BIK-116.8.
Very erudite description of night flying over the outback. You have obviously been there - done that.
You are quite right that CASA could nail people that do not log autopilot instrument flight. The chances of that happening is zilch. I recall that the autopilot logging came about when it was not possible to keep up currency at hand flown I/F due to some operators actively banning their crews from hand flying.
With the advent of LNAV - VNAV and all that stuff, automatic pilots came into their own and providing the right buttons were pressed they flew very nicely, thank you very much.
I recall reading an Air New Zealand submission to their CAA on the difficulty of maintaining hands on I/F skills because of autopilot policy and the CAA then allowed automatic pilot I/F logging just to avoid controversy.
From before the 1939-45 war civilian pilots log books had a column for instrument flight sub headed "In Flight" and "Ground". The in-flight part was either under-the-hood or actual instrument flight conditions.
Service log books used by the RAF and RAAF of that era also had instrument flight columns. They were headed "Instrument/Cloud Flying" and were split into Dual - which was under-the-hood, and "Pilot" which was actual cloud flying. There was no specific column for ground, so an extra column was drawn in and labelled "Link".
Logging of instrument flying was hands on only - never auto-pilot. Service pilots had their log books audited each month and signed by their flight commander somewhat similar to that of student pilot log book checks of today. Instrument flight hours were logged honestly. There were no lost job opportunities simply because one had only two instrument rating renewals or lack of I/F hours. That strange method of assessing instrument flying skills remains a quaint civilian GA peculiarity
Computer skills cannot be equated to hands-on instrument flying skills. There is no skill required to "monitor" current sophisticated autopilots nor such ancient pieces of equipment as the Century autopilots in GA aircraft.
CASA regs requiring logging of auto pilot instrument flying suggests that total instrument flying hours as a measure of a pilots skill, is a myth - especially as there is no differentation between hand flying on instruments or monitoring an automatic pilot. RFDS and other operators requiring applicants to have X number of renewals and instrument hours are kidding themselves.
I recall seeing the log book of an airline first officer who had logged 5600 hours total time of which 2800 were logged as on instruments. I wondered if his captains had also logged the same hours. He had been flying F27 and Boeing 727 aircraft within Australia since he joined one of our now extinct domestic airlines from GA. I guess he was happy with his I/F skills after that lot.
My I/F hours are sweaty hands on flying and will stay that way, too.
Last edited by Centaurus; 29th Aug 2002 at 10:58.