The phrase “rusty pilot” seems to be a thing now. Since we can’t find many new pilots, we’re stirring up the walking wounded, clearing out the ambulatory wards, perhaps enticing them with AOPA logo walkers and a discount on the early-bird special at the airport cafe. I get it. It’s as good a plan as any.
Last month, I decided to do my part and since I’m due for a flight review, why not make it interesting and combine that with an instrument proficiency check? This is a reprise of a stunt I did exactly three years ago this month, scheduling an IPC after not having been instrument current for five years. This illuminates one of the things I don’t like about Florida. There’s rarely any IMC weather and what there is is usually full of lightning and occasionally hail. I miss those 300 and a mile days in the northeast because there’s no other kind of flying I’d rather do than in actual IMC. The lower the better.
As with the previous recurrency, I meant to make this a bit of a personal human factors trial. As I get older, how do my instrument skills degrade given that I’m not using them at all? Do years of instrument instruction given instill habits and skills that are evergreen? The short answer to that, at least for me, is yes. But there are limits and I noticed that this time around, certain things were harder than they were three years ago.
The airplane we used was an aging Warrior with a pair of equally aging KX-170B radios; no GPS, no DME. Pure start of the art. As I expected, my basic scan is still there with no degradation that I can detect. I can still fly to ATP standards, which is good, because I have a certificate that says I am one. No problems with maneuvers or unusual attitude recoveries. Intercepting and tracking VOR courses? Piece of cake.
However—and there’s always a however—I missed two or three radio calls during the first 30 minutes of the flight. I’m not sure why this is so, but for the remainder of the flight I got into the zone. Maybe I had to burn in an unfamiliar tail number. Whatever the case, I feel like I fixed it and it wouldn’t be a worry for me on an actual IFR flight.
The other however occurred on an intercept for a localizer approach. I had it properly set up and had the intercept wired. As the needle came in, I turned to center it, but in exactly the wrong direction. For ^%$’s sake!? The needle whacked the side of the case with a clang audible on the ground. The inbound course was supposed to be 35 degrees and for the plate brief, I vocalized that. But I burned into my brain 135 degrees. I have no idea why this happened but I am sure it won’t again. We missed the approach, took another vector and I flew a needle-centered approach to mins.
When I was instructing, part of my training doctrine was to encourage students to use any non-dynamic periods—straight and level, basically—to error check. Are the frequencies correctly set? OBSs correct? Proper mins briefed and double-checked? How’s my SA? Trying to do that stuff while in a descending turn is inviting overload.I’ve retained this habit and thus caught that the glideslope was inop before the controller reported it and that one of the VOR receivers was incorrectly tuned. I still remember my Morse and still use it.
The assigned hold over a VOR went mostly without a hitch, although the wind pushed me much farther west of the inbound than I figured. Here, another trick kept confusion at bay. Regardless of whether the OBS is set for to or from, if you remember that any of the courses on the side of the instrument where the needle is will result in an intercept, to, from, left or right doesn’t matter. Compass course does. If you’re flying one of the compass courses indicated by the needle, you’ll intercept. It’s just a question of how fast.
One area of diminished capability that I noticed this time was remembering all the items in a clearance. For example, I was assigned 90 degrees and 2500 feet for the missed approach, then back to TRACON. The CFII with me asked I wanted to write that down, but I declined. I could recall it, but not with ease. Second, I needed to calculate both an entry heading for the hold and the reciprocal course for the outbound. Forget it. There was a time I could do that in my head, but not anymore. I used the OBS head as a makeshift calculator. While that’s an old habit, I have to do it now. Five years ago, I didn’t. I used the OBS as a memory jog for the missed, too. But next time, I’ll use a pad, which I had brought along.
Speaking of which, I was using an iPad for chart and plate retrieval and here a shoutout for a product called SmartPlates from Seattle Avionics. I’ve used all of the major apps, but for the flying I’m doing now, I don’t need that kind of horsepower and they’re just another thing to stay current on. SmartPlates offers just charts and plates with a simple search function. With a GPS-equipped iPad, it will geo-reference for situational awareness. The thing is as simple as a box of rocks and just as easy to use. For $49 a year, it’s a good value.
A sophisticated app that you’re not proficient with will be more hindrance than help in circumstances where you don’t have surplus mental bandwidth. The same is true of avionics. You can’t go wrong with a KX-170B, but jumping into a G1000 cockpit cold for the same kind of recurrency I was doing just isn’t an option. Most schools require three to five hours of training just for the G1000. That would have doubled what I spent on this IPC and given me proficiency I absolutely do not need at the moment. The simple app, with geo-referencing, gives nice situational awareness relative to features like approach courses, navaids and airways. I like having that. On the other hand, the real fun of IFR flying for me was always the sheer abstraction of it: being able to determine my 3D position in space merely by the readings on a few instruments. It’s not unlike knowing a second language, whereas glass, for all its benefits, is like having the translation done for you.
IFR flying is and probably always will be nothing but a giant head game in which the real skill is neither the scan, nor radio work, nor keeping needles centered, but how you apportion finite brain power to accomplish those tasks without making a smoking crater. Increasingly, the head is challenged by operating automation and remaining in an ever-more-complicated man-machine loop. Is the latter less of a skill or more of a skill? I think it’s just different. And that’s to say not harder or easier, safer or less safe, just different. Also more expensive. Not that I’m saying an analog panel with KX170Bs is my dream. It’s just a momentary reality.
The next part of this experiment is to hop into an airplane with glass—an Aspen and Garmin GTN 750—and see how that works out. Stay tuned.
