lets have a few postings of those flights that poster on here with an IMCR and have actually used there IMCR for in 'battle' over the last 6 months and what they have done to retain currency
Bose-X happy to oblige, but please don't quote me on any illegal bits !
Nov Trip to Le Touquet , overnight then on to Rouen, and return to base on day 3. At least two hours of this was in IMC (zero viz), and the same again VFR on top. (all IMC in UK FIR only
). Planned arrival at LFAT was with cloud break over sea and then final leg at low level.
Nov Bristol Filton from London area base. ILS arrival at Filton. NDB cloud break on return to base day 2. 80% of both legs were solid IMC. Interestingly on return flight from Bristol after signing off with Benson we free-called Farnborough who were so busy providing a single SRA that there was no capacity to provide any service to us ! Incidentally we always try to get a radar service in clag and squawk Mode S at all times.
Oct Overnight to private strip in Norfolk. Great weather up there but cloud from 800' up to 8000' around London. Luton provided a terrific service all the way around London TMA at 2400' (from Maidenhead area). Shot out of cloud just north east of Stansted.
Oct Business trip to Guernsey. Again 800' base. IMC over Farnborough, climbed on top by Isle of Wight at 6000'. Descended into Jersey Zone breaking out at 3000' in time for SVFR, but carried on with ILS for practice.
I won't bore everyone with more detail but other destinations have been Hungary (Gyor) stopping half way in Germany (Speyer). Western Isles (Islay, , Oban, Plockton, Glenforsa . . strongly recommend the Glenforsa log cabin hotel on the grass strip with pilot owner, Brendan Walsh!), Scilly Isles, Bodmin, Exeter, Roserrow, Jersey, Deauville, St Malo (Dinard), Friedrichshafen for the Aero (but that was April). What all these trips have in common is a high percentage of IMC. Without the IMC rating then all of these would not have been possible unless I had zero time constraints (which I don't).
Our aircraft is well equipped with mode S, Garmin 530 with terrain, Stormscope, RadAlt, ADF, VOR, DME, HSI, twin horizons, handheld Garmin 496. There is no autopilot, and this suits me fine as every trip counts as 'real' training. We fly GPS as primary and cross check to VORs/NDBs. We never fly above 12,000' so airways and IFR routing is not a realistic option for us (even if we were to obtain IRs)
We have registered the aircraft with several RAF stations so regularly practice ILSs and PARs with them (in fact if the entire panel went blank then I would feel comfortable flying on the 496 as sole navigation and 'instrument panel' and doing a PAR into Benson on the iCom handheld!).
One personal preference I have adopted is to avoid single pilot IMC without autopilot. I have done a fair amount of it but find the workload is too high to have 'fun' (which is what it's all about for me). Trying to note down and change the transponder code in reasonably strong turbulence , along with everything else, certainly does get my full attention.
So for us (there is one other similar minded guy in the group) the loss of the IMC rating would be a disaster. No doubt we would have to get IRs but, and I may be wrong about this, I see so much of that syllabus as being irrelevant to our typical flying profile.
Bose-X . . . . I look forward to meeting you up there some time on a suitably horrible claggy day !
I'm relying on you to have the TCAS kit