Continuing Ed

The Best Kind Of Training

The good weather we southwestern Florida-based pilots enjoy has just one drawback: It's tough for someone with an IFR rating to log "actual" in-the-clouds instrument time. Our predominantly sunny days and observatory quality nights mean we stay current by becoming experts under the hood, adept at flying on the gauges while wearing a view-restricting device. On occasion we might get one-tenth of an hour of actual instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) by reluctantly punching through the rough thermaling cores of fluffy afternoon cumulus because there is no easy way over, under, or around them.

My son, Ian, is learning about what it means to be a Florida IFR pilot. He's a college junior who also is working on his instrument rating. He's training in northern Florida where overcast skies are not quite as rare as in the southern half of the peninsular state. Although Ian trains out of a VFR grass strip, his instructor, Frank Osborn, tries to take advantage of the occasional overcast day to give his students cruise and approach experience in IMC. Unfortunately, Ian hasn't yet had that opportunity in his training.

Last weekend, Ian called to say that he and a buddy, who also is an IFR student, had rented the flight school's new Cessna 172 and were flying south to practice their skills under the hood and build hours toward their ratings. He planned to stay overnight with us while his buddy visited his girlfriend farther South in Naples. He added that he'd like to do some practice approaches with me acting as safety pilot.

Ian dropped off his buddy in Naples, then flew the short leg up to Fort Myers guided by approach control. They handle the Class C airspace associated with Southwest Florida International six miles to the southeast of our Class D airport. Ian could have taken the scenic route up the beach at 1,000 feet mean sea level, stayed beneath the floor of the Class C area, and talked only to tower controllers at either end of the flight. Instead he took the opportunity to exercise his excellent communications skills and comply with approach control's IFR-like heading and altitude assignments. Good for him. Not only was it good practice, but he was in voice and radar contact with area controllers, giving him an extra pair of radar eyes watching for traffic as he traversed an area inhabited by a fair number of general aviation aircraft and arriving and departing airliners.

Ian was in town for about 24 hours, and the only time we could fly together was early the next morning - very early. College students usually are comatose at that time of the day, but I woke him up and we were out the door mere minutes behind schedule.

We filed an IFR flight plan in my name with the notation "practice approaches" in the comments box on the flight plan form. While Ian preflighted, the soft blue early morning sky became milky, and within a matter of minutes a low fog layer condensed out of the moisture-saturated air. These morning fog clouds are a common occurrence in our part of the world. Although the fog forces VFR pilots to drink another couple of cups of coffee while they wait for the ceiling to dissipate, it's of little consequence to pilots who are IFR rated and current. The fog does not form at ground level. Instead, it condenses into a low, thin overcast layer with the base of the ceiling at or above minimums for the instrument landing system (ILS). That means a departing IFR pilot retains the option of returning to land if necessary. In other words, the pilot has an out, which is not the case when taking off into fog that forms on the surface and extends several hundred feet into the air. When flying in weather, it's important to always have an out.

I settled into the right seat and read off the checklist items while Ian responded - the challenge-and-response method practiced in professional cockpits. We listened to the ATIS broadcast, called ground control for our IFR clearance, and taxied to the runway.

Ian's first actual IMC came as we climbed through the thin overcast to bright sun on top. We entered the cloud just as the tower gave him a frequency change to approach control. He was multitasking - flying, configuring the airplane for climb, switching frequencies, and talking to air traffic control. The airplane banked slightly left in the clouds as he reported in to the approach controller. When he released the push-to-talk switch he chided himself aloud for letting the attitude deteriorate from wings-level.

The controller cheerfully acted on Ian's request to shoot multiple approaches. We began with an ILS to Runway 5. The controller then issued missed approach instructions and vectored him on a downwind to the ILS final approach course, then turned him in stages back toward the airport.

Nearing the outer marker, I told Ian to remove his homemade view-restricting glasses. This approach would be for real, not simulated by wearing plastic protective glasses with all but a small section of the lens area blacked out with electrical tape. He needed to experience the sensation of descending out of bright sunshine into murky clouds while following a pair of crossed needles to the threshold of an unseen runway ahead and below.

He did a fine job of keeping the glideslope and localizer needles in check on the approach. We were shrouded in fog all the way to the missed approach point when the runway finally began to appear. Ian powered up, started to climb, and called the tower to report the miss.

Next up was a VOR approach to Runway 13. The VOR is located six miles to the southeast of the airport, which means that it is a nonprecision approach in the truest sense of the word. Ian tracked the inbound radial on the final approach course and leveled off at the minimum descent altitude, which put us right on top of the fog layer. At the missed approach point, defined by the distance from the runway, he began the missed approach procedure. Just then he looked down through narrow breaks in the undercast and spotted the approach end of the runway. He had nailed the final approach course, which is more than I can say for my past performance on that same procedure.

We finished the session with another ILS. As with the previous two approaches, he flew it without wearing the taped-up glasses. By then the fog was quickly burning off. The runway materialized out of the dissipating gray at about 500 feet above ground level.

Ian was pumped. He had done very well under pressure. Even though he was in the last stages of training for the instrument rating, he hadn't yet flown an approach in actual IMC. Now he could log three. On the drive home we agreed that conditions had been ideal for gaining experience in flying no-fooling instrument approaches. He'll be a better instrument pilot for it.