PPL going on to take IMC

[PoppyPilot]

Does anyone know what percentage of PPL pilots go on to take the IMC rating and the average number of hour it takes to pass?

[IO540]

There is a CAA website which has the license issue numbers.

I've just spent 10 mins looking for it, without success.

I know a few years ago it was about 10%.

Re # of hours, I would guess about 25. The min is 15.

[Fly Stimulator]

The latest figures I can find here (http://www.caa.co.uk/docs/175/srg_fcl_LRIssues_2004_05.pdf) on the CAA site are from 2004-2005 during which time 308 IMC ratings were issued, compared with 1913 PPL(A) licences. Of course, many of the IMC issues would have been to people who gained their PPLs in earlier years, so those figures on their own don't tell you the overall percentage of pilots who get the IMCR.

You could add up some numbers from here (http://www.caa.co.uk/docs/175/srg_fcl_medcert_sex_age_04.pdf) as well.

The index page to the statistics is here (http://www.caa.co.uk/default.aspx?catid=175&pagetype=68&gid=559).

[IO540]

Thank you FS for the link.

The frustrating thing is that the CAA (clearly deliberately) doesn't publish data on the "churn rate" in licenses. I can see they don't want to publish data on how many new PPLs chuck it in within 1,2,3 years etc because I believe that would make the PPL training business look bad and would not do GA any favours in the bigger picture, but this also makes it hard to work out figures like the original question here is asking.

[JUST-local]

A few people I can think off completed the IMC training and passed the test in less than 20 hours. One guy did his in 12 hours.
I did about 20 hours taken over 6+ months, some of this time 3 ish hours was spent in the hold at my request.
I found rant very useful after a few hours. After the test I relised how good my two instructors were as my training far exceeded the requirments for the test.

JL....

[Dan Winterland]

Time taken to pass varies on a lot of factors other than ability. The club where I used to instruct rarely had anyone take more than the minimum, but we were based on an airfield with full IFR facilities including an ILS and few problems getting into the radar circuit. If you doing the training at a remote airfield with a long transit to an airfield with the required facilities, expect the hours to go up.

[KCDW]

Bang on 15 hours for me. Though I did it in 2 fairly intensive weeks.

This is one area where I think Flight Simulator is a very good training tool, if only to practice the instrument scan. I'm sure it saved me hours in the cockpit.

Dropped it after 2 years. Was using it too infrequently. Marginal weather with marginal skills is not a place to be.

[A and C]

Looked in the logbook and it took me 17 hours of trainning to get to test standard.

I can honestly say that it was one of the hardest things that I have done on aviation (along with the A320 gouund engineers course) because it was all so new to me, after the IMC the IR was just a bit more practice!

Go do it the IMC will give you a whole new perspective and improve your flying skills and don't listen to the peope who belittle the IMC rating, education is never waisted !

[BEagle]

IO540, nothing sinister about the CAA's intentions regarding stats.

Their IT is so lousy that they simply don't hold sufficient records to produce meaningful stats.....

[IO540]

Beagle - not so sure; they could release data on # of valid Class 2 medicals, for example. They do know the figures; their people have come out with them on occassions, in conversation.

I did my IMC in about 22 hrs and found it very hard. In retrospect, the ground school was lacking. I recall one occassion when the instructor got me to fly an NDB approach to the home airport but never told me this was what he was doing, so I was just flying headings, etc, only finally realising that we were at the runway... IMHO all instrument training should start with a ground briefing so you know more or less exactly what you will be doing, and only then you go to fly the stuff.

We used to fly 2 PA28s: one had a working ADF but a duff DME (though the DME would ident and display apparently good figures) and the other had a duff ADF but a working VOR, and a duff DME. So different planes were used for different things. The instructor would sometimes hold a £100 handheld GPS, with the airfield set as a WP, and read out the distance to me as a "pretend DME".

With good instruction by a real practicing IFR pilot and a decent plane, the IMCR is a very good qualification to get for getting utility out of flying.

My feeling, speaking to many about this, is that most IMCR holders drop out soon - much as PPL holders seem to. Ultimately, as with any IR, the use of it is limited by access to a decent plane, and the budget to go with that, and both of these things are (generally) lacking in UK GA.

The FAA IR was much harder still; 2 weeks of flying in a Warrior in turbulence, so hard I was knackered and ready to chuck it in every day. By then I had some 50-100hrs in actual IMC from the UK. No resemblance to any real world IFR flight, unless you have a near total instrument panel failure and then go out of your way to make extra work for yourself. In reality one has a backup for just about everything. Still, that's instrument training... if they made it like normal IFR flying it would be a piece of cake. Of course, it would have been harder still without the previous IMCR experience - I would guess 4 weeks would have been appropriate for an ab initio IR.

[S-Works]

IO540 makes the Roswell bunch look like light weights when it comes to conspiracy theory!!! :p

The CAA do not do very well at stats at all we asked for all of this information for the IR WG and they have still to find a way to come up with the figures.

[strake]

I did my IMC at SND with the late Danny Woolf many more years ago than I care to remember....
It was completed in 15hours more due to Danny's competence than mineI think.
However, I think PPL's have to be very realistic about the benefits of the rating. A stamp or piece of paper does not mean you have somehow magically become able to fly in instrument conditions with a "tra-la-la, lousy weather but never mind, off we go" attitude.
When I first recieved the rating, I was flying almost every weekend from SND to Calais/Le Touquet and very current. After a while I stopped flying quite so regularly and had a few "interesting moments" when I restarted 6 months later.
I came to the conclusion that the training for the Night and IMC ratings, vastly improved my overall flying capability but unless I stayed very current in both, they could possibly be dangerous in that they could lull one into a false sense of security.
Nowdays, with 24 years of flying behind me, I only like to fly on "pretty" days anyway. :)

[IO540]

Strake - you could say that for the IR too. It's up to the pilot to make it useful.

Bose - Roswell is real and you know it, so don't deny it ;)

[JUST-local]

Why anyone would set off for an IMC lesson requiring DME for example without it working is pure madness, even worse is the person then paying for the lesson! Walk away and find a place that has spent the money on fitting or fixing the required equipment, yes its expensive but you are paying for it.
The school I used spent £5000+ on a couple of ADF's for the two PA28's I used/use. Its hard enough trying to learn new things without having to role play and make do with poor or U/S equipment.

Rant over.......

[S-Works]

Which is why we are having so many problems getting the IMC recognized for the JAA IR changes we are working on. The CAA and JAA know what goes on and are unhappy. Despite all the protestations on these forums about how good everyone who posts IMC was the general standard turns out to be quite shocking.

I am pretty sure the Instructors doing this mean well and think they are showing people a good way of dealing with DME failures or an "emergency" approach in a badly equipped aircraft. What they are actually doing is encouraging unsafe practices and covering up for the **** can state of the average GA trainer. IMCR training aircraft should be of the same standard as IR aircraft. With the exception of Class A they can do the same things in the same places just to a lower standard. So why should we think it acceptable for people to train in non FM Immune, Mode S etc aircraft?

[IO540]

So why should we think it acceptable for people to train in non FM Immune, Mode S etc aircraft?

I don't think you actually meant to say the above, bose-x, because a) there is no evidence that FM Immunity has any practical meaning (it is a theoretical device to protect the aviation band from the near end of the FM band, and assumes rather poor selectivity of the airborne equipment) and b) the case for Mode S for GA OCAS (where most IMC training takes place, mostly in VMC) is awfully thin.

The instruction standard is patchy but this is because the PPL training business is for the most part decrepit (due to lack of business) and cannot afford to get instructors other than ATPL hour builders and others on peanut pay, who in most cases cannot afford to keep their IR (assuming they had a SE/non-MC IR originally) valid because it costs too much to do so, relative to the returns. There are plenty of instructors with an IR but when you quizz them you find most of them are lapsed. The hour builders tend to renew theirs only when they get close to getting a job offer.

I think the IMCR is OK for the privileges, which are mostly exercised in Class G, but there isn't really a solution to this problem, because no matter how you train people, they will still be stuck on the aircraft and the budget, and no amount of training can help there.

In the hypothetical case of a (say) £8000 IR (50hrs) replacing the (say) £2500 IMCR, all one would achieve is a very very low take-up, because the CAA isn't going to be handing out nice new planes for people to fly, and subsidise their operating costs so they can stay current.

Like it or not, an IR (JAA or FAA) is largely a game for highly motivated and well funded owner pilots and much as many (I am not saying you in particular) like to think that a new IR will improve the general GA IFR situation, it won't ever reach the PPL masses.

What will eventually improve GA IFR utility will be the gradual scrapping of the junk sitting around airfields today and its replacement with modern (DA40, etc) planes with decent IFR avionics, autopilots, and all the other stuff that makes IFR flight realistic. Somebody flying one of those will be fine even with dodgy training, whereas if flying some piece of junk with half duff avionics one could have an ATPL and it won't do them much good.

[PoppyPilot]

Gentlemen, Gentlemen, Gentlemen ... please.

I was only asking out of curiosity!

I Passed my PPL late last year and haven't managed to do much flying since. I am intending to take a share in a very well equipped AA5 Tiger and have some further tuition to blow away the winter cobwebs. Once I have done about 50 P1 hours I am intending to do my IMC. Just loving it !!! Thanyou for your replies.

[tmmorris]

I must say I loved doing, and have enjoyed keeping and using, the IMCR. But you do have to use it - otherwise you become stale very quickly. Little things can catch you out - just failing to ident one thing can fail you (my examiner let me off with a ticking off at the last renewal because I idented the ILS but not, separately, the DME for the approach - even though it was radar monitored...).

But I like instrument flying, and I know lots of people don't. I don't get nervous OCAS in IMC without a radar service - though as it's against club rules I don't do it intentionally. (There's not much you can do when unit A dumps you off to unit B unceremoniously, and you call unit B to be told 'Negative radar contact, call again in five minutes...')

Tim

[IO540]

I read the other day... OCAS: 4 mid-airs in the UK in past 10 years, all below 1000ft in VMC. Last mid-air in IMC was in WW2. This is probably due to the far lower traffic density in IMC, together with IMC traffic being generally above 1000ft. Certainly, there is no case for worry about flying in IMC without a radar service - it's by far the safest place to be.