After 21 years out of flying, I regained my PPL. With a total of 35 hours 50 minutes solo, with a student pilot pax, heading for the Glenforsa Fly-in, cloud formed round us just east of Fort William. I did a 180° and didn’t get clear of cloud until over Loch Lochy. She mentored my bank angle, and broadcast our situation to others heading through the Glen to Glenforsa. Over the loch. I descended and continued to Glenforsa, lower.
It helped that I’d lived between the Fort and Loch Lochy, and the occasional glimpse of the ground gave me a position. But our ex-WW2 Spitfire pilot Instructor had failed to teach the 178 rule to either of us.
Years later, when revalidating my IMC Rating, the Instructor stressed that in real IMC I would lose control. Despite poor vacuum instruments in our Jodel, I didn’t. The Group voted 4-2 against upgrading them. Later a member and his wife died in a loss-of-control in cloud accident.
Well this one takes me back…
https://groups.google.com/g/rec.aviation.student/c/IwgNPpKfpBs/m/BM8kKyUxR8QJ
I get “429 Too Many Requests” but I can imagine what it is 
@aart wrote:
Althought it’s been 23 years, I will not easily forget a lesson during my IR. Instructor told me to let go and close my eyes. He started fumbling with the controls for maybe 5-10 seconds and then asked me how the plane was oriented and what is was doing. I said “climbing turn to the right, decelerating”. “Excellent Aart, now open your eyes and make the required corrections to straight and level, on instruments only of course”. Sure enough we were pointing downwards to the left.. The correction was pretty good though, so that gave me at least a bit of self confidence Best demonstration ever of sensory illusions for me.
Indeed this was a good instructor!
aart wrote:
As an aside, from my previous life, motion systems of simulators are limited by definition, except for a helicopter in hover. So these systems sneakily optimize their performance by making use of that limited perception level to cheat the human. For instance by – after having moved to its limits- moving back to a more neutral position in a way not perceived by those in the sim. This way the sim is again put into a position where it has more ability to create some ‘real’ perceptible motion.
It is interesting that full motion simulators take advantage of the limitations in our perception to teach us ways to detect and recover from limitations in our perception!
Mooney_Driver wrote:
There is quite a bit of psychology involved in this. A statement turned into a mantra stating that you WILL quite likely die within 3 minutes if you go into IMC unprepared has a lot more attention than some obscure safety recommendation nobody reads.
That is exactly my point.
From my experience: I have around 5 IR students each year. For any of these students, sooner or later the time comes at which they have to hand-fly in IMC. Most of them have not been to a simulator before or have had any other instruction in terms of hand-flying in IMC. They mostly have completed BIR oder CB-IR theory, which does not help a lot in terms of practical flying.
And the magical thing happens: It just works. No, it won’t be perfect or elegant. But all students I had so far were able to keep the aircraft under control in IMC, at least for moderate amounts of time (like ten or twenty minutes or so). And they pretty quickly learn to additionally maintain an altitude and a heading, or fly an IAP. I don’t remember when I last had to take over the controls to prevent a dangerous situation.
So why does it work? Because those students are (more or less) relaxed. They are in a controlled situation, in which things are the way they are supposed to be. And they know that there is an instructor on board who will prevent catastrophic events from happening. So they might be anxious, they might be overloaded, they might be behind the aircraft, but they don’t have the primeval “fight or flee” adrenaline rush one get’s in the face of a mortal danger.
And that makes all the difference. Flying in IMC by reference to an AI is quite simple. One of my IR instructors used to say that he could teach his Grandma to fly in IMC in twenty minutes. I personally think that you could probably teach a Chimpanzee to do that. It is easy. Problems for instrument rated pilots who have to fly manually are multitasking, cognitive strain or lack of currency. But virtually everybody can fly straight ahead (or perform a shallow turn) for say at least 5 minutes.
So, if someone inadvertently enters IMC on a VFR flight: He knows he has fucked up and is now doing something illegal. He has to “confess” and ask ATC for help. He might not be aware of his position in terms of terrain clearance. That is an uncontrolled situation, in which the pilot has already made a severe mistake. This creates a huge mental pressure, which btw. also is the reason why a significant portion of VFR into IMC accidents happen to instrument rated pilots. Inadvertently flying VFR in IMC is a completely different ballgame than flying IFR on a nice vector at a relaxed flight level with everything in order and ATC there to guide you.
So, just imagine you are the VFR pilot who has made that huge mistake and now is in IMC. Adrenaline kicks in, your body responds in a violent way, you are breathing faster, sweating, and maybe you get a little bit of tunnel vision.
And then you remember what all the dumbwits in your flying environment keep repeating: “You’re dead within three minutes.”
Do you really think that helps?
Thomas_R wrote:
And then you remember what all the dumbwits in your flying environment keep repeating: “You’re dead within three minutes.”Do you really think that helps?
No. At the time in any case, there was no IMC training involved in PPL and hardly and airplane had an AI, so the idea behind it then was simply to tell people, STAY OUT OF IMC! At the time it was understandably why the FAA did this and I am quite sure it saved a few lives.
Today you do get IMC training, if marginal, and you get at least some instruction on how to react in a situation like that, namely do do a controlled 180 and fly out of IMC again. THAT is what should kick in with a PPL of this day and age. So the thing may well be, unless you train this regularly, you have a large probability of dying if you get into IMC.
However, the general idea that uncontroled flying VFR into IMC is a very bad thing and should be avoided whenever possible has not changed at all.
I read the article. Very interesting. The subjects weren’t even PPLs. They had ZERO instrument flying experience. ANd they didn’t have a full six-pack – the only gyro instrument they had was a turn coordinator. Most IRs would struggle with that – ultimate partial panel.
After a couple of hours of hood time, they all did OK. Which validates the FAA requirement of three hours of hood time for a PPL. Does EASA have a similar requirement? I suspect not.
johnh wrote:
After a couple of hours of hood time, they all did OK. Which validates the FAA requirement of three hours of hood time for a PPL. Does EASA have a similar requirement? I suspect not.
The EASA PPL syllabus contains a section of “basic instrument flight” (check AMC1 FCL.210 for PPL(A)). And for an FI applicant, at least 10 hours of “basic instrument flight” training are required. I know that because I’m currently doing just that with a prospective flight instructor 
Thomas_R wrote:
all the dumbwits
Well, yeah…
I am one of those dumbwits.
I flew intentionally into a cloud because of too much of exuberance (climbed through a layer to see the sunshine, and then dove back below), it tried to catch me, but here I am to tell the story. I was at the lucky side.
I took the course Why Not to Fly into Clouds, killed myself in the full motion simulator multiple times, and shared my experience in my article above.
The only advice I have is “Get trained, or avoid clouds”.
johnh wrote:
After a couple of hours of hood time, they all did OK. Which validates the FAA requirement of three hours of hood time for a PPL. Does EASA have a similar requirement? I suspect not.
It does have – you should be able to demonstrate basic intrument flying during the test and an 180 turn back.
