The Most Difficult Part of IFR Aviation

murphey said:
Finding a CFII that will work on my schedule, won't take off on vacations (that's right, multiple and for weeks on end), works with a syllabus, and won't quit after the first 1-2 flights because they've gotten a great job that's not in aviation and don't have time to teach anymore, are competent, aren't out to take me for my entire checkbook,....

Yup - just about everything that can go wrong with finding a CFII has happened to me. I started in 2007, need to take the written *again* and, oh, never mind.
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Sounds like you need one of those 2 week deals. They're advertised all over the various magazines. I think one of them is called PIC where the CFII comes to your location for like 10 days and y'all go at it for that time period. Maybe you ought to look into that.
 
For me, it is being able to say "no". There are times when someone will offer you the world if you take the flight. Self-confidence is key.
 
For me, the most difficult aspect of IFR flying was getting myself to practice enough to maintain proficiency. It was also the most important.
 
All the little nuances in the regs, many of which you never think about until you're in some odd ball situation and are trying to find out if it's kosher or not.
 
mscard88 said:
Sounds like you need one of those 2 week deals. They're advertised all over the various magazines. I think one of them is called PIC where the CFII comes to your location for like 10 days and y'all go at it for that time period. Maybe you ought to look into that.
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FYI, he made that post in 2011. I wonder if he finished yet? I'm in the same boat as he was, although to a lesser extent.
 
Most difficult part? Two.

1. Teaching procedures in a vacuum. Understanding that all of the procedures and regulations and rules fit together to create a system gives them context that makes them much easier to learn.

2. CFIs who don't understand #1 or do not have the ability to simplify.


The best example of #2 is the way holds are taught. It is really such a simple concept that is made hell for instrument students because of the way it is taught.
 
Flying approaches and enroute become the easiest with practice. They stay easy since you do them a lot.

The hardest are the things you do when things go wrong (i.e. partial panel). They are the hardest to begin with and even harder in real life when the adrenaline gets flowing. Even in training.

To make matters worse, you don't stay proficient with routine flying, even if you fly a lot. After you get your ticket, it's pretty important to force time to practice the odd-ball things that can happen. If you mess up when things are going fine, well, there is some margin for error. When you mess up when things have already started going wrong, it can hurt.
 
The LPV approach takes the worry out of most of the approachs. That and flying the ILS approachs make foe a confident IFR pilot.
 
I can study and even practice flying departures, holds, approaches and atc communications at home. All of that is easy. The hardest part for me is hitting a bumps in a cloud and trying to trust the instruments reading straight in level when your head is telling you something completely different. This especially holds true when you are bumping around in IMC and ATC decides to ramble off a new minute long clearance to you and you have to write it all down but check your instruments enough to keep the the plane flying straight. That is the hardest part of IFR flying. Could probably be avoided with a good autopilot though....
 
TheGolfPilot said:
I can study and even practice flying departures, holds, approaches and atc communications at home. All of that is easy. The hardest part for me is hitting a bumps in a cloud and trying to trust the instruments reading straight in level when your head is telling you something completely different. This especially holds true when you are bumping around in IMC and ATC decides to ramble off a new minute long clearance to you and you have to write it all down but check your instruments enough to keep the the plane flying straight. That is the hardest part of IFR flying. Could probably be avoided with a good autopilot though....
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Autopilot is definitely a help when copying a route change, briefing and approach, etc.

But remember that you can always ask ATC to slow down the clearance even (especially!) on a in-flight route amendment. I've heard some great ATC folks reading slowly and spelling the waypoint identifiers. And, especially when in an unfamiliar area, there's no penalty for adding, "unfamiliar. please spell the fixes" to your "ready to copy" transmission. That slows thinks down a lot and helps you get it down the first time.
 
midlifeflyer said:
Autopilot is definitely a help when copying a route change, briefing and approach, etc.

But remember that you can always ask ATC to slow down the clearance even (especially!) on a in-flight route amendment. I've heard some great ATC folks reading slowly and spelling the waypoint identifiers. And, especially when in an unfamiliar area, there's no penalty for adding, "unfamiliar. please spell the fixes" to your "ready to copy" transmission. That slows thinks down a lot and helps you get it down the first time.
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The particular place I had in mind is east bound along V186 usually between or just before Fillmore or Van Nuys at around 10AM. Reroutes are long and controllers are busy. I agree controllers are very accommodating most of the time, but when they are busy, and your reroute takes 15-30 seconds to read off they probably would rather run you into a mountain and get rid of you then reread that routing. There, if asked to spell something out, they would probably tell you to disregard and vector you. Not that that is a bad thing.
 
For me, it's dealing with turbulence when hand flying; a 172 is a whiffle ball in turbulence. Single pilot IFR in hard IMC is tough work. . .I use a single axis autopilot that'll track a nav source, but in big bumps, you may have to do it yorself.

The other part is the general lack of solid redundancy in simpler GA aurcraft. It's in your mind that partial panel usually doesn't come with an announcement, or a Master Caution warning. You have to recognize the failures. . .
 
Pilots that really have their act together have a "time budget". An amount of time they know they have until they have to do something else. That way they don't get rushed. I can do two things at once, not three. But both of those things better be pretty easy or previously rehearsed. If I really have to do a new hard thing, like enter a hold or fly a missed, doing just it is best.
 
I don't think anyone area of IFR can be deemed the hardest as all have their challenges. My personal toughest landing under IFR was a simple ILS to mins to a snow covered runway without an ALS (only REILs) in fairly heavy snow with an iced over windshield (save for a small clearing that the windshield heat took care of). The approach itself was easy as pie, but seeing the runway...not so much. It felt pretty good to get in on that one-especially since the guy behind me had to go missed thanks to the snow intensifying after I landed.
 
Its funny looking at this thread, all the concern about VFR GA pilots flying IFR.

I spent the entire day today at "swift camp" an annual event where swift owners gather for a week and help each other complete annuals etc... Most of the swift owners are retired or close to retirement airline or military pilots. They were all talking about how difficult it is to adapt to VFR flying after a career of flying IFR. Feelings of helplessness, confusion. No joke.
 
Icing (in a non-FIKI SEL).
 
dell30rb said:
Its funny looking at this thread, all the concern about VFR GA pilots flying IFR.

I spent the entire day today at "swift camp" an annual event where swift owners gather for a week and help each other complete annuals etc... Most of the swift owners are retired or close to retirement airline or military pilots. They were all talking about how difficult it is to adapt to VFR flying after a career of flying IFR. Feelings of helplessness, confusion. No joke.
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Easy is whatever you do the most...
 
TheGolfPilot said:
The particular place I had in mind is east bound along V186 usually between or just before Fillmore or Van Nuys at around 10AM. Reroutes are long and controllers are busy. I agree controllers are very accommodating most of the time, but when they are busy, and your reroute takes 15-30 seconds to read off they probably would rather run you into a mountain and get rid of you then reread that routing. There, if asked to spell something out, they would probably tell you to disregard and vector you. Not that that is a bad thing.
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And then getting that reroute plugged into the GPS, single pilot, no auto pilot. Click, click........., scan, adjust heading, click, click, click......., scan, click, click, click etc. Wipe brow, whew, one down, six to go.
 
The hardest part for me was taking the bloomin' test. All that equipment I've never seen, figuring out how to tell where I am using cockpit readouts I've never heard of . . . At least I didn't have to answer any questions about A-N courses, but some of it was as applicable to my flying as translating drumbeats and smoke signals. (I took it in Jan '10; read like it was written in 1960, and setup to include things from those new, modern planes with fancy stuff like one VOR and a headset.)

That being said, if I've not flown any actual recently, despite practicing with foggles, I'm always a little tense when I enter IMC enroute. After a couple of minutes, I relax again as I settle back into the routine,and everything is alright. I have little experience "blasting through a low layer to clear skies above," but when it happens its great. Usually I'm that lucky guy who climbs into the clouds and slogs along for an hour or two before flying out of it, or my trip will start and end in VFR conditions, with a chunk of soup in the middle.

But it's a great feeling to shoot an approach at the end of your trip, break out and there's the runway in front if you, right where it's supposed to be.
 
I'm training for me ticket now. The hardest part has been finding a safety pilot. All but 3 of my hours have been with my ii.
 
Staying current, much less proficient.
 
Task management single pilot IFR in an environment where ATC behaves as though you have a PNF. The other one is needle ball airspeed real world unexpected. That one is a killer. I generally try to avoid hard extended IMC in my clap trap, I simply don't have confidence in my instrumentation and rather avoid the scenario with family on board since I lack attitude indicator redundancy and my OEM autopilot inputs crap out if either the vacum AI or DG crap out. If I had better instrumentation no sweat, alas money is an object in my life.
 
To address the original question - I'm not instrunent rated yet.. I was checkride ready when my engine popped in mid-October, so I'll probably take the ride this Summer sometime. But to me, the two most difficult things are weather(and it's still not easy for me) and handling the workload without any help. Reading plates, tuning radios, identifying navaids, keeping on heading and altitude, deciphering ATC instructions, tracking a radial or glideslope, doing the missed, doing ALL that stuff by yourself can be a significant workload, and sometimes things can happen quite fast. I definitely find it easier now than when I first started(where I had to be bottle-fed by the instructor), but in the beginning it was a huge challenge.
 
TulsaWeather said:
marginal weather.

your go/no-go decisions are now shades of gray instead of b/w.
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That is the truth. I kid folks that getting the IR simply made weather decisions harder. When I was VFR only is was simple. Could I make the trip staying out of the clouds with legal cloud clearance? If yes, fly. If no, drive. Then I got the IR. It added a whole level or two of complexity to my go/no go decisions, especially in the weather department. We've got a fantastic ice machine to the east of here (Cascade Mountains). If there is so much as a hint that icing will occur I want nothing to do with it. A 172 or 182 is not the plane for those conditions. If I'm going to have to fly in the clag all the way across the state, I'm driving. Single pilot IFR is WORK and 2 hours straight of it just isn't worth it. I fly for fun, not because I have to.

Now, the biggest challenge is staying current, and, more importantly, proficient. I am neither. I need some decent weather and a CFII to cure that.
 
Ghery said:
That is the truth. I kid folks that getting the IR simply made weather decisions harder.
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Don't even have to kid about it. It's true.

You're switching from a decision where it was a solid no-go when you were a VFR only pilot, to a decision to launch into weather you absolutely couldn't before.

The focus points in the weather briefing for safety-of-flight and good-outcome of flight change considerably.
 
Ghery said:
That is the truth. I kid folks that getting the IR simply made weather decisions harder. When I was VFR only is was simple. Could I make the trip staying out of the clouds with legal cloud clearance? If yes, fly. If no, drive. Then I got the IR. It added a whole level or two of complexity to my go/no go decisions, especially in the weather department...
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:yeahthat:
 
flyingtexas said:
What do you find is the most difficult procedure or aspect of IFR flying? I'm still in the ground school part of IFR, self-study, and alot of the material appears pretty complex to me, and so wanted to hear some feedback about what the pros think is the most difficult part of flying IFR.

Thanks
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My opinion: its the juggling of all of the balls at once. Any one of them is no problem. It's just doing them altogether at the same time. Because of that, you really need to drill how to do each task essentially perfectly and effortlessly so that you can put them all together. This is why it is not good to just go start flying approaches. I think it is really important to get each task down before you move on and try to put too much together.
 
TheGolfPilot said:
The particular place I had in mind is east bound along V186 usually between or just before Fillmore or Van Nuys at around 10AM. Reroutes are long and controllers are busy. I agree controllers are very accommodating most of the time, but when they are busy, and your reroute takes 15-30 seconds to read off they probably would rather run you into a mountain and get rid of you then reread that routing. There, if asked to spell something out, they would probably tell you to disregard and vector you. Not that that is a bad thing.
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Sounds like you fly that route often. What is your departure point, destination, filed route and altitude?
 
luvflyin said:
Sounds like you fly that route often. What is your departure point, destination, filed route and altitude?
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I go into Hawthorne a few times a year, also been to CMA, SMO, CRQ, and CMO, UDD in the past year but HHR is more regular. Fly out of Concord KCCR. Depending on the winds I'll file for gorman or fillmore then airways to the Powup intersection. Despite my efforts to avoid a reroute I am yet not to get one. I've gotten vectors from FIM (which is easy) radials off of SMO, Airways to LAX then vectors. I don't have an autopilot so being in IMC while trying to plug in frequencies and write down new routing while trying to keep the plane straight can be a chore. It seems like whatever I file for they try to give me something else coming over the pass. I have always crossed the pass at 11k. Descents into there are a blast. I like seeing all the stopped traffic on the freeways while flying 180mph + right over their heads!
 
For me it's definitely receiving IFR clearances, especially in the air, in an area you're unfamiliar with. Flew to San Antonio VFR yesterday for the first time and had to file pop up IFR since I ran into weather. The controller was throwing all kinds of unfamiliar names at me and I had no idea if they were intersections, VORs, airports, cities or what. And there's a lot of pressure to get it right the first time reading it back when the controller is busy.


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That's kind of a FUBARed area. Usually Bakersfield Approach will start queing reroutes south of town and will start getting guys to start climbing before throwing them to SoCal. You've got BUR and VNY arrivals blasting through there (especially south of LHS---inbound from PMD.... as a VFR guy, if I can't get the climb to blow north of Tehachapi quick enough, I go direct GMN and then PMD - SOGGI to get to UDD/TRM. Keeps me out of all you fancy fliers' ways. My favorite exhilarating descent story was southbound on the Coastal Transition headed for LGB. I crossed the numbers at LAX and got an immediate vector and descent into a wide base for 30 at LGB... Not gonna say I didn't have to lift a wing and step on a pedal to make that one happen!


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mohamedpac said:
For me it's definitely receiving IFR clearances, especially in the air, in an area you're unfamiliar with. Flew to San Antonio VFR yesterday for the first time and had to file pop up IFR since I ran into weather. The controller was throwing all kinds of unfamiliar names at me and I had no idea if they were intersections, VORs, airports, cities or what. And there's a lot of pressure to get it right the first time reading it back when the controller is busy.


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Asking for the spelling helps out a lot.
 
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