Get the rating.

[gsxrpilot]

As usual @carusoam is spot on with his summary!

We all go back and forth over and over again and then A steps in and wraps it all up in a bow and it's done.

[Skates97]

Sometimes even commercial can't get in... My wife and step-daughter were flying Allegiant from LAX to OGD (Ogden, UT). Before they got there a fog bank rolled in and they couldn't land. They diverted to Las Vegas (I think because that is the most convenient for the airline to make the next planned flight leg), and now they are driving a rental car from Vegas to SLC. (The other option was to take the flight all the way back to LAX and hope they could make it tomorrow) They left for LAX at 3am this morning and she's really wishing she was flying there in our Mooney. We couldn't have gotten into Ogden either but we could have landed at South Valley Regional.

 

[Guest]

4 hours ago, carusoam said:

John,

I've noticed a few common threads along the way...

1) Once you fly a Mooney, There is no going back...

2) Once you fly a FUel injected Mooney, There is no going back...

3) Once you fly a TC'd Mooney, There is no going back...

4) Once you fly a big bore Mooney, there I see no going back...

5) Once you fly on your own IR, There is no going back...

6) Flying in the flight levels, in a 252, with GXSR... sounds like the beginning of an addiction that may be a real challenge to control.

7) Taking a trip to AAA, same thing...

8) Flying to the Summit, same...

9) KOSH, via the Caravan...

10) Mooney Flying to the grocery store....  awesome!  

11) There is always another level...

12) There is always going to be another level...

Stuff that comes to a PP's mind.

Best regards,

-a-

 

 

I’ll have to disagree on number one, having flown my 400 I don’t see me in a Mooney again.

Clarence

[MIm20c]

17 hours ago, gsxrpilot said:

Thanks Paul - all good info.  As a member of the climbing community years ago, we also knew that altitude affected different people differently and it often didn't have anything to do with physical fitness. 

I'm certainly not an expert here, but I do want to know as much as possible about subject, as I do fly in in the flight levels every chance I get. I think the key points for me are...

1. Take all high altitude flight very seriously. Be deliberate, professional, and proactive.
2. Know your personal symptoms of hypoxia and be expecting them.
3. Have a pulse ox and use it. In the absence of an always on, alarming, unit, I set a schedule to check mine regularly, every 10 or 15 minutes.
4. Add the O2 gauges to the regular scan including ships O2 gauge, mask flow rate, pulse ox, sensorcon CO2.
5. Have a second O2 source ready at hand. I keep a can sitting in my lap when I'm on the mask.
6. Use autopilot altitude pre-select with lower altitude loaded and armed so a single button push will send the airplane to lower altitude.
7. Take a second pilot along periodically to verify all of the above.

What else am I missing?

Paul, how much are the alarming units?  Worth the investment since you spend time in the FL’s?

Might be a good idea to practice the preset emergency decent to see what the max rate is without going over redline.  Another feet per min setting that stays out of the yellow for bumpy days.

[carusoam]

21 minutes ago, M20Doc said:

I’ll have to disagree on number one, having flown my 400 I don’t see me in a Mooney again.

Clarence

A few people actually graduate to higher levels of power.

Unfortunately Mooney has topped out with 310TN'd ponies...

If I was made to change rides... there is that turbine bug going around.... 

Best regards,

-a-

[KLRDMD]

3 hours ago, carusoam said:

If I was made to change rides... there is that turbine bug going around.... 

Turbine would be nice but above my pay grade.

[Releew]

Earning the rating is one thing....using it is entirely another.  I know several fellow pilots who have the IR and have never shot an actual approach, tp actual or personal minimums.  The training alone makes you have a better understanding of IMC flying but I do not think it necessarily makes you a "better pilot."  Practice is the net result of proficiency.  So if you use the aircraft as a must go machine, no doubt the IR ticket with practice is a must have.  If not, there are so many tools available for the PP to utilize for cross country flying.  

Rick

[Hank]

We often say that "IFR training made me a better pilot" because the limits are so much tighter. Even when going somewhere VFR, I tend to pay more attention to altitude and heading. When flying IFR, we are allowed +/- 200 feet, but I trained to +/- 100 feet.  I've always tried to keep the magenta line between my wingtips with my G430W set to 50 nm. We also learn what power settings to use for the performance that we desire rather than just pulling back the throttle and seeing what we get.

This is, of course, on top of aircraft control in IMC when I can't see outside, how to find the airport when I can't see it,  etc.

So maybe instead of becoming a "better pilot," maybe I only became a "more accurate pilot."

[Skates97]

10 minutes ago, Hank said:

We often say that "IFR training made me a better pilot" because the limits are so much tighter. Even when going somewhere VFR, I tend to pay more attention to altitude and heading. When flying IFR, we are allowed +/- 200 feet, but I trained to +/- 100 feet.  I've always tried to keep the magenta line between my wingtips with my G430W set to 50 nm. We also learn what power settings to use for the performance that we desire rather than just pulling back the throttle and seeing what we get.

This is, of course, on top of aircraft control in IMC when I can't see outside, how to find the airport when I can't see it,  etc.

So maybe instead of becoming a "better pilot," maybe I only became a "more accurate pilot."

Not having ventured into the IFR world I did not know that about the altitude, I thought it had to be more precise that +/- 200 feet. I just fly VFR but I try to stay within 50' of my chosen altitude. I don't have a GPS in the panel but on my tablet it tells me the distance of deviation off my planned route and I try to keep that under a mile with as few course corrections as possible, constantly monitoring my headings. I like to look at Flightaware after my flights to see how I did on maintaining altitude and then I pull up the track log on my tablet to see how close it matches my planned route. I think regardless of whether we are IFR/VFR we should be constantly challenging ourselves to improve.

This was our flight back from AZ on New Years Day. Altitude was pretty steady and the routing was decent, with the exception of drifting north of it west of Palm Springs but I wanted to stay in the middle of the pass as it was dark at that point.

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/N78878/history/20180101/2334Z/tracklog

[carusoam]

I was amazed with how accurately my M20C could hold a course...

It had no AP.  It was always flown at low altitudes. It never got to show its skills... I expected that it didn't have any...

As I became familiar with the plane...

It went above the cloud levels where the air was smooth.  A heavy wing could be balanced by burning the fuel off the one side.

The plane flew true. Keeping it on the magenta/ black LCD line was very doable. +/- 1/10th of a mile...

Experimenting with weight shifting inside the cabin we were able to steer the plane, climb and descend... without touching the controls...

All done before the IR. But, after a couple of engineering degrees...

Weight shifting... much easier to turn right by leaning into the copilot's area.  Turning left kind of had a cabin wall in the way.  Need to stay ahead of the plane and anticipate what needs to be done.  Then act accordingly...

 

getting help from the other three passengers would require waking them up to explain the experiment I was running...  

 

Fun Precision things you can do with or without an IR... no engineering degrees required.  Just lots of fun if you have a few on board...

Best regards,

-a-

 

[Ftlausa]

"Are they going to be alright?" was the question my wife asked me on a flight through Georgia this week as we listened to an increasingly panicked VFR Cherokee pilot with 4 on board, with low fuel, at night, that was trapped between solid undercast and overcast layers being vectored around by ATC looking for a whole in the clouds that was not to be found. 

This was the darkest night I have ever flown, with solid cloud bases blocking out the ground lights, and solid overcast blocking the partial moon and stars.  It was frankly chilling hearing ATC ask the pilot, over a series of several minutes, if he was IFR qualified -- "No"; how many on board -- "4"; fuel reserves "45 minutes"; and hearing the pilot's voice getting increasingly panicked as he was aimlessly vectored around looking for a hole in the clouds as we moved from twilight to pitch black.  

ATC asked me if I had seen any breaks in the clouds, which we had not for 40 to 50 miles.  The regional jet that had just landed at Augusta reported solid overcast from about 3,500 feet to a breakout of 2,600 feet.  With inadequate fuel to go anywhere else, ATC was setting the pilot up for a straight in decent through the clouds when we got the frequency change to the next sector.  The rest of my flight home that night was quite somber as we wondered whether the occupants of the Cherokee were alright. 

I did not see any reports of a downed aircraft in the news the next day, so apparently he made if down safely, but this was not a situation that any VFR pilot should want to find themselves.  As dark as it was, and with the over and undercast, this pilot was forced to fly instruments for quite a while, and I am glad that he was proficient enough to maintain control of the aircraft. 

I am sure the VFR purists will say that it was the pilot's fault that he got himself (and 3 others) into the predicament through poor planning, but sometimes the weather does not do what is forecast.  This incident was a poignant reminder of why I got my instrument rating, and a clear example of the value of one.