IMC real vs. hood trepidation

Unit74

Unit74

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Unit74
Is there anything you have found to help quell the fear of entering actual IMC? Under the hood, I'm very comfortable. When I'm in actual, I am hyper sensitive to bumps and begin to worry, like I've entered into a game of roulette with gravity. I feel like vertigo sets in quickly and I have to keep telling myself the gauges are right, you are wrong.

I have about 6 hours total of true IMC experience and to be honest, I avoid it to the point of staying on the ground for the above reasons. In VFR conditions, I'm as cool as a cucumber with ranch dip, even in the washing machine of southern convection.

Have you any tips or tricks to break this thought string into a more comforting flight? It has kept me from scheduling my IPC that is due and I'm tired of flying in fear of IMC sad:
 
Like getting to Carnegie Hall -- practice, practice, practice. Focus on the task at hand, and eventually it's like being in the sim.
 
Get some dual in actual conditions. Maybe after an hour or two with a CFI onboard you'll start to feel more confident and comfortable.
 
Set high personal minimums,go fly ,the only way to get the warm and fuzzy feeling, is to go fly actual,practice in actual comes in handy.
 
Get some dual with an experienced double eye in good bumpy cumulobumpus and let him fly while you look out into the white cotton and watch the instruments until you have shed that nervousness enough to gradually take the controls.
 
Yep, get some more dual IMC. I'd suggest night IMC at that. I don't know what it is but IMC at night was always kind of a spooky feeling for students I flew. I had students say it was the most satisfying experience in their flight training.

Personally I preferred actual to hood. This monstrosity was a pain in the butt!
 

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Cumulobumpus, I love that!

I agree with the night IMC with your CFI. I have a similar issue with it at night, because I literally have no reference with cloud cover in the dark. If you can conquer the night, then you can conquer the light.

"Always do what you are afraid to do."
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
 
Fly more in acutal. Take a CFI with you. I was fortunate that my CFI took me in actual during training so it was never something I was afraid of after I got my ticket. After I got my IR I launched into IMC the next day with 500 foot ceilings. Practice, practic, and practice.
 
the first couple times in actual during training i did better with my hood on. not sure why, but maybe try that?
 
The trepidation that you just can't "rip off the hood" in actual goes away with some practice as stated. In fact, it's actually EASIER for me in benign actual than with the hood on.
 
I started with some thin layers, then graduated up to some thicker puffers, then planned a trip at 5,000' with 4,500' bases. I stayed in it for an hour or so knowing that I was 500' above the bases and that quelled any fears that I had.

Watch for those false horizons though! I ran into one on a trip where I was enroute approaching a layer. As I got closer to it the horizon gradually (without me noticing at first) dropped below me. I was subconsciously adjusting.... I got really frustrated trying to maintain altitude and then realized it was a false horizon. They go crooked also. Watch out for those!
 
I feel like I just conquered this fear myself - launched into 500 OVC with nothing but IFR and a couple LIFR spots enroute yesterday, and spent a solid 1 hour in actual in the middle of the flight.

If it's the bumps in the clouds you are worried about, I would suggest spending some time in the different types - low stratus, broken puffy, and maybe with a CFII next to you - some with rain in them (tho I would stay clear of any CBs). I fly with a Stratus 2, so in-flight weather helps to allay my fears of flying into anything really nasty - yesterday was just clouds / mist, with occasional light rain, and the flight in the clouds was mostly smooth - most of the bumps were actually well past the cloudy parts in severe clear!
 
get a simulator. when using a simulator there is nothing to trust other than your instruments. Setting the simulator visability to 0 between 300 agl to 50,000 and some moderate turbulence, you'll learn how to fly by just instruments very quickly.
 
Unit74 said:
Is there anything you have found to help quell the fear of entering actual IMC?
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Yes...fly a GPS WASS plane equipped with GPSS coupled autopilot...push a few button and delacre out loud "Find me airport plane!"

Magenta lines rule!

...or just fly dual with a CFII in actual until comfortable.

Actually the use of an autopilot if available even to just maintain a heading or altitude while in actual helps reduce the workload significantly.
 
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Unit74 said:
Is there anything you have found to help quell the fear of entering actual IMC? Under the hood, I'm very comfortable. When I'm in actual, I am hyper sensitive to bumps and begin to worry, like I've entered into a game of roulette with gravity. I feel like vertigo sets in quickly and I have to keep telling myself the gauges are right, you are wrong.

I have about 6 hours total of true IMC experience and to be honest, I avoid it to the point of staying on the ground for the above reasons. In VFR conditions, I'm as cool as a cucumber with ranch dip, even in the washing machine of southern convection.

Have you any tips or tricks to break this thought string into a more comforting flight? It has kept me from scheduling my IPC that is due and I'm tired of flying in fear of IMC sad:
Click to expand...

No, I just swallow, take a deep breath, close my eyes as I enter, shift into Instrument Pilot thinking mode, and open my eyes focused on the panel. The trepidation lessens greatly in the first 100 flights, but then it kind of levels off to a point that is healthy given the elevated risk and requirements to execute safely.
 
SVT helps lessen the trepidation, and complication, of Instrument Flight greatly though.
 
Get more practice in actual. It's what you will be doing when you get your rating. I always found actual easier than the hood. Less distracting. It will get more comfortable with practice.
 
You have to embrace the instruments, and believe that they're right just like you do when you know its a VMC world out there.

Unless you've had some really scary encounters under the hood you should have seen that this all works out once you get back to VMC (or take the hood off). In fact being IFR in the soup takes away the traffic problem.
 
I just remind myself that I don't have to fly perfectly for the next hour - just the next ten or fifteen seconds. Then the next...
 
Never had any real scary encounters. I just have a hard time detaching from seeing the ground. It's my safety blanket.

I do have WAaS, no GPSS but the AP will follow the line. I have SynVis on FF to reference. I guess I'm just not confident in my skills. I know I can do it if it's a Simple op. But when it gets complicated, I feel like it's just too much to handle.

I rember going VOR apch missed, pre GPS in IMC, to the hold, screwed up the entry, screwed up the turn, got flustered, then scared, finally figured out how to get back the airport and put it down. Scared the be geezers out of me.

I'm a perfectionist and when I don't get it right it bothers me. Seems like under the hood with a CFII safety blanket I can do it reasonably well. But when alone, it's like all that weight on my shoulders becomes a heavy load.

I guess I'm in a rut and least, or training plateau at worst.
 
I messed up a hold entry too, a few months ago. When I got back down I took a couple of hours to thoroughly review the flight and try to understand where I screwed up, but it wasn't particularly scary at the time. The scariest encounter I ever had in IMC was when my HSI seemed to be "reverse sensing" on an ILS approach down to very near minimums. I even got called on it by the controller: "having a little trouble finding the localizer today, are we?":redface: Luckily, by then I had figured out the problem, apparent failure to auto-slew (which turned out, of course, to be something *I* didn't understand about my GPS).

I think those flubs and brain farts are going to happen no matter how proficient we are, and the important thing is to catch them and correct them without panicking. Lack of confidence in one's abilities is likelier to lead to disaster by inducing panic, rather than by reflecting true inability, assuming one is rated, current, and proficient.

The scariest possibility I can think of is total alternator failure in IMC. For that, I'm seriously considering SVT on the iPad.
 
azure said:
The scariest possibility I can think of is total alternator failure in IMC. For that, I'm seriously considering SVT on the iPad.
Click to expand...

That is my biggest fear, reinforced by an actual alternator failure on a CAVU day a few months back in the same plane I fly IFR in. Fortunately I know that the battery will last at least 30 minutes when it is reading <24V (as opposed to 28.2V normally), so all battery readouts (there are three of them in the 172SP I fly) are now part of my regular instrument scan (roughly once a minute).
 
DeckardTrinity said:
That is my biggest fear, reinforced by an actual alternator failure on a CAVU day a few months back in the same plane I fly IFR in. Fortunately I know that the battery will last at least 30 minutes when it is reading <24V (as opposed to 28.2V normally), so all battery readouts (there are three of them in the 172SP I fly) are now part of my regular instrument scan (roughly once a minute).
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Yes, I had a couple failures in close succession when I first bought my plane, due to a defective Kelly alternator and a basically DOA replacement (never again! Plane Power forever!). Both in VFR conditions. But under the load of all my avionics, my battery's terminal voltage (this is a new battery btw) is in the 11.5-12.0V range. My Sandel isn't happy with that voltage and flashes a warning "inverter frequency too low". I sure wouldn't trust it like that in the soup, no matter how long the battery would last.

Not too long ago I saw that message right after I started up the engine, on the ground. It was a fuel stop at a rural airport, after hours, and I had that sinking feeling that I was going to have to call Enterprise for the 2 hour drive back to home base. Then I noticed that only one side of the master rocker switch was flipped on. Whew! :)
 
DeckardTrinity said:
That is my biggest fear, reinforced by an actual alternator failure on a CAVU day a few months back in the same plane I fly IFR in. Fortunately I know that the battery will last at least 30 minutes when it is reading <24V (as opposed to 28.2V normally), so all battery readouts (there are three of them in the 172SP I fly) are now part of my regular instrument scan (roughly once a minute).
Click to expand...


In the 22 years I have been flying I have never had an electrical failure but had a couple of instrument failures, a vacuum pump failure and an engine problem while IMC.

Nothing could have address the engine problem other than having a second engine. But for the rest, I have made it a mission to add redundancy to the plane and if redundancy was possible, a more robust maintenance schedule.

It started out with a simple Precise Flight standby vacuum and now I have reconfigured my panel to include dual Aspens with battery backups. You have a couple of white knuckle experiences, you tend to either be more conservative or stack the deck a little more in your favor.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
Unit74 said:
Never had any real scary encounters. I just have a hard time detaching from seeing the ground. It's my safety blanket.



I do have WAaS, no GPSS but the AP will follow the line. I have SynVis on FF to reference. I guess I'm just not confident in my skills. I know I can do it if it's a Simple op. But when it gets complicated, I feel like it's just too much to handle.



I rember going VOR apch missed, pre GPS in IMC, to the hold, screwed up the entry, screwed up the turn, got flustered, then scared, finally figured out how to get back the airport and put it down. Scared the be geezers out of me.



I'm a perfectionist and when I don't get it right it bothers me. Seems like under the hood with a CFII safety blanket I can do it reasonably well. But when alone, it's like all that weight on my shoulders becomes a heavy load.



I guess I'm in a rut and least, or training plateau at worst.
Click to expand...


When I first started flying IFR, I spent the first few months just filing everywhere I went while only flying VMC or very soft IMC. For me, being comfortable in the system was just as nerve racking as flying in the clouds. As one other person posted, take baby steps with your flights and build up to the extended IMC flights. It is like everything in life, it takes time to become comfortable with something new.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
The best solution is to do as much of your instrument training in actual conditions. Your CFII and you should actively seek it out. If your instructor doesn't want to do training in actual conditions, find another instructor.
 
jonnyjetprop said:
The best solution is to do as much of your instrument training in actual conditions. Your CFII and you should actively seek it out. If your instructor doesn't want to do training in actual conditions, find another instructor.
Click to expand...


I'm already rated. The issue is flying alone in IMC. I just don't like it at all.
 
Unit74 said:
I'm already rated. The issue is flying alone in IMC. I just don't like it at all.
Click to expand...
Go up with your CFII. You don't have to go up with 200 ft ceilings and 1/4 visibility. Start off with like 1000 ft ceilings and gradually lower the bar until your comfortable. After I got my IR I filed as much as I could in actual to get as much exposure as possible.
 
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