the rating - that's got to be cheaper than avgas.

[BackPacker]

Now if that would only include an 'air guitar' type rating we'd be all sorted...:ok:

[Jan Olieslagers]

Accordion is better: works on compressed air anyway. Same goes for organ, but that's less practical in the cockpit.

[Pace]

PR

It was a good move to add the IMCR. Under EASA if you already hold the rating you will be able to continue with its privalages within UK airspace only.

No new IMCR ratings will be issued as the rating in EASA eyes will no longer exist.

With the French calling for an FAA style IR hopefully that is what will be achieved and has to be a better goal than a limited IMCR?

But for now the IMCR has to be a good move on your part.

Pace

[JOE-FBS]

Well done, PRbloke. I got mine a couple of months ago and have made use of it in some way in nearly all the flying I have done since. Not for dramatic minimum cloud breaks but for flying above cloud or in awful horizontal visibility or just for being able to tell a zone controller that I will accept a transit that might take me IMC if it suits him. All three have happened to me more than once already and have meant that I have either had a better flight or even that I have been able to do a flight that I would have cancelled without an IMCR. The fact that it might save my life one day is a bonus!

I also find it great fun to be able to fly IMC and procedures and have to confess that I get a childish pleasure from feeling more like a professional pilot!

For the future. As far as I can tell, it's not quite as fixed as Pace mentions above. Anything could happen in the next few months. If I understand correctly, one thing that is fairly likely is that having got one before the EASA deadline, you will be able to keep it even if it is closed to new entrants.

Join AOPA UK, we wouldn't even have that concession without its efforts.

[I Love Flying]

As this thread seems to be drifting a little anyway, I would be interested to hear your latest thoughts on getting the IMCr, given the situation as it stands at the moment. I know this has been covered before in other threads, but a totally up to date view would be appreciated.

I should say at this stage that I intend only to fly for pleasure, and have no desire at this stage of going on to do an IR/CPL/ATPL etc.

I am a pretty new pilot, got my licence in April last year and now have 100 hours total time (not P1 though). I got my night rating in October 2010. I had always intended to get my IMCr next, but the whole EASA debate has rather focussed the mind. Everyone I have so far spoken to says basically says go for it, you won't regret it. Would you all agree?

Am I right in thinking that the 'deadline' to get this rating under my belt in order to be able to retain it is around March 2012?

I am already starting to read the Radio Nav & Instrument flying book, and upon advice from others I have purchased RANT, although I haven't yet been instructed how to use it. Realistically, once I get started I think I would be looking at aiming for 1-2 lessons a week wherever possible, does this sound like a sensible plan to those who have done it? With that sort of plan in mind, I would imagine it will take me at least a couple of months to complete the course - again is that a fair assumption do you think?

Finally, any other tips or advice you might like to give?

Thanks in advance for your time.:)

[JOE-FBS]

The subject of doing an IMCR has been done at great length in the other place. You might want to start here:

FLYER Forums • View topic - I've started the IMCr! (http://forums.flyer.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=68185&p=930599#p930599)

where I have collected a list of relevant threads.

[Zulu Alpha]

What will the situation be with EASA if you have an IMCR but haven't had it revalidated for a few years?

[spekesoftly]

"It means Daddy can fly on musical instruments."

Smart girl. As the song goes:-

"The 'ils are alive, with the sound of music" ;)

[IO540]

Finally, any other tips or advice you might like to give?

I saved myself 4 figures and a load of hours by flying all the procedures on FS2000, with a cheap £10 joystick.

The bottom line is that if you don't know how to fly a procedure on a sim, don't bother trying to do it in a real plane. Instructors may not spell it out in quite that way but they have to make a living...

Regardless of the IMCR syllabus, you need to be able to fly any approach plate which somebody sticks under your nose, straight off. It's not hard. Most of what you need to know is written right there.

Sims have poor pitch control and you may have to use the throttle to trim it, to hold altitude, but that's OK because you are just practicing the procedures.

In real IFR, you study the plates before you depart, or if for some reason you couldn't then you do it (on autopilot) some 100nm before the destination.

[Gertrude the Wombat]

The bottom line is that if you don't know how to fly a procedure on a sim, don't bother trying to do it in a real plane. Instructors may not spell it out in quite that way but they have to make a living...
My instructor told me to get RANT, and expected me to have flown each lesson using RANT before getting in the aircraft.

Which of course you want to do with today's wind, so no IMCr lessons should be booked for 9am.

I agree that it's a total waste of money trying to understand an NDB approach, or trying to get the picture of where you are and where you're heading and which way you're going to turn next, or whatever, in an aircraft.

[moreflaps]

Hey Jan,
"Same goes for organ, but that's less practical in the cockpit."

What do you mean, my organ is very practical inside the cockpit -it fits nicely too.

:O

Cheers

[IO540]

Somebody was going to do "mile high club" flights recently; not sure how far they got. They would need an AOC for A-A charter which is about 20k up front and then 5k/year.

Gives a whole new meaning to "pleasure flights".

I wouldn't worry about the wind corrections. That is one thing you do in flight. The forecast winds are often bollox anyway, so any wind correction will be out by 2x anyway...

In reality you fly with a GPS and the wind aloft becomes almost immaterial, except in its effect on your range.

[Conventional Gear]

Just picking up on the Sim thing, I think it will be money well spent.

I'm planning to start my IMCr around August. Having talked to my instructor people tend to run into problems putting it all together towards the end of the course. That's another 10hrs one can expect to have to do.

I use FSX with a yoke and pedals. Looking at my first attempts on the sim (it tracks the course) what a waste of money it would have been in the real plane.

I'm finding that one just 'gets it' after a while on the sim. No amount of book reading helped with an NDB approach, doing it over and over in a sim eventually leads to just the right compensations and feel for it all. My biggest surprise was running the whole thing real time in a sim was that there will be no time for error, you absolutely need to know what you are trying to achieve before starting out, something that could have burnt up a lot of cash in a PA-28 to find out.

[Zulu Alpha]

...another vote for using a simulator. I used MS FS and found it very helpful to get familiar before going and doing it for real.

Very easy to set up an approach and a starting point with a low cloud level and then just re run it a few time. Its surprising how you get better after a few times on the simulator...and nice to pop out of the clouds with the runway straight ahead.

[I Love Flying]

Thanks for all your input chaps :D

I will toddle off now and look at the link kindly provided by JOE FBS. Again, apologies, I did know this had been covered before, but didn't have the time yesterday to go trawling through searching for the right threads.:O

So, the general consensus is I did the right thing buying RANT, but I ought to get MS FS too? Haven't ever looked at FS, although I believe they have it on the computer at my club. If I was to buy my own version, what accessories should I get with it?

[Conventional Gear]

Depends how much you want to invest with flight sims. You could get FS2004 and a joystick and learn plenty for not much money.

Or you could go yoke, pedals, radio stacks, VFR photoscenery, aircraft addons, head tracking, high end machine running FSX. You'll want some advice then though on getting the best out of it all from one of the sim forums.

I would judge what you 'need' on how much use you'll get from it. Personally I have pretty 'all singing' sim, it's great for when I don't get to fly for real as much as I would like. I've done a lot of VFR stuff on it too with the photoscenery so it's more than just for instrument understanding.

Remember too you don't need to 'play' a sim. You can use it as a tool in anyway you like, repeating one part over and over, stopping it, moving the plane. Stopping and looking at instrument readings then considering what it should have looked like, etc etc. In a way the more you use it like this the less you need all the accessories as you are not so much 'playing' it as using it as a learning aid. If you want to build up to flying an entire flight as you would for real, then the more 'toys' you have the more realistic it gets.

[IO540]

Pedals are a total waste of money.

The flight behaviour reality of any PC sim is very poor and pedals are thus wasted.

In fact I think a yoke is a waste of money too. I had the big yoke (CH?) which cost over £100. It felt like a plastic toy from McD. A simple "F16" yoke for a tenner or £20 is all that one needs to practice procedures.

FSX and FS2004 are not copy protected, IIRC, but FS2000 required the original CD in the CD drive the whole time, unless you got the cracked executable. Today, you may as well just get FSX. It is quite good enough to practice QXC flights ;)

[JOE-FBS]

I'm no sky god so maybe my experiences will help. I passed my IMC with the minimum of 15 hours PUT (of which 12 was with sole reference to instruments, i.e. 2 hours more than the minimum). I also did about 4 hours in the club sim' which is an elderly version of MSFS. In terms of physical experiences and control feel, it's nothing like flying a real aeroplane but it probably saved me that many hours of real flying (i.e about 450 pounds). I have never felt it worth buying a sim' set-up for home but still use the club one to practice approaches in advance of doing them for real. The other thing that I found very useful at the start of the course was a small 2D procedures trainer called Tim's Nav'. It is freely available on t'interweb. It's not a sim' at all but is a very good way of getting to grips with how to work with VOR, NDB and DME

[Conventional Gear]

Pedals are a total waste of money.

The flight behaviour reality of any PC sim is very poor and pedals are thus wasted.

In fact I think a yoke is a waste of money too. I had the big yoke (CH?) which cost over £100. It felt like a plastic toy from McD

CH yoke is fine, as are Saitek Pro Flight Pedals. It is just a case that the more one adds to the sim the more one needs to know about how to set it up for the best results.

Hence if going much beyond a joystick and a basic experience it is best to seek the help of those who use the software and accessories a great deal. Else it is very easy to get poor results and think the accessory was rubbish.

I find the CH yoke is much easier for precise flying like an instrument approach than any joystick, though one would not want to still be using the stock aircraft provided by MS (Just Flight's Warrior is superb though) and the whole thing needs stripping down and rebuilding to make it move really smoothly.

It's just a case of how far does one want to get into the simulation, the further one goes, the more cash gets spent and the more time one has to put into understanding how to get what one wants from it.

For a bit of instrument appreciation for the IMCr, I honestly don't think you need to go too far into the sim.

[I Love Flying]

Thanks again all.

I will look initially into Tim's Nav, as that has been mentioned on the Flyer Forum also. I will also have a look at the MS sim at my club to see what I think before committing any more precious flying money!

[nick ritter]

I love flying,

I passed my IMCr a few weeks back and looking at your initial post have similar hrs as you

It took me much longer than the 15hrs spoken about earlier on this thread, but frankly I couldn’t care less how long it took, as it becomes immediately clear within about 10 seconds of launching straight into a cloud that if you are new to it (as I clearly am) and are not thought out and prepared and current (especially as someone new like myself) that you are not far away from an impending disaster

The one thing that helped me be more prepared, in addition to going over the route in advance with my instructor, was to practice the trip after a lesson on a MS flight sim, which costs like 40 quid and then a joystick for another 30 or so. This is money very well spent. Irrespective of helping to cut the number of hrs that it may or may not take in gaining the licence, I find it very good to go through an approach on the flight sim before heading off on a trip (especially somewhere that is new to me) as it helps me mentally prepare what I intend to do. In addition to being cheap as chips, there is no need to go to a club to practice on a sim, you can simply have a go at home as you wait for dinner

Maybe with more experience than I have this would all come very quickly, but the sim is an easy way to help prepare oneself before a flight into imc

At least that is my experience

Good luck with your IMCr

Nick

[I Love Flying]

Hi Nick

That was a really helpful post, thanks. From what you (and some others) have said, getting MS Sim could be money well spent. I think I will check it out at the club, and if I get on with it, look at buying my own version. As you, and others, have implied, it's certainly cheaper than learning in a real aircraft!

If you don't mind me asking, how many hours did it take you to gain your IMCr? It would be useful to have an idea so that I can budget my finances and time accordingly. Also, I would be interested to hear the average frequency of your lessons, and how much groundschool you needed. The book suggests 20 hours:eek:

Congratulations on gaining your rating!

[custardpsc]

If you are going to do imc practice on a pc sim it is worth paying for pedals and other similar items in my opinion because it reinforces good habits and foot muscle memory/coordination etc, rather than making you fly without and reinforce bad practices . Of course practicing an approach on your pc will help when it comes to the real thing but also when you are flying an approach, especially the first few, your workload is high and that is exactly the time when you need all of the other stuff to be instinctive so you can concentrate on the hard bits. Use a checklist. Have trigger points for things like prelanding checks , think about things like expected radio calls and time estimates to the beacon etc and generally keep the flow of things to do as close to true life as possible and you will find it will definitely help all aspects of the approach not just the needle chasing.

[awqward]

Well done PRBloke! I have recently passed my skills test and written....still waiting to get my updated licence sent from Gatwick....haven't used it in anger yet...looking forward to it though...

[nick ritter]

I love flying,

In answer to your question:

“If you don't mind me asking, how many hours did it take you to gain your IMCr? It would be useful to have an idea so that I can budget my finances and time accordingly. Also, I would be interested to hear the average frequency of your lessons, and how much groundschool you needed. The book suggests 20 hours ”

It took me 27 IMC hrs I think – which goes up when you add on the 0.2 or whatever per flight for the time on the ground / taxing / taking off / landing etc (so a 1hr flight I recorded as 0.8 IMC hrs)

I thought I was pretty regular in terms of flying frequency – I started back in November and passed mid April. Being married and with a job in London, I can only get out at the weekends and trying not to be too selfish I found myself going to the club roughly every other Saturday (where we managed two flights, flight time of 9/10 and 11/12 or something)

One issue I had was familiarization with a certain type of plane

I often found myself in quite a few different complex planes for reasons out of everyone’s control, which in fact was great experience in itself, and I ended up taking the test in a retractable turbo arrow, but there is no doubt that identifying a plane that is right for your needs and sticking with it, will help make the whole process a little more straight forward

There is enough going on without worrying about finding the squelch knob or some other trivia thing as you launch into a cloud, which very quickly compounds your work load (and your instructors patience)

Regarding ground school – if you mean the exam that you need to sit, I just read the book once and then went over the imc confusor a few times and then sat the test – pretty straight forward

In terms of ground school with my instructor – he would call me or I would call him during the week to discuss the general outline of what we were to do on the Saturday (if it was an approach somewhere, say Bournemouth, this gave me a chance to load up the approach on flight sim and have a go)

We then sat down on the day itself and went over the plan before the flight and again post the flight we would sit down over breakfast and go over what often went wrong etc.

I found the whole experience to be invaluable and genuinely feel very happy to have done the rating

That was just my experience

Good luck

Nick

[24Carrot]

I don't know how good FSX is at turbulence, but practicing in simulated turbulence is safer than the real kind, and just as good for developing the scan.

[Gertrude the Wombat]

I don't know how good FSX is at turbulence, but practicing in simulated turbulence is safer than the real kind, and just as good for developing the scan.
My intsructor, spotting that I wasn't too happy with the turblence inside a cloud, said "try slowing down a bit". Which I understood, and which worked when I tried it, but I hadn't thought of it for myself.

[I Love Flying]

Thanks again everyone, and especially Nick, for all your input.

I feel like I now have a slightly better idea of what to expect, and what to look out for. I wish I had discovered PPruNe before, or even during, my PPL course! It's very useful to compare other peoples' experiences.