As I said on the other recent thread, I think the IMC is a good thing, but only if you have to build hours anyway. The extra cost of an instructor (on top of the cost of hiring the aircraft for hour-building) is really quite small.
Very interesting point about encouraging head-in flying and the problems this could cause on a CPL. I'll let you know in a few months time whether it affected my CPL or not. I'd hope not - although the fact that the main aircraft that I fly is not equipped for IMC flight, and so I still get plenty of practice at looking outside, may help me in this respect (even if it causes different problems remaining current in IMC flying).
Last month, I had a couple of lessons in a Tiger Moth (you can read about them on Private Flying if you look for them - I'd post a link except I don't have time right now). The reason I did this was because I wanted to do it, it sounded like fun (and it was fun!) But if you find yourself flying head-in, it might well be a useful experience, as well as being fun. It's very hard to fly head-in in an aircraft with so few instruments that there's not very much to look at inside - so it should get your head outside the aircraft again pretty quickly!
FFF
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