I did my IR training on a PA28 without autopilot. Always hand flying, setting up the approach, talking to ATC, briefing the approach, etc. was hard work but it’s doable.
It’s workflow management. You always need to ask yourself: what’s next.
lenthamen wrote:
I did my IR training on a PA28 without autopilot.
Same here. Although it was a C172S, and I actually cannot remember whether there was an autopilot. If there was, I sure didn’t use it.
This took place in California in the fall of 2001. I did not get to fly one minute in IMC.
My first solo IFR flight was however in IMC, at least at departure. A few flights later I had to prepare an approach into Monterey in terrible turbulence, in IMC, at night while hand flying. I still remember how intimidating that was, and it made me severely question the safety of single pilot IFR operations without an a/p. However, the fact is that the turbulence was so bad that a KAP140 would not have coped with it anyway and gone into trim fail, so I would have ended up hand flying.
Enjoy your training, @Bobo
Me too, PA28-161, KCHD, 2006, all hand flown, and most of it partial panel.
I also have an embarrassing pic of myself having passed the checkride 
When I came back home, every trip was IFR. Shoreham to Jersey, then Shoreham direct Shoreham to Ljlubljana, Tirana, Dubrovnik, Corfu.
You will never look back.
Practise makes perfect then… I’ve also followed Peters advise and invested € 25,- in FSX and a joystick (second hand). Since yesterday I’m deskflying all sorts of IFR procedures, never thought I’d be enjoying a flighsim. It even has a turbo Mooney to ‘fly’ in! Next week I’ll be doing Human Performance and IFR communications exams. I’ve practised with Aviation Exam and it ‘should’ be no problem, but one never knows…
Next flying lesson we’ll do Arc’s, and I’ve been practising those on my iPhone with the VOR Tracker app
A short update: I did the Human Performance and IFR comm exams last week and by the looks of it, I’ve past both without any margin. I still have to get it in writing tho. I have done five out of seven subjects now, but not one of the exams were 100% covered by aviation exam, some 10% of the questions were a ‘match’ the rest was new to me. I was led to believe that the questionbank of AE was all you had to study, definitely not the case for EIR/CB-IR TK, so beware!
Finaly, after two weeks, I did another flight lesson past Saturday, the weather was prohibiting the weeks before. We have to start VFR, so the weather is still a serious factor. In briliant sunshine we did a series of VOR holdings and three arcs. I used VOR tracker on my iPhone to prepare and that did wonders. I do, however find it difficult to make relatively simple calculations in the left seat whilst flying and doing all those other things. In an armchair with my iPhone situational awereness comes easy…
I find that I am easily rushed in making a decision, because I don’t wan’t people (ATC, instructor etc) waiting for me. It’s the stuff you read about in accidentreports, so it’s a habit I need to kick quickly.
Bobo wrote:
definitely not the case for EIR/CB-IR TK, so beware!
Interesting. I wonder if exams are different according to each national “CAA” (I did mine in the UK).
For CBIR, I found it a good match. Don’t know how much exactly but I would say only probably 5-15% of the questions were an actual surprise.
I think human performance was one of the ones with the higher ratio (asking some CRM questions), as well as instrumentation (the famous 737 EFIS questions) – unsurprisingly got my worst results on these.
I hope I wasn’t the one leading you to that, my recommendation is to read a good book (I really liked the padpilot ones and actually learned from them, but only available on apple ecosystem I believe), and do the aviation exam.
These are some notes I sent to other people after passing the exams:
- Human performance : fairly close to aviation exam. asked much more on dealing with stress though, and little on body
- Instruments : I think we all had it, more questions on EFIS compared to what we liked. I had one where I was in doublt between 3 of the 4 possible answers ! It was asking which sources feed the EFIS. A few were common, but they mostly changed on inclusion / exclusion of : FMC / Fuel flow sensor, fuel qty sensors, radio altimeter. Also question about gyros (precession)
- Air law : pretty much same as aviation exam. no surprises there.
- Radio nav : There was a trick question for theoretical range, where one of the ranges was in meters (and the same number as in another question in same test but feet). A few Pythagoras questionsAll really close to aviation exam to be fair.
second set:
Flight planning : I only had to use 2 maps (one of them one side only and the other 2 sides). I asked to the invigilator to confirm having lat / long lines underlined and they said no problem (I didn’t trust < TK provider > advice that it was allowed)
What I would even do is get the little post it to mark pages (the semi-transparent case, not the opaque ones), and mark the locations you see coming up a few times in the exams. I remember seeing often ALBA / TIREE / ODIN / DEAN CROSS . the exams also asked for the same locations.
I ended up having about 15 min to spare which was nice to recheck everything.
Regarding the calculations you have to do from graphs (performance), the only graphs provided in the pack they give you were single piston range, and twin piston fuel, time and distance to climb.
Calculations to do some not in aviation exam (but i didn’t even do half their questions), but really straighforward. Measurement of some distances on map, dividing by speed. simple stuff.
Also asks for certain routes what is the flight min / max flight level you can choose (make sure to notice the E> O> arrows, and they ask in upper aispace sometimes, so 310 would be an Even level (just check on one of the charts which has the levels)IFR comms : I had littlerally 5 questions that were of the name of type of station (GROUD / DEPARTURE / DELIVERY / RADAR / etc). very similar to aviation exam, it’s the only exam I didn’t stay till the end as you should be done in 5-10 min including verification. know the figues for braking action (They asked about that, fortunately I had memorized that >= 40 is good and <= 25 is bad (not entirely sure if < of <= already, but they asked for 45). Asked about what type of
Meteorology : questions quite similar to aviation exam, but didn’t have any sort of question regarding air masses (and meteorology according to each air mass type). Lots of figures, identify which type of cloud, few questions about icing, which type of cloud produce which type of ice.
Also questions like what is visibility better in drizze or rainfall (rainfall), or showing a point on a figure (on the warm sector of polar front) and ask what would the direction of the wind be.Overall, I think if you stick to aviation exam you should be fine. I did spend a couple of hours practicing for flight planning, and overall the exam as easier.
Hope that helps. At least I can tell you I didn’t have any surprise. Its great news regarding your instruments test!
Possibly, I don’t think I would have an idea.
I did mine in Winter 2015.
Timeframe was roughly (working full time):
Started studying mid jan (after work, evenings)
TK 2 day course in early feb (complete waste of time in my case)
1st set of exams Mid feb
2nd set of exams 2 weeks later (early march)
Flying (21h including exam)
1 day end of March
1 weekend early Feb
2 3-day weekends in May (including exam)
I find that I am easily rushed in making a decision, because I don’t wan’t people (ATC, instructor etc) waiting for me. It’s the stuff you read about in accidentreports, so it’s a habit I need to kick quickly.
Everybody has this problem. The solution is called an AUTOPILOT
But, seriously, this comes with practice (and using the autopilot 100% of the time).
After a bit you will anticipate specific things e.g. if going to a big airport, you should check out every published hold anywhere near there, in case they tell you to hold there. Very rare to get one, but anticipating this is easy enough, and you immediately do a DCT to the holding fix (on autopilot of course) and work out the entry procedure while on the way there.
I don’t know the current IR test rules in different places but when I did mine (Jan 2012) the autopilot and GPS were permitted during enroute, presumably including sids/stars and thus flying to the holding entries. Approaches and I believe holds had to be hand flown. So yes this is harder work because half your brain is used up flying a heading and altitude.
I wonder if exams are different according to each national “CAA” (I did mine in the UK).
They always were different, to the extent that all JAA questions (except PPL ones, which are done domestically) were taken from the common JAA ATPL QB and the “more competent” CAAs then removed the rubbish, and added some new ones. So for example in the UK and Germany you find almost no rubbish questions (multiple right answers etc). France I don’t know about; I don’t think I know anybody who did exams there. In say Spain or Greece you will just get the straight 1990s JAA QB with all the rubbish. But, as with batteries on Ebay, you get what you pay for: UK exams were £60 whereas the Greek ones were €5
The CB IR QB in any given country is AFAIK the JAA IR QB with some topics removed.
The online revision sites have always suffered, to varying degrees, from being based on the original JAA ATPL QB, with little or nothing removed.
as well as instrumentation (the famous 737 EFIS questions) – unsurprisingly got my worst results on these.
You should appeal those. They should not be there. I know of several people in the UK who got a marginal fail and they appealed this, and got enough points credited to turn a fail into a pass.
