However I still needed most of two weeks i.e. about 25 hours' hard flying under the hood, to reach the FAA checkride standard. This was the hardest flying by far I had ever done in my life. The hood goes on seconds after takeoff and you spend the whole flight doing vectors, then banging VOR/DME/LOC/ILS approaches, every one to minima, and you don't know if you will land or G/A until you are AT the minima and then the instructor lets you know. One would be a fool to listen to the scores of idiots who say the FAA IR comes on the back of a fag packet and is no harder than the UK IMCR. It is MUCH MUCH harder.
Thank you IO-540, finally somebody who tells it like it is.