Are all your X countries >50 miles?
Question on PIC and XC time for IFR rating
- Thread starter Blueangel
- Start date
Im just curious how/why you logged so much XC time Dual getting your PPL. Looking at my log book, my total Dual XC time was 5.4 hours compared to your 43 hours dual. I know some people go through more XC's for comfort or skill but that's 8X as much XC time logged dual than I did. 2-3x I'd be less inclined to ask but 43 hours? That's a lot of time to be paying an instructor for a ride along... In fact that's more hours than some people spend getting their license.
Also, dont forget there is a XC component to the IR. Typically, most instructors seem to do this the same way they do the PPL XC with a "short" 50NM trip to check progress before going on a "long" 250NM trip with a stop 100NM from the start to meet the requirement. Both XC's are done with your CFII but count towards your PIC XC time. You'll probably pick up a minimum of 0.75 to 1.5 on the short xc and 2 to 2.5 hours on the long one so that's another 3-4 hours... And that's just based on the speed of the plane going direct; in all likelihood, due to routing, holds, delays, and approaches you're easily looking at your needed 5 hours and if it looks like you're going to wind up short, you can always spend some time circling in a hold or shooting missed approaches. In fact, if you do an approach to missed and then an approach to landing at each airport you'll easily add another hour and putting you well above 50 hours by then.
If you still find you're just at 50 hours before the check ride, personally, I'd go put in an extra XC or two trying to get the time up to 51-55 hours... If you're right on the line, the DPE might take a closer look at your log book and you dont want to have one of your XC's disqualified on the day of your check ride... an extra 1% (0.5hrs) is good but more is better 2-10% is likely just to get a cursory glance
If you choose not to put in more xc time and go for the checkride right at 50hrs, I'd recommend sending your logs to the DPE a few days before the checkride so they can review them. Nothing worse then spending the time and money on a DPE only to have a log issue on the day of.
All that being said, with your 88 hours of XC, I doubt the DPE will look too closely either way... You might have done 43 hours as non-PIC, Dual, Pre-PPL but chances are they'll expect the actual number of those numbers to be much less and even if they do the math, they probably wont disqualify any of your PIC XC's given the expectation that you spent more time doing DUAL XC than many people spend getting their PPL.
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Blueangel
Line Up and Wait
The reason why I did more XC dual time is because the CFI that finished me up had me fly farther to the training site. Long story so I won't bore you with the gory details. I spent way too much getting my PPL so lesson learned. Fortunately the bonuses I received did cover it. Anyways I will probably take a long xc trip to visit family up north before finishing the IR that will handle the remainder xc pic time. One reason why I want to do an intensive IR program to save on time and costs.
How long is long? If you can manage it, you should try for a point that's at least 250NM straight-line distance from point of departure with 2 more stops for a total distance of 300NM. You'll meet 61.129(4)(i) for your commercial rating. Even if the commercial isnt something you currently plan on doing, no reason not to take advantage of a long XC. I've heard a few people tell stories about how they did a long 300+ NM trip but only landed at 1 or 2 airports because they either didnt think about it beforehand or had no intention of going for a commercial rating and thus had to do the XC again because of insufficient stops or a distance just shy of the requirement when they did go for their commercial.
Again, nothing like spending 3-4 hours doing a 298NM XC and having it disqualified over 2NM or not enough landings at different airports.
The regs call for a XC of at least 300NM with landings at 3 different airports 1 of which must be 250NM straightline distance from the original point of departure.
The regs also say it should be solo and the most common interpretation that I've seen is solo means sole-occupant though a few instructors I've talked to have been more liberal in what that means (after all, you aren't required to log passengers) and the FAA doesnt explicitly spell out solo=sole-occupant the way they do for student pilots. Still there is no official FAA interpretation that I can find on the reg so you may wish to do it as the sole-occupant. Make sure to clearly log it as meeting the requirement for 61.129(4)(i) so that you can easily identify it and there is no question later.
Blueangel
Line Up and Wait
I plan to fly from KMYF to KCIC to visit family and then to Pine Mountain Lake to look at homes and then back to San Diego so that would be 2 stops in a Cessna 172 each way. I would most likely land at Harris Ranch for lunch or perhaps KWVI to grab lunch at Ellas restaurant. Spend a fun weekend getting it done and visiting family. In a Cessna 172 or Piper Archer that will be enough time about 3-4 hours each way total of 6-8 hours to meet the requirements for both IFR XC PIC time and the commercial requirement.
-Scott
-Scott
azpilot
Line Up and Wait
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azpilot
unless we're in a philosophy class...
JeffDG
Touchdown! Greaser!
Except for extremely high values of 1
According to FAA interpretations, you can log "multi-day" cross-country time such that your trip out and your trip back, even though its separated by a few days in between counts as one...
That's the technical FAA interpretation and you find the interpretation online if you search the FAA interpretation database
That being said, you are meeting the distance requirement in a single day/direction so personally, I would just make sure I put in at a 2nd and/or 3rd (as needed) stop airport just to be "safe." I dont mind using interpretations where needed but find it best to avoid forcing too much on the DPE in terms of altering their world view; while they have to accept the interpretation, they do not have to pass you because of the interpretation (that is to say forcing something they disagree with down their throats unnecessarily could result in them looking for other reasons not to continue the flight).
I'd look for something like French Valley (F70). They have a nice North/South oriented runway that if you take an inland routing only adds 6 miles to the trip and assuming conditions are right (traffic, winds, etc) you can probably get away with a straight in touch and go on runway 36 so the total time required is probably only 5-10 minutes.
Again, I'd also clearly label the flight as meeting requirements for 61.129 so you can find it easily in the future too and so there is no later questioning whether you met the requirements as you explicitly stated it at the time you logged the flight.
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EminiTrader
Cleared for Takeoff
When I was still VFR I flew into IMC inadvertently (and that post is around here somewhere). I was the only pilot in the plane and I logged it as actual.
My thoughts? Simple I was PIC and I was in actual IMC. How else could you log it?
My thoughts? Simple I was PIC and I was in actual IMC. How else could you log it?
You can still be VFR and log actual. There are several threads explaining various situations. One is flying in the Midwest or in the desert on a moonless night. It's still clear and a million however you must rely on instruments as you don't have a horizon outside.