Instrument Training

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Colin G

Filing Flight Plan
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Jun 1, 2016
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Fort Wayne, IN
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Colin G
I am well past 1/2 way through instrument training, and according to my instructor I don't have much left to learn -- I still have the long XC which is scheduled, but his advice is just to get out there and practice, which I am planning on doing.

I have 20.5 hours out of the required 40 hours of simulated/actual instrument, so I just need to find a safety pilot to practice with.

Any advice on:
- What I should focus the time on?
- Any great way to find safety pilots?
 
Finding a safety pilot (especially a reliable one) can be tricky. I would seek out a facebook group of local pilots, Indy might have one, I don't know about Fort Wayne. I know our group in KC has a lot of active members who are always posting availability for SPs. The next best thing would be to visit local flight schools and/or flying clubs.

Good luck on the rest of your IR. It's a fun rating to get!
 
I'm going through the same thing....the safety pilot sounds good in theory but it has been difficult to connect with other people. You either can't mesh on times (I fly REALLY early in the AM) or length of flight (I like 4ish hour outings) etc. And if you can't find someone just "Building hours" that doesn't want to log xc time, it really eats up time if you're not just "building." In an ideal world you'd fly with someone just building hours to get to their commercial mins. It's really a pain. I'm at the point that I am flying xc with my CFI (not my CFII) since I'm sneaking up on the XC mins. Cheaper to do the XC and hood time together w/ an instructor than do them separately. I'll keep trying for the elusive safety pilot outing....
 
Same here. I even have my dad as a safety pilot and it's hard to find time when we're both available.
 
Personally, I would continue to fly with a CFII and seek out some actual during your remaining hours, which you may not be able to do with a safety pilot. The experience and decision making in actual IFR will be very relevant to exercising your privileges safely later.
 
Go find some retired pilots hang out,find a pilot that still enjoys flying,and doesn’t mind being a safety pilot. Food can also be helpful.
 
For a lot of my time it was more divided up into smaller flights. Finding ppl who want to donate a 4-5 hour chunk flying with ya will be harder IMO.
Going up for 1.5-2 will be more manageable. Plus does your cfi have any other students that are already ppl rated going for IFR rating??? Instuement students can work together to log some time as long as you maintain VFR rules. To go IFR and be IMC you would need an IFR rated and current pilot, sometimes a bit harder to come by.
 
chemgeek said:
Personally, I would continue to fly with a CFII and seek out some actual during your remaining hours, which you may not be able to do with a safety pilot. The experience and decision making in actual IFR will be very relevant to exercising your privileges safely later.
Click to expand...

Yep, the next month or so as the seasons change, you should get a lot of ice-fee IMC. Early fall is the best time of year to get some time in actual.
 
Colin G said:
I am well past 1/2 way through instrument training, and according to my instructor I don't have much left to learn -- I still have the long XC which is scheduled, but his advice is just to get out there and practice, which I am planning on doing.

I have 20.5 hours out of the required 40 hours of simulated/actual instrument, so I just need to find a safety pilot to practice with.

Any advice on:
- What I should focus the time on?
- Any great way to find safety pilots?
Click to expand...
In April of this year, I was where you are at now: I had just under 20 hours flying instruments with my instructor, and I was looking for a safety pilot to log some hood time. I just happened to attend a dawn patrol breakfast at my home 'drome, and (extremely) lucky for me, I found a fantastic safety pilot! My safety pilot owned a plane just like mine that he had nearly 5000 hours in, and he already had an IR. I think the fact that he already had an IR with hundreds of hours while flying IFR really helped...he knew what to fly/practice and helped me as much as my CFII.
 
Have you practiced the old training figures? Getting these down can make you a really precise pilot. Pick a triangle to fly, and put one of these figures in the middle of each leg and do an approach at each airport. You can easily burn up 2 hours and get *tons* of good practice in.

https://www.gleim.com/public/pdf/av_updates/ipfmadd2.pdf

Also, it's not a bad idea to grab another instructor and ask him/her to assess your progress and readiness for the checkride. Every time I fly with a new instructor, they find something the previous one didn't teach me.
 
There has been an ad on the Spokane area Craigslist where some guy wants you to pay him $50 per flight hour to be his safety pilot. Claims it’s well worth the time you can log in his (apparently) C-182P. Gotta say, that’s a first for me
 
Go to the flight school. Look around for a kid wanting to fly professionally who just got their IFR but lacks to 250. That is where I am. I need another 30 hours of PIC. If you lived in Houston, we'd get it knocked out in 10 days....
 
If you can afford it, use your CFI for every training flight - no Safety Pilots. You will learn something on every flight and you most likely will be ready for your Practical at the minimum hours required.

And since you are using your CFI for every flight, get as much actual IMC as you can. Makes your first solo flight into IMC a non-event. A hood is not the same as IMC
 
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