Menu Sign In Contact FAQ
Banner
Welcome to our forums

The EIR - beginning to end

Thanks for the replies! The Mooner is EASA registered. I’ll check my insurance. The Cessna s#cks, it has no HSI no A/P no RMI no WAAS and no speed. I wouldn’t go so far as call it a shagged out shitbox, but it’s just not very nice. The exam would take three hours to complete to get the thing from Teuge to Eelde, do three approaches and get back again. And I rather fly my own plane opposed to renting someone else’s.

EHTE, Netherlands

If you are not used to that Cessna just go for your own plane, you currency on your Mooney will matter a lot to be able to relax the yoke and pause instrument scan to doing other stuffs while it keep accurate flying…also, having an HSI/RMI vs VOR/RBI could mean a pass vs fail after 3h of handflying in IMC or simulated with stress from an examiner around, the drawback you may have to teach the examiner your own pannel if he want to try some fiddling !

Good luck with it anyway,

Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom

Glad you’re going for the full IR, Bobo.

The 252 will be grateful :-)

EBST, Belgium

@Ibra I would have loved to continue training at the ATO on the Mooney but I had to make some choices. The ATO at Rotterdam probably would have let me train on the Mooney, and in hindsight that would have been the way to go. But I opted for Teuge because that is the flightschool that is closest by, at half an hour by car. Flying at Rotterdam would require me to drive to Teuge and fly to Rotterdam for each lesson.
The flightschool at Teuge refused to add the Mooney to their fleet due to all sorts of reasons, but I guess they just wanted to rent me their Cessna. I can’t blame them. So opted for Teuge because I thought it would be quickest. Still it took me 15 months to fly 15 hours. The instructor was wonderful, she really took the time and the whole syllabus was well sorted. She prepared every lesson in detail and everybody at the flightschool was friendly and accommodating. Flying should be fun and they get that.

EHTE, Netherlands

@airways Yes that’s exactly what most people said to me when I brought up the EIR. The 252 begs for a full IR and nothing less. But it’s been quite an investment in time and money so far. I would have been better off just blocking three weeks in my schedule and get this sorted, but work and a young family just won’t allow that.

Never thought that IFR flying would be so much fun tho…!

EHTE, Netherlands

My examiner confirmed I can do the exam on my own plane, I’m very happy with that because I’m way more current on the Mooney then the C172. Hope I do well on my last planned lesson tomorrow so I can actually plan the exam.

EHTE, Netherlands

Good luck for your exam !
I think many would be interested in your reasoning about switching from EIR to CB IR.

LFOU, France

Good luck Bobo

Jujupilote wrote:

your reasoning about switching from EIR to CB IR

Usually for me:
- Slow rate of progress and overshooting minimum hours, just go for the long sprint
- Budget constraints, go for the short sprint

I think many will find that while getting ready for EIR is already costly and takes more than min hours, so they are already close to CBIR as it is just a matter of extra 10 hours to get there….If you can do EIR on min hours and short on budget, then it may make sense to just break it but I find the EIR syllabus to be very fuzzy and not well defined compared to full IR, so there is always “some extra” to do left and right…

Last Edited by Ibra at 26 Sep 10:38
Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom

Jujupilote wrote:

reasoning

Well, for me IFR flying doesn’t come naturally. My mind is not geared for the type of thinking that is required. I do love to fly longer cross countries and IFR flying is a great tool for planning, because of it’s simplicity and as it opens up so much more airspace. I felt that I would be well off with an EIR, it would give me just what I felt I needed to expand my flying. It would also keep me from doing all these complicated approaches and procedures I dreaded. Most of my flying friends however advised me to go full IR anyway, because would come in handy one day. More or less the same was said over here. The consensus on this was so strong I just went ahead and tried a few lessons for the full IR. The old-school radio nav stuff I find most difficult but this is also part of the EIR syllabus, flying approaches – for me – doesn’t really make it more difficult but it does add to the useability of the rating so that’s why I went ahead and go full IR.

I did 35 hours on the Mooney with an instructor, and another 20 hours with an ATO (only 10 are required, but I just needed some more…). So that’s 55 hours total time learning stuff I already was a bit familiair with to start with, so I guess I’m a slow learner, but it has been a lot of fun! The planning of these training hours did put some strain on the homefront, so all will be happy when this is all done.

EHTE, Netherlands

New EIR kid on the block

Hello EuroGA!

First of all, thanks for this resourceful forum. Secondly, thanks to the people who programmed autorouter.aero and its chat bot!

I hold an FAA IR and converted to an EIR more than a year ago. Then it expired without much use, because the airplane I mainly fly was not yet fit for IFR. Now the Skylark is ready and I had to get ready too. After studying the GTN650 and dual G5 manuals I felt comfortable again for the EIR proficiency check to renew my rating. The check went well. I think it helped that I flew VFR to the Black Sea this summer, where even VFR you always get full clearances, so I wasn’t out of the loop ATC wise. Of course there are limitations to this rating. I basically look at it as an easier means to navigate throughout Europe, without too much advantages over pure VFR in regards to weather. The examiner concluded with an important hint: ATC is unaware of my IR “limitation”. As I called them to divert due to worse weather at destination than forecasted, ATC advised me that the weather there is improving. But in their context it is improving, meaning, the fog’s visibility is increasing to 400m RVR for an approach and by no means improving to a 1,5-5km visibility for SVFR/VFR (even then, it might be a bad idea to approach an unfamiliar field in such visibility).

What irritated me was ATC when they called me to “immediately return to my FL, maintain strictly FLXX”, even though I was doing so within +-50ft. The controller said once again: “I see you at FLXX*1*, maintain strictly FLXX!”. The examiner and I looked puzzled as I couldn’t have kept altitude much more precisely (no autopilot, so I did have deviations of around 50 feet. The thing is, per my understanding a transponder is rounding up to the next one-hundred increment when at plus or minus 50ft of a flight level. That’s absolutely normal – or does anybody know what was going on there? I am positive that the transponder never showed an excess of 100 feet. To please the controller I pinned the altimeter hand to +-10ft and that made her calm down, apparently. Nevertheless, I filed a report about this occurrence as it is another example of negative Swiss ATC attitude endangering flight safety (I will not use them as a decision-making tool/partner as in the USA but rather try to avoid any transmissions whenever possible). Good thing is, I have my rating to fly abroad, so I will be flying with more helpful ATC, hopefully. :-) Sorry for this rant, I couldn’t resist writing it down.

Now I am looking forward to getting a bit more into the European IFR system and using the new privileges that I gained.

Cheers
Florian

Last Edited by ArcticChiller at 24 Oct 06:35
Sign in to add your message

Back to Top