Instrument Rating for Cheap

[jesse]

I've been slacking off on getting an instrument rating for way too long. I really need to just come up with a plan so that I can knock it out. Basically I'm looking for a CFI and a cheap airplane somewhere in the country. I'd prefer to do a lot of lessons in a little amount of time.

I currently need about 34 hours to hit the 40 hour requirement.

Anyone know an affordable CFII, with lots of spare time, and a cheap airplane? I'm looking for a Ron style instrument rating course without the PIC cost.

Obviously what I want is unrealistic. But I'm open to suggestions. If I could work out a cost for a CFI, airplane, and 34 hours of flying...that would be ideal. I recognize that I might have to do some work before the actual check ride after this is over with.

 

[Areeda]

Well to get 34 hrs of hood time will probably take around 40 hrs of hobbs time (maybe a little less). At local FBO prices of about $130/hr for a 172 + instructor that would be $5,200.

It would be better in our flying club but unless you are a member of the JPL or Caltech community (or immediate family) there's a waiting list and they probably won't go for a short membership.

Just discussing options, I've never done a 10 day course and have a pretty full schedule for the next few months.

Joe

 

[foka4]

Jesse,

Maybe we can both do it at the same time and get "bulk pricing"!

Matthew

 

[CJones]

Jesse...

I'm sure you've already checked, but look in the back of the AOPA and/or EAA magazines. In the classified's section there are usually several FBO/Flight Schools that are advertising their "get there quick" training programs for less than what some of the 'chain' schools would charge. If you can find somewhere to just get the little piece of paper, then you can come hang out in Ames for a weekend and let Tony actually teach you what to do. I got lucky and had a good CFII in my back yard and a dad that is willing to let me use his plane for cost of fuel (and an oil change), so I'm afraid I can't help you find the super bargain.

Have you talked to any of the CFI's there in Lincoln to see if they would be willing to do a 'cram course'? If they're like Tony, they would jump at the opportunity to do some hardcore flying in a short period of time.

 

[infotango]

Jesse,
Read FAR 61 carefully, you only really need around 15 hours with the CFII, the rest can be with a safety pilot. If you can learn the basics with a CFII, get practice with a competent safety pilot, and finish up with a II you are good. I'm on the last part now.
R

 

[RMCN172RG]

I think American FLyers has a five day IFR course. My nearest one is in Cleveland but there are a few around the country.

Don't know if it's any cheaper. http://www.americanflyers.net/instrumenttraining/5dayifr.htm

I did mine part 141 in the local flight school From start through checkride was just under 10K. But I started 4 days after my PPL checkride and flew or simmed 2-3 days a week except for holidays and weather. It took me from the end of Oct to mid March with 37.5 dual and 15.8 sim.

I tried using the sim a lot early because of A)weather and B ) I hoped to reduce cost. It probably was not effective at either. Today I would do it all in the aircraft.

 

[B25Flyer]

Jesse,

They have a pretty good, fairly priced, program at MN Aviation in Albert Lea, MN.

MN Aviation. They send me some of their students for my CRAP. (Comprehensive and Rigorous Assesment Program) I pass most of them

Tell'em I sent you and they will up the price a little more.

Tailwinds,
Doug Rozendaal

Check it out at http://www.mnaviation.info/

 

[vontresc]

Hehe I wonder if you could convince Tony and Hap's to take the 182RG for a week and do an IFR trip out west and back. That would be fun as hell, and you could pay Tony in peanuts

Sort of the low budget version of Field Morey's program

www.ifrwest.com/

Pete

 

[jesse]

Jesse,
Read FAR 61 carefully, you only really need around 15 hours with the CFII, the rest can be with a safety pilot.

I'm aware. But I see no problem with doing all the hours with a CFII if the price is affordable.

 

[stingray]

Jesse, I am in the same boat that you are. I am getting more hrs under the hood now after the trip to AZ though. I have a good school up here in Rush City MN that has a few new CFII's that would do it resonable I think. I have the 150 that would just need fuel to knock off most of the hours with the CFI. It only has a VOR so you would want a few hrs in their 172 which has a 430 for the GPS portion. The rest of your time only needs to be with a safety pilot. I will suggest though that if you do not have much acctual IMC to get some before or after your test before venturing out on your own. It is not the same as under the hood.

Dan

 

[TangoWhiskey]

I've been slacking off on getting an instrument rating for way too long. I really need to just come up with a plan so that I can knock it out. Basically I'm looking for a CFI and a cheap airplane somewhere in the country. I'd prefer to do a lot of lessons in a little amount of time.

I currently need about 34 hours to hit the 40 hour requirement.

Anyone know an affordable CFII, with lots of spare time, and a cheap airplane? I'm looking for a Ron style instrument rating course without the PIC cost.

Obviously what I want is unrealistic. But I'm open to suggestions. If I could work out a cost for a CFI, airplane, and 34 hours of flying...that would be ideal. I recognize that I might have to do some work before the actual check ride after this is over with.

If you're trying to keep costs down, do like I did and find a good CFII with access to an FTD... do all the hours you can in it. You'll practice many more procedures, failure modes, back it up and try it again, than you'll do in the airplane. The scan, needle indications, 'what's next' will all be much more intuitive once you set foot in the airplane with the hood on, and you'll maximize that learning effort.

I'd have to pull out my CFR, which I don't have time to do at the moment... how much FTD/Sim training time do they allow towards the rating now? 15 or 20 hours?

 

[taters]

If you're trying to keep costs down, do like I did and find a good CFII with access to an FTD... do all the hours you can in it. You'll practice many more procedures, failure modes, back it up and try it again, than you'll do in the airplane. The scan, needle indications, 'what's next' will all be much more intuitive once you set foot in the airplane with the hood on, and you'll maximize that learning effort.

I'd have to pull out my CFR, which I don't have time to do at the moment... how much FTD/Sim training time do they allow towards the rating now? 15 or 20 hours?

20hrs for instrument and 50 for comm initial

 

[stingray]

If you're trying to keep costs down, do like I did and find a good CFII with access to an FTD... do all the hours you can in it. You'll practice many more procedures, failure modes, back it up and try it again, than you'll do in the airplane. The scan, needle indications, 'what's next' will all be much more intuitive once you set foot in the airplane with the hood on, and you'll maximize that learning effort.

I'd have to pull out my CFR, which I don't have time to do at the moment... how much FTD/Sim training time do they allow towards the rating now? 15 or 20 hours?

Anoka has a real nice Sim. One of those full cockpit kind. RC Avionics, Inc.

Dan

 

[taters]

I'm aware. But I see no problem with doing all the hours with a CFII if the price is affordable.

I would recommend doing just that..the overall learning experience will be much better. Not slamming the saftey pilot thing at all.. but from my instructing experience students who did most of the time w/a II were much more competant instrument pilots and actually got to the checkride a little quicker. I do highly endorse the use of sims , that 20 hours you can do on the sim can be some of the best instrument learning there is since you can stop the thing and talk about whats going on. If you do use saftey pilots, try to do cross country flights under flight following using V airways and such, this will be much more effective than flying around aimlessly under the "hood" which IMHO does IMC little justice anyway.

 

[Let'sgoflying!]

And you can knock a lot of hours off by knowing the procedures cold (by using a computer simulator) before getting anywhere near a sim or an airplane.

 

[tlglenn]

I did 95% of my hood work with a CFII instead of a regular safety pilot. I think I was better off because of it.

 

[TangoWhiskey]

And you can knock a lot of hours off by knowing the procedures cold (by using a computer simulator) before getting anywhere near a sim or an airplane.

I agree 100%, Dave. How much book learning have you done, Jesse? If you haven't already, look at the lists that have been published on this site under similar questions before. I highly recommend this one:

http://www.actechbooks.com/instrument_flight_training_manual_dogan.htm

Jepp's Instrument/Commercial manual is excellent, as well.

Get somebody's old (recent old!) set of Jepp and NACO charts, study them and their legends. If you can get them for the same airports/area, so much the better... study them side by side and learn the differences. Or, choose one (NACO is cheap and widely available) and learn it and stick with it.

Have you passed your written yet? Get that out of the way soon if not.

 

[stingray]

I did 95% of my hood work with a CFII instead of a regular safety pilot. I think I was better off because of it.

That is true to a point. Sometimes flying with a veteran IFR pilot as a safety pilot does a lot of good also. I know of one CFII that I would not fly with even for free. Getting some experience from a pilot that flys a lot of CC IFR is a good thing to have. Just like flying under the hood is different than flying actual. Flying CC is different than flying around the home base.

Dan

 

[taters]

Getting some experience from a pilot that flys a lot of CC IFR is a good thing to have.

Dan

your right on stingray,..huge gap between really knowing how to operate w/in the IFR system and knowing how to shoot approaches...

good luck Jesse, congrats on making the decision to move forward in your training.

 

[gismo]

I did 95% of my hood work with a CFII instead of a regular safety pilot. I think I was better off because of it.

It's awfully easy to develop bad habits during instrument training and a good CFII will minimize that. This is also a potential problem when using a Sim, FTD, or PC "simulator" program on your own. Such problems can be avoided if you stick with honing skills that your CFII thinks you should whether you're practicing in an airplane with a safety pilot or in something tied to the ground.

PC "sims" are great for learning certain skills like ADF tracking, holds, procedure turns etc. IMO, they're not particularly useful for learning basic IR skills like level flight, turns, climbs and descents but I also believe that it is possible to develop a good scan on a PC with the assistance of a CFII.

 

[gismo]

BTW if you're looking for an affordable CFII, how long before Tristan gets that rating? Of course you might be risking the whole relationship if you let her be your instructor.

 

[jwriteclub]

I know that there is a certain impracticality to this, but, try to get as much actual as you can with a CFI-I. Two reasons:

1) Simulated is not actual
2) Foggles are uncomfortable

~ Christopher

 

[gprellwitz]

2) Foggles are uncomfortable

One of my DEs won't even accept Foggles, because she doesn't feel they do a good enough job on cutting down on external stimuli. She mandates an actual hood, which she'll provide if you don't have one.

 

[Baron 55]

One can do some hood time with a safety pilot, ostensibly cutting down on the cost of dual. Perfectly legal. Of course, the CFI isn't gonna sign you off for the practical til you are ready, and flying around on your own with a safety pilot doesn't necessarily guarantee that's quality training time. The purpose of allowing one to get a number of hours of simulated instrument toward those hours required for the rating is not because only fifteen hr. of dual are really all that're needed.

I have had probably well over a hundred instrument students; I don't really know, as I don't keep such totals. In those students, some have come to me expecting to fly maybe 15-20 hr. dual, max, due to the fact that they've either fooled around with a simulator of some sort [sometimes at college, sometimes at home on a PC], flown with some buddy, under the hood, drilling appch after appch, or some combination. I pretty much ignore this, or at least let it slide, then we get to work. I don't recall any of these folks being instrument aces. In fact, I usually have to "retrain" them to some extent as far as scan [if they have one] and other techniques. There is a big difference between sitting at a desk and guiding a sim' to a real airplane with its noise and systems to monitor and the wx [turbulence, winds, etc.]. Flying sims and with safety pilots does not necessarily establish and polish safe and correct pilot technique.

Note I am not declaring that one cannot save some time and/or money by those methods. However, my experience has been that it can be very little. One fellow came to me and declared that he was only going to need 15 hr. dual, period, and we needed to get that straight right up front as his wife was not cool about spending money on another rating and he'd shown her how little it would cost after all his sim' time and hood time with a friend [He had 25 hr. of hood time flying ILSs—no basic scan, no emergencies, no cockpit organization, no experience in anything but ILSs, no knowledge of anything but two needles and keeping them centered. Zero work other than that]. I declined to work with him. He went with a newish CFI and at 15 hr. dual was "extremely unready" for the checkride according to his instructor. I heard the yelling from the classroom and investigated....

 

[sanchezpaulk]

I've been slacking off on getting an instrument rating for way too long. I really need to just come up with a plan so that I can knock it out. Basically I'm looking for a CFI and a cheap airplane somewhere in the country. I'd prefer to do a lot of lessons in a little amount of time.

I currently need about 34 hours to hit the 40 hour requirement.

Anyone know an affordable CFII, with lots of spare time, and a cheap airplane? I'm looking for a Ron style instrument rating course without the PIC cost.

Obviously what I want is unrealistic. But I'm open to suggestions. If I could work out a cost for a CFI, airplane, and 34 hours of flying...that would be ideal. I recognize that I might have to do some work before the actual check ride after this is over with.

That is going to be a trick (and illusion) at the mastery level of Houdini.

 

[taters]

Note I am not declaring that one cannot save some time and/or money by those methods. However, my experience has been that it can be very little. One fellow came to me and declared that he was only going to need 15 hr. dual, period, and we needed to get that straight right up front as his wife was not cool about spending money on another rating and he'd shown her how little it would cost after all his sim' time and hood time with a friend [He had 25 hr. of hood time flying ILSs—no basic scan, no emergencies, no cockpit organization, no experience in anything but ILSs, no knowledge of anything but two needles and keeping them centered. Zero work other than that]. I declined to work with him. He went with a newish CFI and at 15 hr. dual was "extremely unready" for the checkride according to his instructor. I heard the yelling from the classroom and investigated....

One of those dicating students ...those guys are dangerous

 

[flyingcheesehead]

I've been slacking off on getting an instrument rating for way too long. I really need to just come up with a plan so that I can knock it out. Basically I'm looking for a CFI and a cheap airplane somewhere in the country. I'd prefer to do a lot of lessons in a little amount of time.

I currently need about 34 hours to hit the 40 hour requirement.

Jesse,

The IR is a very hard rating, one that's very easy to go over the 40-hour requirement (I think I had 85 simulated and 14 actual when I took the checkride). So, my number-one advice is to hit the books hard. Ask lots of questions here. Read every thread in "Cleared for the Approach" and understand both the questions and the answers. Take the written. THEN do the flying, and fly as much as you can. That should allow you to minimize the hours. (I got my private in 42.6 hours because I was very well prepared before I started. The IR, I was not prepared and it took a long time.)

Second, make use of a sim. One thing you might be able to find is a deal on a sim - When I used to work at MWC they had a deal where you could get UNLIMITED Frasca sim time for a month for something like $100. If you get your 20 sim hours in that one month, that's $5/hr which is way cheaper than any airplane. You do still have to pay hourly for the CFII though, but it'll still save you a huge pile of money. Plus, after flying the sim, the airplane is easy!

Finally, remember that there's a difference between an instrument pilot and an instrument rated pilot. One has some letters on their ticket, the other one understands that instrument flying is all about knowing the entire system and how you fit into it, and the decision-making process. What you don't know can and will kill you. So, don't focus too much on the hours. The ground stuff is as or more important than the flight to understanding this, and a good instructor is essential.

I recognize that I might have to do some work before the actual check ride after this is over with.

FWIW, the Morey trips are $7K the last I checked, and that's in a Turbo 182RG. You need 25 cross country hours which I'm sure you have, and the written to be finished. You'd also get some invaluable experience.

However, I bet you could also get in a 172 at Hap's and take Tony around the country for a week and get the rating, cheeeeeeeep.

So, figure $100 for 20 hours of sim time at MWC, $800 or so for the CFII up there. That's $900 (or about $950 with tax) for 20 hours.

Then figure 20 more hours in the 172 from Hap's at $85/hr at $1700, plus a few orders of the deluxe nachos from Dublin Bay for Tony and you should be able to get it done for less than $4,000. I can't think of any cheaper way to do it.

 

[tonycondon]

However, I bet you could also get in a 172 at Hap's and take Tony around the country for a week and get the rating, cheeeeeeeep.

yep i just have to find the next full week that im not booked with something. probably mid may at the earliest...

plus a few orders of the deluxe nachos from Dublin Bay for Tony

now we're talking! food is way more valuable than money!

 

[pilotmattk]

yep i just have to find the next full week that im not booked with something. probably mid may at the earliest...



now we're talking! food is way more valuable than money!

Be careful what you offer up, a people might think you're serious . Next thing we know it'll be the CIP, Condon instrument program or something in the flight training mags. You provide the plane and 3 boats of nacho's per hour. Hey, it's only 340nm to Ames from here!

I'm working on my instrument rating as well. It's going pretty slow so far, the last two months have been pretty crappy weather wise for a beginner IFR student. I think Feb was at minimums 15 or 20 days or something here. I'll probably just keep working on it slowly locally. Jesse, if you find what you're looking for, be sure and post it!