Picking a Training Method

The resolve to get the rating was easier than actually deciding how to do it.  The most popular way is to simply go back to the flight school where one received their Private Pilot certificate.  This process typically involves spending an hour or so per session "shooting" approaches at the local airports.  If you're able to commit to two sessions per week and actually fly them, you can expect to have the requirements for the rating completed in half a year.  Unfortunately it's very difficult to actually fly twice a week as your schedule, the instructor's schedule, the aircraft's schedule or, amazingly, bad weather will cause you to cancel a significant number of lessons.  I think it's more reasonable to budget a year to complete training locally.  Presuming it takes 40-50 hours of flying to prepare for the rating, I expected the cost to be in the $3,000 to $4,000 range.

 There are other considerations in receiving the rating locally. 

• It's tough to find & keep a good instructor.  Instructors who have a goal of flying for airlines will teach only as long as they need to "build up hours" and will be gone as soon as a regional commuter airline makes them an offer.  Career instructors are generally booked solid and the good ones are significantly more expensive than the new ones.
• Learning to fly approaches in an airplane is not as efficient as flying approaches in a simulator.  In a simulator, a good instructor can set up specific situations which you can quickly fly and receive a critique.  This allows you to "fly" many more approaches in the same period of time and get better feedback on your progress.  Depending on the type of simulator used (technically a "flight training device"), 10 to 20 hours of the instrument flight time can be on the ground.  Finding a simulator at a local flight school may be difficult, but finding an instructor who can use it effectively will be the biggest challenge.  You need one who can set-up meaningful scenarios and interpret your progress.
• Flight experience will be at the local airports.  Because of the cost of flying the aircraft to other airports, you'll find that most of your training will occur at the local airport and possibly at three or four near-by airports.  
  
  I also had a bias against local flight experience:  When I did my primary training, I could hear the Instrument Rating students shooting their approaches at out airport.  They didn't sound like they were having any fun and I didn't think I could put myself through forty hours of that. 
• Insist on schools that have a syllabus & instructors who will fly in instrument conditions.  Disorganized schools will piss your money away and you'll spend much time covering things multiple times.  I cannot emphasize this enough.  A syllabus is critical to your success.  Flight time in real instrument conditions is not to be missed.  Surprisingly some instructors do not like to fly in it.  Avoid them.

 I decided that I wanted to avoid training the traditional way and started to look for intensive training programs.  I came up with three that were particularly interesting: Professional Instrument Courses (PIC), where instruction takes place in your home on a simulator the instructor brings along, along with flight time in your plane (10 training days, $4,295 includes instruction & simulator time.  Twenty hours aircraft & instructor's lodging is extra, written required in advance); Sporty's Academy Hawaii, takes place in Hilo, Hawaii (12 training days, $6,195 includes 13 nights lodging, 25 hours aircraft requires written & 47 cross-country) & Field Morey's West Coast Adventures, which gives training in cross-country flight from Middleton, Wisconsin to the West Coast & back (9 training days, $6,000 includes 6 nights lodging, 25 hours aircraft, requires written, 25 hours cross-country, 15 hours instrument).  Each had some similarities.  The courses run 9 to 14 days and offered full days of simulator & flight, quizzes & preparation for the practical exam.  The Instrument Rating would be given on the successful completion of each program & the required practical test.

IFR Training Price Matrix (prices as of September, 2000)

 An intensive program is not for everybody and here are some considerations I had.

• Don't expect to be able to get any other commitments (such as work) done at the same time.  Each of these programs will take more than eight hours of your time each day.  In PIC's case, you're training at home, so you may still have some family time – you can at least say "hi!" as you collapse exhausted into your bed; at Sporty's, your family can enjoy Hawaii while you train and they can occasionally fly with you; at Morey's, there's no provision for taking your family along - I don't think Morey will even take on a husband and wife team anymore.
• The quoted price doesn't include everything.  No program includes the training for the written exam, for example.  Morey needs 20 hours instrument training accumulated before you begin their program.  PIC doesn't include lodging & local transportation for the instructor (a rental car, for example).  Morey doesn't include lodging during the pre-trip training period in Middleton, Wisconsin.  Sporty's & Morey's don't include airfare for getting to their location.  PIC & Sporty's do not include the examiner's fee for the practical test.
• Don't forget about the requirements before you begin.  The Instrument Rating requires 50 hours of cross-country time.  Expect to accumulate 3-5 hours of cross-country with PIC & Sporty's & 25 hours with Morey.
• Passing is not guaranteed.  All of these programs have very high pass rates because of their syllabus, organization and training methods, but if you're not in the mode for the very intense training you'll receive over these days, you will not pass.  All programs have some provision for this and include an extra day of instruction in the base price should this be required.  
  
  But the fact remains that if you aren't focused, you could go back home without the rating.  Then you'll be in the awkward position of going back for additional instruction & examination or going to a local school for "finishing."  I reckon this to be quite expensive, as the local instructor knows that you've failed once and will have to verify your knowledge and skill in each area of the practical test.  This will take time, and time equals money.

The lesson here is to make sure that whomever you choose that you're very well prepared, and at least somewhat above the published minimum standards.

 When I began considering whom I would choose, I tried to look at the "value-added" benefits that would work well for a low-time pilot like me.  

• I wanted complex & high-performance endorsements.  It's difficult to rent a complex or high-performance plane unless you have 25 hours of experience with that type of aircraft.  To get these endorsements on their own requires flying the hours with instructors.  I estimated the cost to get these endorsements to be $2,500 if attempted on their own.  However, I also realized that if I could do my instrument training in a high-performance, complex aircraft I would accumulate experience for these endorsements at the same time I was building experience for the Instrument Rating.  This strategy was possible with the local school, PIC & Morey.  It was not possible with Sporty's, so Sporty's was removed from consideration.
• I only had 10 hours of cross-country time, so I wanted to minimize the extra flying I had to do.  Morey includes 25 hours of cross-country, so I only needed 15 hours more to meet the requirement.  With coordination with the local school, it was quite possible to accumulate a good number of hours during training.  PIC required 35 additional hours of cross-country, and was removed from consideration.  However, as it turned out, I did so much cross-country flying, that I had more than 50 hours before I even got to Morey's.

Morey offered some cost benefits for me as he could include the high-performance and complex endorsements as well as the extra cross-country in his program.  This actually made him cost competitive against the other three options.  Morey was also the hands down winner for the "fun factor."  The thought of doing cross-country flight across the Western US in all types of weather, all types of terrain and all types of approaches sounded like great fun.  Only Sporty's came close and if I was going to part with this kind of dough, I wanted to have as much fun as possible.

Having preliminarily decided on Morey, I went to check references and find other sources that recommended him.  The references were very positive, religiously so.  And it was very creepy to hear person after person basically give the program an "A+" and call it the highlight of their flying careers.  It was my introduction to the "Cult of Morey."  I also found several articles on the program in AOPA Pilot, IFR & a couple of other magazines who also gushed about the program.

But I still had nagging concerns.  Morey's trip hinges on flying in a Cessna 182 Turbo Skylane RG for 60 hours in a week with Morey and another student.  What if we didn't get along?  What if the other student was a jerk?  What if the other student had thousands of hours and was just here for a "tune-up" (something that several of the references I checked said they did)? Would I be suffering in the back while some career pilot showed off his stuff?  I finally decided that I could "suck it in" and if any of these happened, I would still do my best to make my own fun.

So, I picked the August trip, allowing myself three months to get my preparatory instrument time in and sent in the deposit.  Only a couple of days later I received a syllabus, a copy of Peter Dogan's PIC Instrument Training book, a tentative itinerary and some other information about the trip.  My dread began when I saw the hand written note on the Frequently Asked Questions page.  Highlighted with a double underline, "Make sure you have 15-20 hours of instrument time and can perform attitude instrument flight and shoot the three basic approaches to practical test standards (PTS)."  Oh, my!  With only five hours of instrument time under my belt, I had problems enough keeping the plane upright, much less come close to meeting the standards of the PTS.  I wondered if this was a skill I would be able to pick up so fast?  Already, I was starting to psych myself out.  If I sucked, the entire Adventure would be a disaster; I'd be working 20-hour days just to keep up and even then, I would still require two days of remedial work after the trip to even have a hope of passing the practical test.  Crap.

Painful Preparation

I needed to get instrument instruction and cross country time.  As Leesa can attest, I began to obsess on it.  It was on my calendar and my electronic organizer and how far I had to go was in my face every day.  I needed to get hopping on both.

I learned to fly at North American Flight Academy (NAFA) in Denton, Texas.  Even though I started flying from Addison, Texas after I got my Private certificate, I had confidence in NAFA's ability to help me and I gave them a visit to see if we could work out some training.  The Chief Instructor had reservations and wanted me to use the school's syllabus, but relented as we further discussed my plans.  He remained skeptical, but did okay his instructors to help me using a syllabus I had developed with Field's help.  I started training with John Sharp in a Piper Arrow, a complex aircraft.

Staying with Field's syllabus was critical to my success in the Adventure.

Our first flight was April 5, and we spent our time with attitude instrument maneuvers, along with training in operating a complex aircraft – the most frightening part of which was the possibility of landing without putting down the gear.  This is a Very Bad Thing.  A slightly less frightening possibility was spinning the propeller too fast, which I understood to be another Very Bad Thing (for reasons I did not understand at the time, but assumed to be related to the propeller simply falling off the aircraft).  I ended that lesson with headache and more self-doubt.  And then I realized that I needed to pass the FAA knowledge exam.

The FAA exam is a multiple-choice test that is supposed to demonstrate the airman's knowledge of instrument flight procedures & rules.  It is possible to prep for this test through ground school or self-study.  I used self-study for my Private Pilot Knowledge exam and scored a 98, so it was not a difficult choice for me to use the same method this time.  I used Jeppesen training materials over the course of a couple of weeks and passed the exam with a 92.  The questions I missed concerned the way instruments performed in instrument flight – a subject with which I had little experience at the time, so I didn't feel too bad about it.  Further, instructors tend to look at the test with skepticism – after all, it's a multiple choice test, the questions are published in advance and some of the questions do not apply to the current system – especially the sections on interpreting weather charts and entering holds.

John and I continued our training, covering VOR^[8] & NDB^[9] tracking along with more basic attitude instrument flight and ILS^[10] approaches.  Some sessions were conducted in a simulator, which did help me get my bearings before trying them in the Arrow.  By the middle of May, I had 7.8 hours of instrument flight time and 3.7 hours of flight simulator time.  With 11.5 hours, I was right on schedule.  Around this time, I also got another letter from Field inviting me to another day of ground & simulator training at the beginning of the trip.  I accepted and was very pleased with my progress to date and the opportunity to have another day of training in Wisconsin.

But I did not do any training in the rest of May, or in June.  My travel, sale of the flight school and instructor availability all brought me to July with one month to go and still only 11.5 hours.  In effect, I had pissed away the extra day that Field was offering.  I was starting to stress.  I called NAFA and scheduled a flight for every remaining Saturday and Sunday in July, hoping to meet a personal goal of 20 instrument hours before the trip.  John Sharp was no longer available, so I used Joe Weinzapfel for a brush-up on attitude instrument flight and Michael McDonald for the instrument approach instruction.  Amazingly I only had one weather and one instructor cancellation and reached the end of July with just under 20 hours of simulated instrument time and encouragement from my instructor that I was definitely ready.  I hoped so.

It's Finally Here!

I only flew once in August before the trip.  And I flew it in a 172, so I could remember how it feels to fly a high wing plane.  I didn't feel comfortable at all and it increased my anxiety.

Leading up to the trip, I had a couple of nights of poor sleep, but I eventually found myself on my way to Madison from Chicago on Wednesday, August 16.  Little did I know that I was racing a large storm heading across the Plains.  We left O'Hare without a hold on the ground and flew the entire distance to Madison below the clouds at maybe four to six thousand feet in a regional jet.  What a view!  We landed just before the rain started.

My Avis rental car was waiting for me on arrival and this leads me to

Small Surprise #1:  There's a drop off charge for leaving the car at Morey's across town.  It cost me about twice what I was expecting.  If both students are from out-of-town, you'll want to share a car.

Madison was scenic, and I enjoyed the drive across town to Middleton.  I was staying at the Baymont Inn & Suites, just a couple of miles down the road from the airport.  It was comfortable and they gave me a complimentary cocktail at the bar each evening.  It was adjacent to a Damon's restaurant, and I wound up eating there each evening as I just had too much to accomplish and really couldn't be bothered looking for some place special.  Also, their hot tub was nice and hot and having a soak each of the first three nights was a great way to unwind.  Bring your trunks!

I must have been the only American staying at the Baymont.  On Thursday, the place was packed with Dutch executives and on Friday, it was packed with Australian & European tourists on a Contiki bus tour.  I wondered what they were doing in Middleton.  I turned out that this was just an overnight stop on their two day drive(!) between the Rockies and Chicago!

I really hoped I would sleep well this night before, unfortunately not only was I restless, but also a massive thunderstorm sat over the hotel for a couple of hours and kept me up.

Pre-Trip Day 1 – Thursday, August 17

I was finally getting tired right as it was time to get up, but I didn't want to be late!  I walked outside to the car to find fog!  This surprised me, as I haven't seen fog in months.  I arrived at Morey Field at 7:45 to find the airport office open and Field sipping coffee in the front area.

We got to work immediately and made copies of my certificate and medical while Field reviewed my logbook and knowledge test scores.  My partner in this adventure, John Galvin, arrived right at 8:00.  We began our day reviewing a pre-test that Field had sent us.  My answers were, uh, passing, and we had good discussion over them.  John was right on top of each question and he appeared well studied.  This didn't do anything to make me feel better about my preparation. 

After an hour of review, the syllabus had us scheduled to spend today in the simulator, but the fog had lifted slightly and Field sent us out for some flight in the muck.  We flew all day!

Small Surprise #2:  Field's not a cheapskate.  Although we were scheduled to be on the ground, real IMC^[11] is not to be missed, so we flew.  It added a few hundred dollars to his costs and I appreciate that we got to fly in the weather.

John and I did the pre-flight on the plane and got our first look at N6389T, a Turbo Retractable Cessna 182.  Field had just acquired this aircraft and we would be the first to take this plane in a West Coast Adventure.  John flew first and Field's son Rich took us for some attitude instrument flight in the fog along with some approaches into Madison.  After John did his stuff, I got to show what I could do and thought things went well.  After my chance at attitude instrument flight, I flew three ILS approaches into Madison.  Two of these were right at minimums – we broke out of the clouds at the last second.  Cool! 

My final ILS was what I've come to call a "freight hauler" approach – Air Traffic Control (ATC) wanted me to keep up speed so I demonstrated an approach to minimums @ 120 knots, a full 30 above the specification for the plane.  I'll have to thank Joe Weinzapfel, my primary instructor, for teaching me that trick.

Finally the clouds had started to lift, making the ceiling higher for the last approach and making it possible for us to return to Morey.  The day culminated with a VOR-B^[12] approach back into Morey Field.  The clouds were about 700 feet above the surface, right at the minimums for the approach.  I was a little surprised to actually see the airport right where it was supposed to be.

Then I had to land this plane.  As we circled to land, I set about taking care of all of the important things that you need to take care of on a complex plane:  gas on both tanks, gear down, mixture full rich, prop full forward.  Then I actually looked at the runway and just about had a cow.  It was a freaking sidewalk!  I trained at airports with very wide, very long runways.  I was used to having heaps of room to cover some sloppiness I have about landing exactly on the centerline.  Morey Field is 38' x 2,900'!  Everything they tell you in training is true – you feel like you're high and very fast.  I felt like I was rocketing in, flared too high and smacked the plane into the ground and brought it to an ignoble stop at the end of the strip.  I didn't damage the plane, so I guess I can take partial credit for the landing.

I got 2.5 hours of real instrument time and sat in the back for another 3 hours.  An exhilarating day of flying!  We finished up the day with a review of the custom Jeppesen trip kit that Field had prepared for us along with a preview of the weather along the Adventure's route.  This time of year, the weather is usually fine, but the huge fires in Montana & Idaho were causing visibility to be obscured with smoke.  This didn't bode well for the day of mountain flying on the schedule.  I was really looking forward to that and hoped we wouldn't have to skip it.

We ended the day around five with a homework assignment and I went back to the hotel to have a beer and do my homework.  Over dinner, I was able to reflect that now that I've had a day with Field, I'm realizing that this is doable.  I'm well prepared. I'm still expecting it to be painful along the way, but I will be successful. 

Pre-Trip Day 2 – Friday, August 18

Yesterday was hard IFR.  Shooting precision ILS approaches in this weather takes lots of practice & experience.  A small error on the approach will mean you're not likely to see the runway at the missed approach point.  Although I did enjoy the approaches to minimums yesterday with the comfort of a safety pilot, it's not something that I would voluntarily venture into unless I was very current – and this isn't likely to be the case all that often in the sunny Southwest.

Today, however, is different.  A marginally shitty day! And the reason I wanted the rating.  Marginal VFR^[13] weather – 1000-foot ceiling and 6 mile visibility but on the other side of the clouds only 3000 feet up it was sunny!  In this weather, any current Instrument Rated pilot could make a safe flight and landing.

I arrived a little early again and enjoyed walking around the planes parked on the grass smelling of aviation fuel.  And then the wind changed and everything smelled like cows.  Welcome to Wisconsin!

This morning, we spent some time on the Frasca simulator practicing NDB approaches & holds.  The NDB is tough to master and it's good to be able to practice a couple before we start burning gas.  After sharing a couple of hours in the simulator with John, we spent about three hours flying with Rich, putting our practice to work with the NDB approach at Madison.

I wanted NDB experience & Field was ready to oblige.  I had figured that if I could do an NDB correctly, I could do any non-precision approach.  I had practiced the NDB many times in X-Plane Flight Simulator with okay results, and my attempts in a real plane were so-so.  I wanted to be able to nail it.  The first approach was okay, probably as good as my best in Texas.  But the second one was better.  

An aside:  X-Plane is a wonderful flight simulator.  I think it's the best on the market.

Rich decided we had enough NDB approaches and he covered up my gyroscopic instruments and requested an ASR^[14] approach.  It's pretty much an emergency procedure.  If your navigational instruments fail, a controller can give you directions to vector your plane to a runway.  It went okay – it's tough to screw up when the controller says "89T, turn left….  89T, stop."

I was starting to get the feel of the plane and found it very easy to fly (if not land).  It was perfect tuned and responded to the lightest touch.  Completely unlike any of the rental or club planes I've had a chance to fly.  It's fuly equipped, with the state-of-the-art Garmin GNS-530, BF Goodrich Skywatch Traffic Advisory System superimposed on the Garmin, BF Goodrich Stormscope lightning detection, horizontal situation indicator and other goodies that the average plane doesn't have.  I quickly became fond of the Bose Aviation Headset X and enjoyed the very comfortable fit & superb quiet.  They're fantastic!  And lo!  Field's a dealer!

As the clouds started to rise, the air started to get bumpy.  That combined with some altitude excursions that I made during lapses in my flying started to make John sick.  Field suggested John get a scopolamine patch and hopefully that will fix him up for the trip.

I also got two more attempts to land the 182.  Both were very, um, exciting and one was borderline dangerous.  I shared my frustration with Field and he had some good advice:

"You're here to get your Instrument Rating, not to learn how to fly the Cessna 182."

On reflection, it seemed so obvious.  I was in primary training mode:  You've got to be able to land the plane!  Of course I can land the planes I'm used to.  That burden was lifted, but I was going to do my damnedest to get that thing on the ground without scaring the passengers.

We completed our day by doing the flight planning for the four legs we'd fly to Pierre, South Dakota on Saturday.  The weather was expected to be okay, but things were looking grimmer for the mountain-flying coming up on Monday.  I kept my fingers crossed, but was coming to the realization that we would miss out.

I spent Friday evening picking up some last minute things I had forgotten.  Who would have thought that I would have used up all of my Post-It notes?  And why did I pack an empty container of shaving cream?

Footnotes

^[1] Includes lodging & transportation for instructor.

^[2] Includes airfare for one to Hawaii.

^[3] Includes airfare for one to Middleton, Wisconsin & hotel before trip starts.

^[4] It may be possible to complete some additional cross-country as a part of the flight training.

^[5] Authorization to act as Pilot-in-Command for an aircraft with an engine in excess of 200 horsepower.

^[6] Authorization to act as Pilot-in-Command for an aircraft with retractable gear, constant speed propeller & flaps.

^[7] Assumes two, one-hour sessions each week with some cancellations.

^[8] VOR:    

^[9] NDB:  The Nondirectional Beacon is a radio signal that allows an aircraft with direction finding equipment to "home in" on the signal.  It's a very common non-precision approach, which makes it important to know, but it is difficult to master.

^[10] ILS:  The Instrument Landing System is the most common precision approach.  A precision approach provides a radio signal known as a glidepath, which allows the aircraft to descend safely to a much lower altitude on approach than a non-precision approach.

^[11] Although not completely accurate, the simple answer is that Instrument Meteorological Conditions are the type of weather that requires an instrument rating.

^[12] An approach with a letter following it, like VOR-B or NDB-D means that it is not lined up directly with the runway.  When you reach the missed approach point, the runway will be off to the left or right, not straight ahead.

^[13] VFR: Visual Flight Rules are the rules governing the procedures for conducting flight in Visual Meteorological Conditions.  These are the rules that pilots without an Instrument Rating must fly by.  Flight in marginal VFR is legal, but requires additional skill and has additional risk.

^[14] ASR:  Airport Surveillance Radar.  Used for an instrument approach where ATC gives instructions to the pilot based on aircraft position in relationship to the end of the runway as displayed on the controller's radar scope.