Graham wrote:
Why do you need a safety pilot? Why can’t you just fly an instrument approach?
You can fly an actual approach as long as certain conditions are met, including flying the procedure and encountering actual instrument conditions after established on the procedure.. I don’t have to depend on conditions if I use a safety pilot. I just need to have a pilot friend fly with me as a safety pilot. It is much simpler. I met the entire requirement in a 1.6 hour flight. I did 6 approaches, three with the autopilot and three without. I did 5 holds, 4 RNAV to LPV minimums, two ILS one full and the other using localizer only with a circle to land. I was much more proficient at the end of the exercise.
I don’t get paid to fly so I fly when it is fun. I keep up my IFR skills mostly in good weather. I use them for real when I travel.
Graham wrote:
There is this strange idea in the UK that if you fly an instrument approach in VMC conditions then it is by definition a ‘training’ or ‘practice’ approach and thus people say you need someone in the right seat. I don’t understand the basis of that assertion – to me it is just an instrument approach that one is qualified to make, solo or with passenger/instructor, regardless of the weather conditions.
There is very little skill involved in performing an instrument procedure in VMC. As long as you can control the aircraft using outside visual references, you are just a VFR pilot who can follow a course. If you can control the airplane without using outside visual references, you have to both maintain control of the aircraft solely using your flight and navigation instruments. That takes skill and practice or regular recent experience. An instrument scan is a highly perishable skill.
I obviously can’t speak for the UK, but in the US, we don’t need to use ATC to practice approaches at uncontrolled airports, which are the vast majority.
Graham wrote:
Who decides it’s a practice approach? Is it always a practice approach if the weather is above some maxima?‘Flown at least partly in IMC’ – is that verbatim from the regs? How is that defined/interpreted? If you nip through a tiny puff of cumulus while being vectored to intercept, is that enough?
The pilot does if they have a safety pilot on board and make approaches into uncontrolled airports. If they decide to fly into a towered airport, then they must request either a practice approach or an approach. Requesting an approach requires an IFR clearance, even if the conditions are VFR. So it is the pilot who decides if an approach is practice or not when VFR and if IMC, then the rules require an approach clearance.
Yes, the US FAR dictate when an IFR clearance for an approach is required, But IMC is not the criteria. IMC is simply not meeting VFR cloud separation and visibility requirements for the airspace you are in. The currency rules allow for logging approaches under actual instrument conditions or simulated instrument conditions. The latter requires a safety pilot. The former requires that in order to be loggable for the purposes of instrument currency, the approach must be performed under actual instrument conditions, Actual instrument conditions is a term of art meaning that control of the aircraft requires using flight instruments because outside visual references are not available. Flight over the desert on a high overcast and moonless night has no discernable horizon and in this black hole environment, it can be 100 miles of visibility, yet loggable as actual instrument conditions and fully VFR. In an opposite situation, you can have an overcast just above you.and not be able to meet VFR cloud separation requirements and therefore are in IMC, yet not in actual visual conditions as you can fully control the airplane with the available horizon and ground contact, so do not meet the requirement for actual instrument conditions. One is required to operate under IFR anytime the conditions ar IMC and if an approach is required, must obtain an approach clearance based on an IFR approach or a visuals approach.
NCYankee wrote:
Flight over the desert on a high overcast and moonless night has no discernable horizon and in this black hole environment, it can be 100 miles of visibility, yet loggable as actual instrument conditions and fully VFR. In an opposite situation, you can have an overcast just above you.and not be able to meet VFR cloud separation requirements and therefore are in IMC, yet not in actual visual conditions as you can fully control the airplane with the available horizon and ground contact, so do not meet the requirement for actual instrument conditions.
Very true. Something many people fail to appreciate is that IMC and actual instrument conditions are entirely distinct. You can have one but not the other, none or both. And you can legally fly VFR in each of these four cases! Not generally of course, but in certain situations.
NCYankee wrote:
I met the entire requirement in a 1.6 hour flight. I did 6 approaches, three with the autopilot and three without. I did 5 holds, 4 RNAV to LPV minimums, two ILS one full and the other using localizer only with a circle to land. I was much more proficient at the end of the exercise.
This is what drives European pilots crazy and makes us so envious of the US environment. Europe is a real patchwork and the ability to do this sort of thing varies from one extreme to the other, but doing this in Switzerland requires an IFR flight plan and would cost roughly $300 in fees (approach, landing).
Airborne_Again wrote:
And you can legally fly VFR in each of these four cases! Not generally of course, but in certain situations.
Just out of curiosity: What are the situations in which you can legally fly VFR in IMC?
Malibuflyer wrote:
Just out of curiosity: What are the situations in which you can legally fly VFR in IMC?
I think the point was that one can fly VFR in instrument conditions (but not IMC), such as the given example of a moonless night with no visible horizon. Another example is the sea crossing from mainland France to Corsica at, say 10’000 feet, during hazy conditions.
Malibuflyer wrote:
Just out of curiosity: What are the situations in which you can legally fly VFR in IMC?
In a control zone with a special VFR clearance.
On a calm, sunny, hazy day you don’t have to go far offshore to lose all horizon indications. With no AH, I’ve done a very cautious 180 after crossing the coast with 10+ miles visibility. Looking over my shoulder to keep coast in sight.
There is very little skill involved in performing an instrument procedure in VMC
I think it depends on whether you are flying the procedure, or pretending 
IMHO the practice value is pretty substantial especially if it involves using the aircraft systems. And it should because if you always hand fly the approach, one day when things have gone badly wrong, the workload is high for whatever reason, you don’t want to find the autopilot doesn’t couple. Such a discovery dumps the pilot in a very tricky situation.
