I've been reading this with great interest.
This particular subject does feature very early in the safety evenings.
I think that some of the problems we have in the UK, are
- a lack of understanding of the dangers of going IMC in an unstabilised helicopter (single or twin)
- Inadequate training on CPL courses (by people who have no instrument experience)
- A lack of any decision making training whatsoever.
- Over confident students being 'trained' to fly on instruments (so they think)
- A lack of any formal training in the UK weather, by someone more qualified than an FI.
When you read this its sounds like I am having a dig at instructors, but I am not. I have been at both ends of the scale where I am allowed to teach instruments and radio nav to CPL students (when I have no instrument experience myself). I have been allowed to teach Met to PPL students with no real experience of the UK weather. Now a bit older and perhaps no wiser, I believe the the CPL instrument training should be carried out by someone with actual instrument experience (not neccesarily a current IR perhaps previous military).
I think the 5 hrs instrument is a red herring, its generally taught by the wrong people, under foggles which are hardly the most restricitive things in the world (yes its harder, but nowhere near as hard as with screens or actual IMC).
I've just got back into R22 flying after a couple of years off the type, and am not surprised that half the gyro instruments in the ones I've been in are u/s, not completely but they do lose their alignment quite quickly, I can only assume that this is due to the environment they get operated in (training doing EOLS, and being left running during startup and shutdown).
We will hopefully have the Met Office aviation forecasters running some courses for helicopter pilots soon, I am just trying to get it sorted if anyone is interested (I suggest we discuss that in the heli safety thread or a new one and not here to avoid too much thread creep.)
Thread on this can be found here.
The R22 is a brilliant helicopter if you use it for what it was designed for, if you use it outside that environment it might (and going IMC it probably will) bite you in the arse.
Gary