I think this has the potential to become a very good thread!
My aircraft is day-VFR only, which makes it difficult to use my IMC rating. Until I got busy doing things like a CPL and FIC, which don't leave me much time to do my own thing, I used to try to use the IMC rating once a month. That would involve hiring a Cessna from my club (about four times the hourly rate of my own aircraft, but never mind), finding a safety pilot, and putting on a pair of foggles if there didn't happen to be any real cloud around.
Because of the hassle of booking a suitable aircraft, I have flown in clouds without an instructor next to me only a couple of times. Neither time was anywhere near as serious as the type of cloud I was flying in during the IMC training - a little bit of fair-weather cumulous once, and a broken stratus layer at about 2000' once - so no, it wasn't at all scary.
The last time I flew in clouds was a couple of months ago. I'd recently completed my CPL, so I'd had plenty of practice at instrument flying on the CPL course, but no approaches. In fact, it had been nearly three months since I'd last flown an approach. On the day I had the aircraft booked, there was an overcast layer at around 1200', which was getting very close to my own self-imposed minima.
I was debating whether or not to fly, and was just on the verge of driving home when I bumped into my IMC instructor. She'd had to cancel some PPL lessons due to the weather, so I asked if she wanted to fly with me. Definitely the right choice. My handling skills were pretty good, which wasn't surprising since I'd been practicing them on the CPL course. But I'd lost the ability to plan ahead, and was making silly mistakes like forgetting pre-landing checklists, not being 100% aware of where I was at times, and so on. Nothing life-threatening (although the lack of pre-landing checks could have been aircraft-threatening if it was one of those fancy aeroplanes where the wheels go up and down!!!) but enough to remind me how important it is to stay current.
And, now I know all about currency, have I kept current? Erm, no - been too busy doing the FIC to have any time to do instrument flying for the last couple of months.
FFF
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