ACTUAL instrument time
This morning I embarked on a solo IFR flight to the New Braunfels Municipal Airport to shoot an instrument approach there and to miss that approach and return to San Antonio Intl for the ILS Rwy 12R. Objective? Instrument flight proficiency.
The weather? Marginal VFR with ceilings of 1500 broken with a higher overcast layer at 2,300 feet. Here’s the actual METAR from the airport:
KSAT 141353Z 17011KT 10SM BKN016 BKN033 BKN250 27/24 A2997
With a requested cruise altitude of 5,000 feet I knew I’d earn some actual instrument flying time on this short trip. That was exactly the point.
Taking a peek at my logbook, the last time I logged actual time was .2 hour on July 23rd, 2005. That was surely the result of going up and down through cloud layers and obviously not representative of spending time in IMC.
This morning I climbed to an assigned altitude of 3,000 feet on a heading of 030 degrees. At around 2,600 feet or so I encountered the first broken layer of clouds. The bumps started. As I leveled out at 3000 I was in solid IMC.
The view out the windshield, at least from what my peripheral vision could tell me, was all white growing darker gray as I encountered moisture in the cloud. The bumps, jolts and jostles - left - right - up - and down intimidated me. The word pilots don’t like to talk about - fear - tried to creep up on me. These clouds meant business. I slowed the airplane down to around 90 knots. Then a light bulb came on. “Justin, you are an instrument rated pilot. Now let’s keep that scan going.” So…I flew the airplane. I kept the wings level, corrected the deviations in bank created by the turbulence and eventually emerged for a moment from the cloud deck just as I was assigned an altitude of 4,000 feet.
At 4,000 I was above most of the clouds but not for long. Soon I was cleared for the GPS approach into New Braunfels. As I descended back into the clouds, I kept my airspeed in the 90 knot range and reviewed the approach. At one moment, I was in IMC again following the GPS track for the Intial Approach Fix when my body told us we were straight and level. The attitude indicator in the airplane disagreed. It said we were in a right, standard rate, turn.
That IFR training helped me level those wings. At least for a few brief moments, the level flight indication felt so wrong. Level flight felt like a slight bank. My body was lying to me and this was confirmed when I emerged from the clouds and saw that airplane and attitude indicator were flying straight and level.
So what’s the point of all of this? Simple. If you invested the time and effort to get an instrument rating you need to be flying in actual instrument conditions as often as you can. There is quite frankly, no substitute.
If you’re a student pilot earning your instrument rating, make damn sure that you log several hours of actual instrument flying during your training. Demand this. You cannot afford to encounter actual IMC conditions for the first time by yourself. Your simulated flight with a view-limiting device may teach you how to develop a good instrument scan but it will NOT prepare you for the bumps and jolts of cloud flying.
The rest of my flight went very well. It was, like most IFR flights…magical. Flying a small airplane through and around huge clouds is a breathtaking experience. On the route back to San Antonio, I took advantage of the two-axis autopilot in the ‘03 Skyhawk SP I was flying to snap some quick photos out the window with my EOS 1D Mark II digital camera.
