For me the trick was to …relax. Almost all of the airplanes we fly have enough built in stabilty that they fly best if you fly with a light touch and leave them alone as much as possible. You have to recognize the tendency on the Attitude Indicator early and make many small corrections – and never let the plane deviate from the course/attitude too much. Actually “over controlling” is what many inexperienced pilots do in VMC aswell.
Since I don’t do it very often I am not very good at it either, but if I concentrate I can fly within 100 ft and 3 degrees for some time.
I find it pretty hard to handfly inside rough IMC
Everybody does… that is why one gets an IR which gives you undisputed airspace access and thus allows you to operate the more general strategy of avoiding cloud whenever possible 
I don’t hold an IR rating (yet). I flew once VFR into IMC. Well technically twice, the first time was easy enough to do a 180 turn out of (even though I also slightly overshot my reverse course like the guys in the video), and pointed to me a key tool: the autopilot. For the second flight, where I knew the risk of bad weather was not very high but not strictly zero, I made sure to pick the club’s one plane with a fully functional autopilot. Even though it’s a simple one axis wing leveler, it reduces the workload so much. Suddenly you do not use any brainpower whatsoever just to keep the plane level and can focus on the GPS, the map, setting up instruments, making calculations, etc…
In the PPL’s mandatory 5h under the hood and 10h of sim time (prep’ing for CBIR), I had never experienced spatial disorientation. I guess peripheral vision and sitting on a fixed chair is enough to know where up is. In real IMC in a plane, it took a good 15s until my ears were telling me I was turning left (I was not). Ignoring one’s senses does not come naturally.
I climbed enough to get out of obstacles (antennas and wind-mills)(yes I was that low over the crests) but not into heavy turbulence, contacted ATC, converted to IFR FPL and got vectors to the ILS of a local field (not my planned destination, but not far either). The weather cleared shortly after I got established, by the time I parked the sun was out again, and the sky became all clear when we left the airport. The weather forecast was mostly correct, except for those key 15 minutes where the clouds went all the way down.
Thankfully I did not become a statistics that day, not more that an incident report statistics. This winter I am allocating time for completing the CBIR.
You have 178 seconds to live.
EuroFlyer wrote:
To be honest, I find it pretty hard to handfly inside rough IMC, even with my instructor next to me.
I’m with boscomantico, this is similar to learning to ride a bicycle. Once you have become friends with your gyros, you automatically revert to them when visibility declines. It starts to feel natural to only take cues from your instruments.
I find hand flying in IMC to be very easy, what I still find stressful is situational awareness — where exactly am I, what is my position relative to ground, am I on the correct path on the approach?
Arne wrote:
converted to IFR FPL
Without IR?
This was during my training. Around the 9th hour in the air:
IMC @ 3:53
Dimme wrote:
This was during my training. Around the 9th hour in the air:IMC @ 3:53
This shows very well how dangerous scud running can be. Since the visibility is poor already and you don’t have a well-defined horizon, it is difficult to see in time if the clouds ahead are below your level.
achimha wrote:
I’m with boscomantico, this is similar to learning to ride a bicycle. Once you have become friends with your gyros, you automatically revert to them when visibility declines. It starts to feel natural to only take cues from your instruments.I find hand flying in IMC to be very easy, what I still find stressful is situational awareness — where exactly am I, what is my position relative to ground, am I on the correct path on the approach?
I also agree. At no point during IFR training or afterwards have I had any difficulty whatsoever controlling the aircraft on instruments. The difficult thing is doing so with the required precision while at the same time navigating and communicating.
Dimme wrote:
This was during my training. Around the 9th hour in the air:IMC @ 3:53
I suppose this was with instructor and not sole? Did the instructor want to make a point?
