You’d be surprised how easy that part is… compared to VFR.
Since I have an IR, I’m not surprised. I stand by my claim that the tricky part of IFR is not keeping the aircraft right side up.
Night (as in darkness) is equivalent to IMC.
Night is a function of light i.e when the Sun is more than 6 degrees below the horizon
IMC is a function of weather, not related to the above.
Tumbleweed wrote:
Night is a function of light i.e when the Sun is more than 6 degrees below the horizon
IMC is a function of weather, not related to the above.
While that is true, in the context of maintaining control of an aircraft, it is a distinction without a difference. The need to maintain control without external visual reference remains the same whether inside a cloud during the day or outside one at night (without moon etc). It would probably be helpful to drop the M from IMC. Although most IC are due to M, not all are.
Airborne Again wrote:
You’d be surprised how easy that part is… compared to VFR.
Since I have an IR, I’m not surprised. I stand by my claim that the tricky part of IFR is not keeping the aircraft right side up.
Interesting. I think keeping the blue side up gets challenging when things start going wrong, you loose instruments in bad weather with turbulence and an autopilot that cannot cope, does not work or no autopilot at all, and you have to prepare your approach, dial frequencies, look up plates etc.
Thinking back at my instrument training, I do remember that one thing I found difficult at the time was to transition from an approach at one airport directly to an approach at another airport relatively close by. I remember we could do approaches at Stockton, then transition to Livermore and then to Hayward. The mental process of determining where I needed to go, get the ATIS, finding the right plate, briefing the approach, dialing in the right frequencies etc. was actually at that time quite challenging when it had to happen quickly, and I could easily get a little overwhelmed.
Now I think that the thing which is the most challenging in my day-to-day flying is the decision-making, especially related to weather.
The need to maintain control without external visual reference remains the same whether inside a cloud during the day or outside one at night Quote
If you are flying without being able to maintain visual reference to the surface, you’re not VFR. VFR is flight with visual reference to the surface, in the “surface of the earth” sense. with minimum distance limitations. Being qualified by a time of day does not affect the meaning of VFR. I can fly VFR over the top and have less cue as to where I will land in the case of a forced approach than some night flying conditions. I can fly out of sight of shore, over water on a hazy day, and have less (indeed no) visual reference to the horizon, perhaps to a greater extreme than a dork night over unpopulated areas. It remains the pilot’s responsibility to choose to continue or not into conditions with reduced or lessening visual reference conditions, while flying VFR. Time of day is a factor in that, but not all of it….
Pilot_DAR wrote:
If you are flying without being able to maintain visual reference to the surface, you’re not VFR. VFR is flight with visual reference to the surface, in the “surface of the earth” sense. with minimum distance limitations
Not according to ICAO and European definitions! It is in general perfectly all right to fly VFR on top without visual reference to the surface.
The difference is AFAIR that you are not allowed to fly VFR on top at night because of the difficulty of finding a hole to descend through or climb through.
Pilot_DAR wrote:
VFR is flight with visual reference to the surface, in the “surface of the earth” sense. with minimum distance limitations.
Nope. That used to be the definition in some European countries (e.g. the UK), but that’s gone now. Never was the case in FAA-land.
Aviathor wrote:
Thinking back at my instrument training, I do remember that one thing I found difficult at the time was to transition from an approach at one airport directly to an approach at another airport relatively close by.
Yes! That’s one of the fun things I do from time to time, airport hopping at night in the L.A. basin. Great fun and gives you a good workout!
There are three distinctions that are frequently mixed up in discussions like this one.
(1) VFR vs. IFR
(2) VMC vs. IMC
(3) Flight with external visual references vs. flight without external visual references
The distinction (1) is related to (2) in that you need VMC to fly VFR (except special VFR). That is essentially the definition of VFR.
However, both distinctions (1) and (2) are unrelated to (3). You can fly both VFR and IFR either with or without external visual references. You can also have – or lack – visual references both in VMC and IMC.
Airborne_Again wrote:
You can fly both VFR and IFR either with or without external visual references
I’m not sure what the exact definitions are, but in my opinion you cannot fly VFR without external visual reference. It is more a matter of what kind of visual reference you have. You can fly VFR without visual reference to the ground, but you cannot fly VFR with no visual reference whatsoever because then you are in IMC.
