Impressions from my completed journey towards the CB-IR

Following up on this thread about the theory part I finally found time to finish my journey towards the CB-IR. As Peter pointed out here as most of us do I have to fit it around my existing life, which is why everything takes so long.

In the meantime I also had to pass my (final) english proficiency test, as posted here and am having a lot of fun at work, where I just last year took over a company. So making the IR is really a good way to get a fresh breeze through the head and to think about other stuff

I did my initial part of training outside an ATO with the instructor I wanted to do it since ages. He did my first check flight of my entire flying “career” in a glider when I was 16 and about to fly solo. He’s got tons of experience in GA, doing atlantic crossings and good stuff like that. He’s got a share in a twin and holds IRE (and I don’t know what else) and he’s an open book for me. He’s also the one who pointed me in the direction for why I’ve got the plane I fly, that is, having a turbo but no further anti-ice equipment.

I might also add that I probably started my training a bit better prepared than the average IR student. I have my own plane that we used for the first part of the training, so I know the setup, I know quite a fair bit about the instruments installed. I knew how to do a RAIM check already before training started. And I had lots of hours flying “controlled VFR” across Europe, that is above FL100 and in principle like “enroute IFR” but without touching the clouds and not doing any procedures. Finally, two years ago I had the chance to assist on the copilot’s seat in my own plane nearly 30 hours of IFR flying where I was doing radio and hand-flying the plane in IMC. So I started quite optimistic to get the best out of the required training lessons.

First session (November 2022)

Now here we go. My very first lesson brought me already to a very scenic flight, that was VMC on top of a low overcast that started right about 5 miles away from my homefield. Goal was to do a first approach on Mannheim, going around on SID towards second airport Saarbrücken, there going around again and back to my homefield without landing, just to get to know the aircraft. All without GPS, only steam gauges for the first ride. What a plan! Well, the reason for the “only steam gauges” restriction was that my NAV data was long outdated and it took very long until Jeppesen provided me with the nav data due to the attack on Jeppesen . So during preparation we decided not to use them but to do it “the old way”. On the very day of the flight my subscription finally started so that we had in fact GPS data up to date on board, but we kept with the plan.

Me hands flying the aircraft and trying to stay in the desired limits (trying, yes, keep trying ) and setting the appropriate engine settings et cetera we first went for a localizer/DME approach on RWY26 in Mannheim EDFM. So first task was to find the IAF KETEG by means of two radials and DME distances as given on the approach chart. My instructor was doing radio (including opening consecutive flight plans in the air during approach) and together we tuned in the necessary frequencies on the instruments. What a workload. I had the approach chart printed out and right before me on the yoke, what I found very intuitive, and way better than having it on any tablet. In fact, I did not look at my (two) tablets the whole flight. They were not programmed, just logging times and showing the aircraft’s position. One is running Skydemon, the other one Foreflight. However, so far I have no idea on how to use them for my kind of flying, because training is also about to use the built-in avionics to display the information. I also like the idea that I have a sheet of paper in my hand where the information I need is fixated, it doesn’t move or change like maybe on a tablet, where you can display all kinds of information. And I can take it, pass it over to my instructor together with a question whenever I haven’t understood it right. I share that opinion with my instructor, so for the time being I’ll carry along paper charts and note all down with pen and paper. I tested foreflight for this, and it is o.k., but I’m just so used to doing it with pen and paper that it’s a no-brainer for me.

Turning back to the approach, the cloud layer was broken and I did not see the airfield, so I followed the (lateral) diamond on my PFD and tried to keep the correct altitudes at every mile decrement. About two miles out I saw the airfield, we continued until minimums and went around on second flight plan. We climbed on the SID as filed, but shortly got a direct to Zweibrücken VOR. We climbed to FL70, and after ZWN went for the ILS on RWY26 EDDR. Over Saarbrücken was a solid stratiform overcast of about 1000 feet thickness, so we were descending into and through that. What a feeling when we entered that cloud layer! O.k. I already have some minutes of experience hand flying my aircraft in IMC, so it wasn’t my “first touch” really, but still I was surprised how much I relied upon horizont view and that it was a lot more difficult to maintain on the ILS. We popped out of the clouds about 100 feet above minimums, seeing the approach lights in dizzy weather, visibility maybe 1 to 1.5 kilometers. I wasn’t exactly overhead the lights, and was high and too fast, but hey I would have landed on that long runway if necessary. That was cool. It was exactly what I had in my mind for what I would use the IR later. We went around again, back through the cloud layer and to the wonderful sunny weather above. During right turn already above the clouds we got a direct to Ried VOR where uneventfully my first IFR session ended. It is crystal clear that I wouldn’t have done that myself, managing the instruments, the plane, the radio, all that shear amount of information at the same time. In fact besides hand flying I was more like watching what was happening. When do we listen to the ATIS. When do you prepare the plane for landing and how. How do you transit the plane from cruise to approach. Where do you put the information you need and how do you get it from your instruments. Do my naive ideas of cockpit organization work as I thought. (It does partly, but improvement is on its way). And we were lucky in that there was practically no traffic around. In the end, I felt that it’s nothing I wouldn’t be able to master any time soon. What a great experience!

Second session

My second session included preparing and performing a holding and two LPV approaches in EDQG Giebelstadt. There’s not much to say about this, because with the help of a GTN650 navigator this is peanuts against the other day’s flight. It’s all displayed in front of you. Incredibly simple. And it tells you when to turn and where to, and displays altitudes and everything. O.k. of course one has to setup the navigator, and that I played around quite some time with the installed device as well as the iPad simulator from Garmin turned out to be a good idea. I got aware that there are options I haven’t come across so far and I’ve got to dig deeper, but for a first impression I got it o.k. and was able to push the right buttons to program what was needed, to acknowledge that we went missed and to reprogram the second approach. Regarding the holding I got time and wind correction angle wrong, but again, give me some more holdings and it’ll run through my veins

Third session

There was some downtime in between due to bad weather, but we’re still in winter. Third session was in another typical German winter setting. There was fog in the morning that lifted to be a low broken stratus layer, but forecast had it that at some point of the afternoon the fog would lay down again. My homebase is VFR only, so we had to keep that in mind.
This flight was the first time that I was also responsible for all communications. We went to EDDN Nuremberg in mostly perfect VFR weather and blue skies, made an ILS approach RWY 28 and had a walk through the GAT. By the way, EDDN is a top notch destination, absolutely low fees (around 30 Euros including GAT fees for training flights, for a normal flight below 50 Euros in total for up to 2 tons). From the plane you get a shuttle to the terminal building and the subway station is directly in front. 15 minutes to the city.
Back to flying. We were a bit nervous about the weather so we focused briefing on what to do if weather doesn’t allow for an approach at homebase. What are the limits. What do we need for an alternate. Will someone come and fetch us by car or do we go by train, and so on. However, we filed our plan again to EDFM Mannheim to maybe do a low approach there and proceed, if weather permits. It did not. During the flight my instructor watched the webcam at the homebase and reached out by COM to get latest weather information. As it deteriorated quickly, we changed plans in the air and flew direct. The stratus had become solid, but we managed to slip below right at the point where we turned to final. What an experience!

Fourth session (January 2023)

Three weeks have come to pass, but finally another flight right after new year’s day took me to EDDN Nuremberg again. There was a cold front approaching from west, that is from behind, so that we decided to first fly there, thereafter again EDFM and back, if possible. Beginning with the flight to EDDN we climbed straight to 5000 feet and experienced about 50 knots on the tail. On ground, however, there was practically no wind, which led the controller to ask us whether we would like to have an approach on RWY 10 which would mean a shorter flight. My examiner agreed to this and mumbled that this means some more exercises in the cockpit. Of course I had to switch charts, brief the next approach, set up all the devices while approaching with close to 200 knots. I’ve been given vectors to intercept, but the controller was nowhere close to be aware of the wind up there. So he made us miss the FAP. In the meanwhile we noticed that there’s no signal coming in, where a reason could be that the ILS was still switched off. And indeed while we turned to final suddenly the ILS signal came up. We still had about 40 knots on the tail and quite some cross, so that I had some issues bringing the bird down the glideslope. Yet some other lessons learned.

In Nuremberg we had a break for lunch and watched the development of the weather. As it was a cold front, icing level decreased, which was an issue because we had to fly initially FL70 and keep in mind that we would have to descend during flight. We got airborne and while climbing to FL70 headwind kept increasing. During cruise we had around 60 to 68 knots on the nose, bringing us down to around 80 knots ground speed. Well into the flight we got into IMC and requested descend to 5000 feet that was below clouds. We prepared for the RNP approach in EDFM, that meant of course doing all the checks like RAIM prediction, checking the waypoints and monitoring the GPS switching to approach mode. Whoever flew to Mannheim may hear some alarm bells ringing when such westerly winds are involved (there’s a small mountain ridge right before the Rhine valley that has to be flown over). We prepared ourselves for turbulences and were not disappointed. Doing some 50 knots on the approach (still 60 knots wind on the nose) I had some trouble nailing the “diamonds” on my display to the center. But in the end we got through that and another flight finished safely.
In Mannheim we took a coffee and planned the return flight. Meanwhile it got dark outside and we started what shall be my first night-IFR-in-IMC flight, where ceiling was now in about 3000 feet. The hefty wind was still there (now on the tail again), but the mountain ridge had also to be crossed again, which meant that I had a lot to do to stay on course and altitude. It was, however, nothing more than a try. I was quite able to maintain altitude, despite updrafts of up to 2000 ft/min, but failed quite hard on heading, where I got off by up to 30 degrees and more. It was just impressive when you are in there, your tail gets kicked to all sides by these winds, in a sudden it banks by 30 degrees and you don’t notice that by feelings, but you’ve got to maintain all stabilized. Again my instructor just let me do what I was doing, as it never got critical. Only once did I have maybe 40 degrees bank and he pointed on the AI

Following sessions: part 1 (May 2023)

After the first sessions not less than four months passed until everything lined up again. That means, I could seriously block more time for me and my training, the weather was fine and my instructor had time when I did. We did some further flights, nice and longer ones to EDDP (Leipzig), EDDE (Erfurt), Karlsruhe and I don’t know where else. The mission was to see different places to get used to approach bigger airports to really have them in mind as a plan B in case of bad weather. Until now I accumulated 19 hours of Instrument Flight Time when I got another “big case” in my company that left me completely without any more free time for another eight weeks.

(and besides I also wanted to do some flying without instructor )

End of September I read about a mission request on “Ukraine Air Rescue” where seemingly no one had time to fly. Weather looked doable, but maximum PROB50 VFR. So I started to check whether there was an option that I could fly but with a proficient pilot due to the potential IMC. I initially asked my instructor but he didn’t have time. Then things went quite quickly and the result was this epic and unforgettable flight with a wonderful teammate, that I commented in the related thread here

Following sessions: Part 2; inside ATO (January 2024)

After that mission day my tach hours climbed to 27 instrument flight hours on the clock and I was thinking like do I do more hours outside ATO, and where do I proceed and with which aircraft and so on. This process was accompanied by increasing workload in my company, so it was not until three months later when I had the next opportunity to proceed with the training. I went straight to the ATO to fly the remaining hours inside with another instructor whom I knew since decades and who has also tons of experience, but from “another world of flying”.

Initially I made a familiarization flight in December on a Cessna 172 of the ATO at my airfield, but already before my next possibility to fly it I got notice that it was grounded due to a crack in the engine. So some further weeks passed until another aircraft was found to be suitable.

I arranged with my instructor that we both have two days a week blocked, that really hurt me and my employees were like WTF What followed was that we had an incredible luck with the weather and nearly all dates turned out to be flyable. So I did the missing 13 hours (in fact 14 more, so I totalled 41) in less than 3 weeks. That was a very steep training curve with an aircraft that I hadn’t flown before. We concentrated on the very topics necessary for the exam, but as she is an ex-airline captain she worked hard to incidentally teach me their SOPs. Lots of tiny things that I never questioned in my flying life. Like to switch the taxi light on when you taxi but to switch it off when you’re standing still. It started there but went on through practically any flying related topic or task.

We did a series of nice IFR flying to the airfields where the exam could go to, also in the night, and I posted about it with some nice photos like here or here or here

The last sessions were really very effective. They were in fact what I needed. We did airwork, approaches 2D and 3D, instrument and GPS fails and so on. A lot of questions from my instructor. And a lot flying IMC.

Final step: My exam (February 2024)

The last step was the exam, which was for me at this moment a mere repetition of the sessions of the days before. I met the examiner at the Office of the ATO and we started with flight preparation. I got asked several unusual and usual questions during preparation (likewise did my instructor before). Sometimes I was thinking too much, like when I got asked how the LPV signal is corrected and I got into details about signal processing and that the information signal is first sent to the satellite to be broadcasted therefrom and just was about to explain how the atmospheric fluctuations are corrected just to find out that four letters S-B-A-S would have been totally enough.

I didn’t know where the flight would go until when we were there in the office, so I had to prepare and file the flight plan there and do all this in presence. We did have some surprise NOTAMs for the destination (surprise for me because I didn’t know until I checked them during briefing and brought them to the attention) in form of cranes in the approach path that affect the minimum height of the LNAV approach but not of the LPV approach. That led to questions how that could be and how these altitudes/heights are obtained, including procedure gradients and so on, so we went through the differences of these approaches (we concluded that the cranes might be just outside the LPV path but inside the much broader LNAV path) and so on. So it was a quite “organic” exam that mostly evolved out of the briefing itself.

Flight preparation for the exam also included real weather and ice planning where we both were quite surprised to see that Foreflight forecasted severe icing right from ground to FL100. That led to the next discussion about whether that could be possibly correct, and how to understand where you might find ice and which type of ice etc., risk mitigation, get-out-strategies. As I said, the specific flight for the exam had enough in itself to not start with any irrelevant topic that falls out of the sky. I checked the last balloon data to extract the temperature gradient, because we had to file minimum FL50 and 0 degrees centigrade was forecast also at FL50. This was still a potential go/no-go discussion, where the most relevant part (in regards of the exam) might have been the risk analysis that I gave. In favour of the flight was that we had several options to possibly get out and that we had +8 degrees on ground (we had not even traces of ice on that flight by the way).

We entered the aircraft soon thereafter to start our preparations, where I did the instrument setup, departure briefing and continued all the way with the approach briefing of the first approach, because it’s only a short flight that had the potential to be completely in bad weather. The looks of the unexpected severe icing forecast made me quite cautious, so that I also included our options of what to do in case it really should get that bad, including the MRVA and MSA along the flight path. It was all natural, because I was really concerned about this.

After the VFR departure I had to do the IFR pickup (standard procedure at my airfield). I got a wrong frequency (not that I got the frequency wrong) where my examiner acknowledged that I made the correct readback but ATC told us the wrong frequency (funnily enough the same happened 45 minutes later on another frequency where my examiner did the readback of the clearance for the return flight while I did the approach, and repeated the same that I also heard, but ATC apologized that it was the wrong frequency that he gave us, so at least he noted that it was his mistake). We entered IMC soon after passing 3000 feet and stayed there until the holding. The whole holding procedure was flown in an interesting cloud hole with IMC all around, but not where we were flying. Teardrop entry. Calculation of WCAs. I should fly the hold on autopilot, but as this was unexpected as I regarded it as guaranteed that this part will be hand flown it didn’t feel right. However it was quite a good point from my examiner that later I’d fly that always on autopilot, so it’s good to get used to it.

The approach was again IMC until maybe 400 above minimums. We did a 2D and a 3D approach, quite standard. And with only 10 knots wind straight on the nose and not many turbulences my workload was significantly less than before where in all the last flights I had around 40 to 60 knots and all that stuff like 20 degrees WCA, and windshear right on the approach.

After the approaches we did airwork, some steep curves, upset recovery, stalls and that stuff, all in IMC.

That’s it from memory. We did everything that’s required on the exam sheet and I got a pass