Are you a VFR or IFR pilot?

[carusoam]

10 years in a non IFR M20C...

Got IR.

7 years in an IFR capable M20R.

All things being equal... An IR with a capable plane is better than being a VFR only pilot and plane...  When the family wants to cross vast distances somewhat reliably...  and hang out for a few days... and leave when the clouds are still at 1000’ AGL...

Nothing wrong with being VFR only,  IFR is better for my situation.  Working on getting current with the IR is next on the want to do list...

Best regards,

-a-

 

[kerry]

I'm a VFR pilot and been flying Mooney's 14 years.  I was working on my IFR and I contacted my insurance company and was told my IFR ticket would save me only $250 per year.  I'm base out of Las Vegas and I figured with all the blue skies here a IFR wouldn't benefit me much. I think if you live in southern California with all that fog then a IFR would be a must.  I do think a IFR rating would make anyone a better pilot but I also believe if you fly IFR in a single engine can add some risk.  If your engine quits your screwed,   I spoke with a Mooney pilot a few years ago that was in the soup and had an engine quit.  Clouds to the ground.  He landed in an orchard.  He was very lucky.  His wings were ripped off with the fuselage going right between a row of trees.  He said he'll never fly a single engine  in IFR conditions again.  I fly by the blue card.  I have a blue card in my wallet.  I pull it out.  If it matches the sky then I fly.  If it doesn't match then I don't fly.

[cliffy]

A different perspective here.

54 yrs flying, Wright Bros Award, 20,000+hrs, 7 jet type ratings, and more IFR than I can count BUT-

now that I'm retired and every day is Saturday, I have no need to be anywhere in a hurry so last year I dropped my ICC and now I'm VFR only!

Blue skies and bright sunshine for me and my flying :-) :-) @80 hrs/yr

If there's wx? I find a hotel and look around a new city for a day. The old adage says- "the accident investigation is usually done in clear weather".

Owned the M20D for 16 years, 1700 hrs in it. LAX to PDX to MKC to HOU to TUC to SAN just about covers my Mooney flight arena for those years. I don't have one of those nice colored maps to post (don't know how). 

The IFR rating is the best rating one can get even if you never use it. My Mooney flying has always been from LAS or PGA as a base so winter time Wx ALWAYS has ice at any usable altitude so the ICC didn't get used much anyway. I never pushed the ice issue in something without boots or hot wings!!!!!

 

[Marauder]

I flew for a few years VFR before getting my instrument rating 24 years ago. As someone mentioned above, the rating gives you a different appreciation for weather and helps round out that knowledge when you apply it to VFR flying.

I have become a more conservative IFR pilot after experiencing engine problems while IMC over some really bad terrain. I now like to have 1000' ceilings along my route but will still overfly lower IMC conditions if for short distances.

I still do a lot of VFR cross country flights when the weather is nice since my routes will look more like this:



Than this:



The rating gives you more opportunity to make a flight happen, but it also gives you the knowledge when it shouldn't happen.

And if you are a techno weenie like me, you get to figure out what all those knobs and buttons do on the panel


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[MooneyBob]

PPL 2013. Mooney 2014. IR 2014. 

January 2017 moving to the air park community in Florida. 

[Yooper Rocketman]

38 minutes ago, MooneyBob said:

PPL 2013. Mooney 2014. IR 2014. 

January 2017 moving to the air park community in Florida. 

Which one?

[Bob_Belville]

11 hours ago, Bob_Belville said:

I've owned 2 Mooneys, the current one for 5 years, the first for 11.

PPL 1969, IR 1978.

From home in NC I've had the Mooney in all the colored states below plus the Bahamas. I think I'll talk to Nancy about filling in those Western states next summer.

It's well and good to say you simply wait a day or two for the weather and go VFR but we made several trips this year to "events" that would not be delaying their schedules until we arrived. The actual Caravan flight into KOSH is VFR of course bud Madison was IFR when we arrived from NC a day earlier. MooneyMax was a weekend in June. We had to shoot an approach to get into KGGG Thursday afternoon, then we took off into a low ceiling Friday to visit KERV. It took an approach to near minimums to get in there. Likewise getting to the PPP in NH require flying in some IMC. I don't think we logged any Actual to and from Panama City Beach this year but we have in previous years.

Being "qualified and equipped" takes most of the sweat out of weather flying. Plus, and I'm not sure it's been mentioned, being on an IFR flight means not being concerned about penetrating Special Use Airspace. ATC has that for you.  

[pinerunner]

VFR working on IFR. I've passed the written and hope to take the flight test in the late spring.  I've learned enough now that some things are becoming clear. Simply keeping the plane right side up and flying a reasonable procedure is the easy part. If they would just clear out the sky for me and let me come down through the clouds following an ILS to a reasonable landing while everyone else is kept out of my way it would only take a bit more training than what I went through getting my private and then commercial. In the real world you have to declare an emergency to get that kind of hand holding. The big trick in IFR, as far as I can see, is what I call the office management. I can easily see where a pilot can get himself into a situation where he is overwhelmed by the combination of flying, communication, planning, etc. I was raised on a seaplane base where bush flying, maximum performance takeoff and landing, VFR navigation far from civilization were the order of the day. IFR did almost nothing for that. These days there are a few GPS approaches to lakes in Alaska I guess. What IFR gives you is a more complete understanding of the whole aviation system and more options to fit into and use it. I think it makes you a more complete pilot and look forward to lower insurance rates and very, very simple IFR flight plans.

Edited December 2, 2016 by pinerunner

[1964-M20E]

PPL in 87 IR in 2012 best thing I ever did.  I  have been able to safely make many fights that possibly could have been made under VFR but it would have been nerve wracking and I have made many other flights that simply could not have been made VFR.

 

You need to define your mission.  If you are going to use a plane to travel >100NM and plan on staying there overnight or longer you should seriously consider getting an IR.  If all you are doing is short 100NM or less trips on clear blue sky days then you do not need an IR.

[TWinter]

I knew when I posted that comment it would get hit with many posts of resistance. That's okay and I'm thick skinned. Many on the site are IFR. Some like myself are working on it.

Paul "gsxrpilot" seems to get the best handle on what I'm saying. I never said that the rating did not require more skill and proficiency testing. I did say that having a IFR stamp on your license does not mean that IFR rating makes you a better pilot over a good VFR.

Example: I flew a few months back with a guy who has commercial rating.. Went right through the ranks from PPL, IFR to Commercial and now wanting to get multi.

He knew I started working on IFR. He said, " Hey lets go up in my plane and I'll show you some IFR procedures".. I'm okay, lets go!!  We take off and I'm watching him get things squared away after we take off..several minutes go by and I notice he has not retracted the gear? ummmm, okay. As the plane climbs very slow and sluggish I'm thinking are we ever going to raise the gear?..Finally he looks down and notices the gear is down, he says " Wow I forgot to put the gear up, there we go, up now, I wondered why we were climbing so slow". We start an approach to a airport maybe 30 miles away..he has the IPad procedure pulled up, starts setting the auto pilot and setting up for the instrument approach"..Tells me what he is doing..I'm just watching and listening. Picks his approach and we start to line up and enter, but wait....we are lined up on the wrong approach for the runway. I'm hearing traffic announcing a different runway as the active, but he continues until someone over the radio questioned his choice of runway and approach..he soon realizes we are set up wrong and we abort the approach. We redid the approach correctly on a 2nd attempt. We then head back to our home dome..at this point I'm just hoping he remembers to put the gear down! No awareness of airspeeds on landing, no GUMPS check etc..He has a IFR and Commercial rating so according to many of these replies he is a safer pilot than I am?

Example #2. As I have posted before. My brother is retired Navy. He was a instructor at TopGun and flew the F-18 Super Hornet. While he was on vacation a few years ago I took him up in my Mooney. I let him handle the controls for a few minutes..Now this is a fighter jock with thousands and thousands of military hours and has over 800 carrier landings. When put at the controls of a 200 hp Mooney in GA airspace approaching a non-controlled airport he was in total foreign grounds. Point being... I have no idea what rating you have to have to fly a F-18 Super Hornet, but I think whatever it is has absolutely NO validity in a Mooney M20E in GA airspace. Even though he has thousands of F18 hrs is he a better IFR pilot than most of the IFR guys on here? Now he is flying for JetBlue, he had to actually earn his civilian ratings after retiring from the Navy when signed w/ JB. We have not flown since he retired and joined JB, I'm sure things would be different now. I'm just trying to explain my point of view and say that the IFR stamp is not the holy sign-off of the skill set of the individual. It's how you apply your skill and knowledge.

I knew I would get flamed on this post, but the point was the IFR rating "stamp" DOES NOT always make one a better pilot. It allows you more opportunity as pilot. IFR is a great tool. I just spent a ton trying to make my bird a great IFR platform, I've been studying IFR procedures and working on ground portions. I hope to have the rating by the end of 2017. The only thing I can say for sure is if I do earn the rating I wont tell VFR guys the rating will make them "better pilots", I've never flown with them. They might already be awesome pilots. I will tell them it has allowed me more utility with my airplane. To each their own and we all fly for different reasons.

 

-Tom

[gsengle]

Not sure anyone has made this point but for me this is a big deal. The IR let's you go places and enjoy the trip.

Sure you can wait for a VFR day to go but most of us have to be back for work at some point, and weather forecasts are unreliable. I hated spending weekends stressing about marginal VFR weather or deciding to leave early because of weather or ceilings that would be no big deal at all with the IR.

A Mooney is hobbled as a traveling machine without an IR.


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[gsxrpilot]

I rarely get to shoot an approach to minimums and therefore fly regularly with a safety pilot, under the hood to get my approaches in. But there have been countless flights where VFR would have been very sketchy, but filing IFR allowed me to climb through a layer a couple of thousand feet thick, fly to my destination, descend and break out at 2000 ft or so and shoot an easy visual approach. In 7 years of flying with the rating, I have almost 40 hours of IMC and only 2 approaches shot to within a couple of hundred feet of minimums. (Not including training/practice approaches).

[MooneyBob]

1 hour ago, Yooper Rocketman said:

Which one?

Wing South Naples. 

[Danb]

Tom your point is well taken there are many lousy pilots out there both IR and VR, I was flying into LOUISVILLE with a high time pilot in the right seat, mother nature didn't play nice that day, we g had an approach closet to min. in moderate rain, outside the marker ATC had us go missed due to something on the runway(it does happen), giving us vectors to reestablish us on the approach, my copilot started to tell me I was 180* off, after I quickly had him shut up and watch the IPAD and G-1000 to learn and see situational awareness as it unfolded then landed at minimums he was shacking literally as we got out of the plane now this was a high time IFR pilot...pretty bad. 

So there are many piss poor pilots out there still alive, not attending MAPA programs or in case Bonanza pilot proficiency programs or for that matter not even staying current, somehow paper current, these all shed poorly on us.

 

[Bob_Belville]

ISTM we're talking past each other, Tom knows some sorry pilots who have IR. Well, duh! What do you call the guy/gal that ranked last in medical school? Doctor. Can you imagine how bad those pilots were before they got their IR! Surely Tom is not suggesting that getting their IR made then worse than they were before!

OTOH, most if not all, the responders to his thread have zero interest in defending hypothetical mediocre pilots but instead would encourage Tom and others to see the value of getting their IR.  

You're welcome.

 

[Bob_Belville]

Just now, bluehighwayflyer said:

I operate well beyond the limits you guys set forth for a non instrument rated Mooney pilot, and have for a quarter century now in lots of different makes and models of aircraft.  To me it is about two things. What I can afford and what I enjoy, both of which FOR ME are biased completely towards VFR flight. To each his or her own, though. There is no question that an instrument rated pilot can get greater utility out of their Mooney, but to suggest that non instrument rated pilots are limited to 100 nm flights on blue skies days is nothing more than pure hyperbole. 

Jim

There's no one more self righteously obnoxious about smoking than a former smoker. And I'm sure almost all of us with IR did a lot of cross country flying before we had our IR. (I know I got caught on top of a solid deck more than once in those days. I had 350 hours when I got my IR and 270 of those hours are logged as cross country.) 

But as I've said a million times, hyperbole is not a dirty word! 

[201er]

9 hours ago, kerry said:

I'm a VFR pilot and been flying Mooney's 14 years.  I was working on my IFR and I contacted my insurance company and was told my IFR ticket would save me only $250 per year.

By that logic you've already overpaid $3,500 on your insurance. You need about 20 hours of instruction. So say at $50/hour (if you don't have a friend that can do it), that's $1000 bucks. The flying costs just come out of your normal flying budget cause you can fly for a hundred dollar hamburger or fly instrument practice, so it happens on your normal budget but in place of other flying. After 4 years, you're saving money and you have the rating and the knowledge in your hand. Sounds like a terrible deal not to.

[1964-M20E]

27 minutes ago, bluehighwayflyer said:

I operate well beyond the limits you guys set forth for a non instrument rated Mooney pilot, and have for a quarter century now in lots of different makes and models of aircraft.  To me it is about two things. What I can afford and what I enjoy, both of which FOR ME are biased completely towards VFR flight. To each his or her own, though. There is no question that an instrument rated pilot can get greater utility out of their Mooney, but to suggest that non instrument rated pilots are limited to 100 nm flights on blue skies days is nothing more than pure hyperbole. 

Jim

Jim

Point well taken.

I was not setting limits on VFR flying or saying you can not make long trips VFR just reality in some situations.  There were many 300NM to 600NM flights I could have done VFR without a cloud in the sky and I stayed for several days.  I still file IFR just to stay fluent talking with ATC.  My trip to KORL for thanksgiving last week is a prime example.   Having an IR makes the decision to go by Mooney much easier but not always a sure thing at least for me.

Finally having an IR lets me choose the altitude that works best for the trip as opposed to the weather choosing my altitude for me.  Sometimes there is a compromises on altitude and routes regardless of your rating.

[ziggysanchez]

I'm a 2000 hour VFR pilot. Over 1800 of those hours in a Cirrus SR 22 150 or so in a 172 and 60 hrs in my first month of Mooney ownership (M20K). Got my PPL in 2010 and have gotten plenty of utility out of my aircraft flying long cross country flights VFR. I've had to scrub very few flights over that time because of weather. Many of my flights are over 750nm and flown between 11k and 16k and most of them are over flat land. 

[flyboy0681]

I joined my partnership in 2010 and decided to get my IR out of pure frustration. My base is a couple of miles from the ocean and I had to scrub many trips due to low lying clouds and couldn't get out. I got my rating in 2014 and have had a 100% departure rate ever since. The only problem I have found, if you can call it that, is staying current. It's much more difficult than I thought it would be.

Edited December 1, 2016 by flyboy0681

[Zwaustin]

Both depending on weather. IR has allowed me to complete many longer cross country trips that would not have been completed otherwise or would have been delayed. Well worth the training and cost. Highly recommend getting Instrument rating right after your private. 

[rbuck]

10 hours ago, cliffy said:

I don't have one of those nice colored maps to post (don't know how)

Just use this link: http://visitedstatesmap.com. Once you're there, click the states you've been to, download the map (I do a small size), and add it to your signature block in your MooneySpace settings.

[cliffy]

COOL OK I'll try it today sometime Thanks!!!

[Hank]

{to the tune of My Dad's Bigger Than Your Dad}

My license is better than your license!

My license is better than yours!

It don't make no difference,

'Cause everything is better than yours!

Can't we all just get along? My longest VFR flight was twice as long as my longest IFR flight, in a shorter timespan [07-10, VFR; 10-16 IFR; been licensed 9½ years, rated 6½ years]. Never did have many cancelations, but did have some that I would really like to have made . . . That happens less now, but still happens.

[Danb]

17 hours ago, Bob_Belville said:

.