IMC
 

If i was to do the IMC rating in the next few months and then it was to be scrapped, would i still hold the rating or would i have wasted my money.

I understant the skills would be invaluable scrapped or unscrapped but the question has to be asked! 'sorry if its been coverd before'

The skills are priceless. Get it, definitely. But try to get a "modern" instructor; one who knows GPS. IFR is de facto GPS these days. The rest of the stuff one should know, for a backup and to pass the exam :)

IMHO the chance of it simply being banned is under 10%.

Plus the earliest "end" date is 2012. That's an awful long time in politics (and flying :) ) and this issue is going to become red hot nearer the time, not least because there is zero precedent in aviation for summarily stripping a few k pilots of a relevant privilege.

I totaly agree with all of the above, Im going for this regardless
Fingers crossed tho hey..

Thanks

IO540 is I suspect correct.

Historically, I'm not aware of a situation where people have ever been stripped of an aviation privilege without being given something else to replace it.

If that were to happen with the IMC rating, it would unleash a minor sh*t storm.

Strange statement to make??

GPS shouldn't be used as a primary means of navigation anyway, so its irrelevant. I would get an instructor that can teach you the ground based navaids properly and use GPS as a backup; En route use of GPS requires additional certification as does using it for approaches.

There are also a limited number of places that use GPS approved approaches, so I would get to grips with ILS, NDB and VOR approaches and leave the GPS stuff until you've passed the skill test as its not a requirement.

TJ

TJ - I'd tend to agree. I finished my IMC at the end of last year and GPS wasn't discussed at point throughout the course. Perhaps that's because the instructor was not a "modern" instructor? Is it something that should have been touched on?

I tend to use both GPS and nav aids - GPS being much easier and nav aids being on the whole, more reliable.

The IMC course syllabus was written pre-GPS and hasn't, to my knowledge, been updated to incorporate GPS.

Having said that, if you were at a field e.g. Shoreham, that has a GPS approach and your aircraft is certified to fly GPS approaches, then it wouldn't be a 'modern' instructor that teaches an IMC course without incorporating some sort of training to enable you to fly the GPS approach.

Furthermore, GPS shouldn't be used as the primary means of navigation in non certified aircraft, and even if it is certified, I would still use cross cuts of radials and DME to confirm my position.

TJ

Before doing my IMC rating towards the end of last year, I did quite a bit of research on this. The conclusion I came to was the same as IO540: the rating will continue to be valid until at least a date in 2012, still over 2 years away.

What a load of uneducated tosh!!

GPS can and is used as a PRIMARY means of navigation. Above FL95 in a light aircraft it is pretty much the only means of meeting the BRNAV compliance.

NATS and the other European ATS providers are currently looking at turning of the conventional navigation aids in preference for BRNAV systems. Take a look at the current consultation that will see nearly half the VOR's and all of the enroute NDB's turned off in the next couple of years.

Whatever the old guard may think, GPS is here to stay and we will all have to come to grips with it as a primary means of navigation. Any Instrument pilot, IR or IMCr should be embracing current technology and any Instructor teaching for such ratings is doing the student a disservice by not teaching current technology.

The AOPA RNAV course is currently being updated to cover GPS and this can be linked to the IMCr for full credit. We tried to update the IMCr a couple of years ago but with the transition to EASA it was put on the back burner.

The problem is that obviously from the posts on PPrune many people in the UK don't understand GPS and its capabilities or limitations so it is very hard to get proper training to use it properly. Luckily I have done a lot of flying in the USA where GPS overlay approaches exist for nearly every instrument approach and standalone GPS approaches exist for nearly every airports with an IAP.

There is nothing wrong with using traditional instruments to back up the GPS but if they didn't agree I'd tend to follow the GPS for a number of reasons.

I still think it is nuts that the departure out of Gurnsey (if memory serves me right) has one dead reckoning a ground track to ORTAC. If one has a G430 fitted, why would one DR one's way there?!?!?!?!??!?!??!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHHH :ugh::ugh:

(as well as being totally wrong as any kind of a summary of the legal position)

How true.

Not surprised with general negative attitude to GPS in UK given the fact that CAA have been casting GPS as the devil incarnate for the past decade !

We have some catching up to do so please listen carefully !

GPS Can be primary Nav above MSA and if you have the right GPS it can be primary for an approach as well. Unfortunately many of our new GPS approaches rely on conventional nav aids for the missed approach procedure (how daft) - so CAA must have decided that NDB must never be forgotten !!!

I teach IMC ratings and I teach use of GPS and if your aircraft has GPS approach capability then that as well. Call it a modern approach to IMC training for real world real aircraft operations. There are many instructors who are passing on a very rigid training syllabus that hasn't changed in donkeys years, yes pass on the old stuff but please get to grips with the new stuff as well.

Actually, there is no concept or definition of "primary nav" in the ANO.

The ANO specifies equipment to be carried. It does not specify equipment to be used.

The only time equipment usage may be specified is on AOC ops where you fly IAW a company ops manual.

The whole business of "primary nav" (GPS being good / no good etc) comes from various pompous leaflets emanating from the CAA, or the pompous GASIL/GASCO organs which are written to appear as if they are written by the CAA :)

In truth, a private pilot is free to navigate with any, or any combination of, navaids, and is 100% legit to do so. Above MSA or below MSA :)

Above FL095, Europe, IFR, the carriage of an IFR GPS is the only acceptable (GA context) means of compliance with the BRNAV equipment carriage requirement.

I seem to remember a previous IO540 post advocating navigating using a rubber duck in a bucket of water :ok:

GPS is a fantastic tool, and used properly just as safe as any other navaid. Particularly in the USA, given their WAAS network (and a capable receiver)!

I think a tuna sandwich (more here) is the more definitive version.

GPS is something ill be investing in even if its just for the moving map purpose at the moment, Thanks for your shouts

bose-x - uneducated tosh - Really. Well I refer the honourable person to the CAA Safety Sense Leaflet entitled 'GPS' which in its opening paragraph states:

If you're using it at FL whatever it is in a light aircraft it should have been approved to BR-NAV standards which is the +/- 5nm 95% of the time. Instrument approaches require a higher standard of approval of GPS equipment.

Furthermore, my point is that a modern instructor who tells a student he can go and use his handheld GPS to fly an instrument approach or to use it as a primary means of navigation without it having been approved to do so, is not doing the student any favours.

I understood it to be +/- 2nm?

and the reference that this organ has the slightest legal significance is......... where?

This is the problem the CAA is now facing, when they try to drag themselves kicking and screaming into the late 20th century.

For as long as I've been flying (~ 10 years) they have had various staff members (both inside and outside CAA premises) emitting their personal opinions and prejudices, in various publications, and in CAA "safety" meetings, all dressed up to look very "official".

Together with the highly deferential climate which prevails in GA (a bit like our whole society was in the 1950s and before) and the almost totally opaque ANO, this stuff has been taken as gospel by many otherwise perfectly intelligent people.

Now the CAA has a double hill to climb on GPS approaches: these need full ATC, and way over 90% of private pilots are convinced GPS is illegal, the work of the devil, etc. Most of these are long-term PPL holders who are operating outside of the PPL training scene and there is no real way to re-educate them.

In the meantime, NATS (to their credit) has got fed up with the constant stream of major CAS busts (a few hundred per year) which only by sheer luck have not yet brought down an airliner, grabbed the bull by the horns and have sponsored the production of a £150 GPS which runs a decent map.

The IMC rating was designed to allow pilots to fly IFR outside controlled airspace in their own aircraft using whatever equipment it had fitted hence there is no specific requirement to do particular approaches other than one must be pilot interpreted.

Initially there were only a few civil airfields notified in Schedule 8 that you could make approaches to but that was scrapped in 1996.

There is nothing to prevent GPS approaches being conducted as part of an IMC course, if you have the appropriate equipment and can find one.

2/3 of the course is basic IF, the remainder is being able to fly two different approaches using whatever is fitted to the aircraft. It must however cover the basic IF and limited panel and the candidate should be able to use anything fitted to the aircraft so that leaves only a small proportion of the time to cover the GPS element.

There was a committee looking at revising the syllabus to include the GPS a couple of years ago but changes were inappropriate if the rating is to cease.

EASA have said that pilots holding IMC privileges will be afforded grandfather rights until alternative arrangements are put into place. The crackpot En-route IR appears to be the first step! EASA Flight Standards: Instrument Flying

IMC is one thing, but GPS is greatly useful to pilots under VFR as well. I'm working on my PPL(A) right now and all the instructors I've flown with advocate using GPS for general navigation.

Of course I'm also learning to use the old nav aids as is required for the PPL, I can find my way using VOR, ADF or map-and-stopwatch no problem, but quite frankly, I consider those to be (cumbersome) backups for when the GPS fails, just as the turn indicator can be used as a substitute gyro horizon in a pinch.

GPS is here to stay. Possibly supplemented by other satnav systems to provide redundancy, but I for one won't be shedding tears when they turn the last power-hogging NDB off.

IO540

Are you suggesting I teach the use of GPS contrary to a CAA safety publication?

I also refer you to CAP773: Flying RNAV GNSS Approaches in Private & GA Aircraft which states that the required approval of the GPS equipment to fly GNSS/RNAV approaches should be clearly stated in the AFM. This, I believe, is also true of en route GPS navigation.

I believe GPS is great, I use it every day, I am not stuck in the dark ages, or dragging myself kicking and screaming into 2010; I also don't believe GPS is evil or illegal;

However, if you are teaching GPS to students who fly GPS approaches or use GPS for en route navigation, then they should be taught that the equipment they intend to use is to be approved for its intended use or it should not be used as a primary means of navigation. I don't believe this is uneducated tosh -

En route nav: RNP is 5
Terminal nav: RNP is 1

I've been looking at FAA RNP. Guess it must be different...5nm seems pretty poor precision.

The problem with GPS is the inherrent inability of MOST owners to keep the database up to date - and despite protestations to the contrary, things do change from time to time.

Gents, the truth of the matter should be that we use ALL available facilities to maintain our positional and situational awareness. Who really cares whether GPS is primary or not.

DD

The CAA investigator when you're sat in front of him facing an infringment interview !!

When London City airspace changed a few years back it caught a lot of GPS happy PPL holders out who were flying fat dum and happy with their out of date databases, using GPS as sole means of nav.....cos their instructors probably told them it was such a great piece of kit....

TurboJ, Do me a favour and show me where a Safety Sense leaflet is enshrined in law? I am struggling to reconcile your claim with the legal position and just want to make sure we are talking from the same book.

Yes... all that "RNP" stuff goes back to the goode olde days when pilots were real men with sextants, and a jet pilot coming off the oceanic route was doing damn well if his INS drifted off by just 5nm.

Today it is basically meaningless, because both INS with GPS or DME/DME fixing yields accuracies of a fraction of a nm (equivalent to RNP 0.3 or better).

A Garmin 496 is RNP0.0-something and that's before you get EGNOS..... :) The funniest thing being that a handheld is allowed to receive EGNOS whereas a certified unit isn't :yuk:

But there is such a huge army of assorted well paid hangers-on around the national regulators safeguarding "RNP" based performance specs, and all the associated avionics certification garbage, and turkeys have never voted for xmas.

BRNAV is RNP5 I think. PRNAV is RNP1, I think. GPS approaches are RNP0.3 or something like that, which is why PRNAV (which requires weird equipment and crew certification, despite being less accurate than GPS approaches for which even EASA has a straight path today) is now completely irrelevant. But does that stop the PRNAV machinery in its tracks? No way. It will be 10-20 years before they realise that the "RNP" boat has left the port (sunk, actually) a few years ago.

I am sure that's true but have not seen evidence that this statistically features in CAS busts. Let's face it, the CAA VFR charts update once a year, and they are as "official" as you can get... And the typical handheld, with its fairly hopeless Jeppesen mapping, needs to be used together with the printed chart anyway.

It's different and more critical for airways/IFR where all nav is 100% GPS and ATC are constantly feeding you waypoints. I should update the KLN94 database every 28 days but in practice I don't bother if I am not flying airways in those 28 days, so I skip that cycle and save myself a few bob. I did one airways flight 2 weeks or so ago and the next one will be to Germany on 9th April and I see there is a download becoming valid on 8th April so I will grab that one.

Which is why we should have all available systems on and tracking.

I'm not pro GPS or anti it....I couldn't care less....but I do teach my students GPS/VOR/NDB/DME navigation and the use of an integrated approach to navigation. In VMC, I even advocate looking out of the window:ok:

DD

The RNP is about how close the aircraft is to where it is supposed to be, not about how accurately the nav kit measures the actual location.

So RNP 0.3 means you are within 0.3 nm 95% of the time and, I think, 'never' (ie. 99.999% sure) be more than 0.6 nm from your programmed track. This needs to be true for all of the supported profiles (turns, DME arcs, etc.) this is why there was the debate on PRNAV if autoslew HSI was requried

(How many people can make a 45 degree course change in IMC never moving more than 0.5 mile from the specified flight path using an NDB or VOR?)

The US version of PRNAV is called RNP xxx. It is on trial in Alaska with IMC approaches consisting of multiple fly past waypoints weaving up mountain gorges all below the mountain ridges.


The use of GPS ranges from the use RNP SAAAR approaches, through WAAS approaches, into normal GPS approaches, RNAV, GPS monitoring, VFR situational awareness with a quality aviation moving map (with up to date data) down through a hacked car GPS with a 5 year old map on down to a camping GPS with a lat lon display. So making any comment about Good/Bad on 'GPS' is not very illuminating with out contexting the type of equipment.

Indeed; however one has the same issue with a standard T-shaped GPS approach, with a fly-through IAF and a fly-past later on. The accuracy required is pretty high.

America seems to be relaxed about it - for private GA in its own airspace.

I don't believe I have stated that a safety sense leaflet is a legal document.

Where does it say you can go and use a handheld GPS to fly an instrument approach?

Where would you stand at the board of enquiry when a person you have taught has crashed their plane because you didn't teach them the pitfalls of GPS and the need to have equipment approved and certified before use?

Where does it say you can't?

Of course only an idiot would fly an ILS using a GPS...

To fly a nonprecision approach (VOR or NDB) using a GPS, one really needs one with OBS mode and few handhelds have got that. Most modern pilots fly them with an IFR GPS's OBS mode.

Nowhere. It would not arise. In the UK, there is no comeback on an instructor. If there was, many would be out of a job, following accidents of former students.

CAP 773

Legal document or not, its a reference document produced by the UK CAA.

I'm not going to ignore a UK CAA document cos some guy on pprune says so.

Which is entirely your perogative, however your previous posts were ethusiastically trying to convince the rest of us that it was against the rules to use a GPS as primary navigation equipment when I clearly pointed out that in order to meet BRNAV and PRNAV in light aircraft a GPS is the only means of complying. Therefore it is somewhat at odds about your claim that you are not allowed to use GPS as primary navigation.

As IO540 quite rightly points it there is no legal requirement for any type of PRIMARY navigation. The CAA safety sense leaflet is primarily aimed at those who think it is a great idea to use a car or walking GPS or the in the bottom of the bag brigade who generally don't have a clue how to use them and when they actually need them do more harm than good.

The use of an aviation GPS even a handheld one for VFR flying if properly trained for and used is a huge benefit to situational awareness and safety. It can be used on its own or if the pilot is prudent as a part of blend of navigation tools.

For IFR cruise and approaches then an approved panel mount is the way to go and used by the majority of GA IFR traffic this day. Even our work Turbines are being fitted with Garmin stuff now to replace the old FMS. The FMS was also the PRIMARY means of navigation for us in the past, however it is not unknown for me to stick the 496 up on the dash to watch the world go by.

Maybe I should have phrased it slightly different.

GPS can only be used as a primary means of navigation if the equipment and installation is approved and certified and correctly indicated in the POH/AFM in accordance with EASA AMC 20-5. Otherwise it may be unsuitable for RNAV/GNSS operations.

I am not going to teach a student anything to the contrary.

So my FTO is paying a fortune for instructor liability insurance for......??

Correct for BRNAV, but not a lot of your students will be going IFR, FL095+ which in the UK is Class A anyway, and in virtually all cases an IR is needed :)

(I say "virtually" because there are a few places in the UK one could go IFR on the IMCR alone at FL095+ but one would be hard pushed to find non-Class A CAS :) )

Not applicable to normal private flight, however.

You are paying that in case one of your instructors is involved in an accident, and the student (or his estate) sues, or there is a ground damage claim. Or some spurious personal assault claim which has to be defended... a possibility when one is spending a lot of time alone in a plane with the student.

There is no known case of a comeback (in the UK) against an instructor simply for poor teaching methods.

Prestwick I forget the details but a student crashed after getting himself IMC and the instructor was sued by the arab parents and the instructor had to pay sizable damages. It wasn't just poor teaching methods (by teaching methods I also include the process of sending someone solo and the duty of care if the student isn't hitting the grades)

Exactly. If the instructor ticks all the boxes, there isn't going to be a comeback purely on bad teaching methods.

Anyway, we are talking about instructor being gone after after the punter is qualified. Establishing liability would be almost impossible - provided the paperwork was straight.

So how did the FMS derive position?

My FMS uses 6 DME/DME cross hatchs then down grades to VOR/DME then GPS . It throws up all sorts of warnings if it goes into GPS only mode.

yep agreed on that one IO