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Instrument Flight

Welcome to basic instrument flight. The lesson where your Instructor actually wants you to keep your head in the cockpit and watch those instruments!

Instrument Flying (IF) is a challenging component of the RPL where you’ll ‘get under the hood’ (a visor that stops you seeing outside of the aeroplane) and learn to use the instruments as the sole means of maintaining safe flight.

The aim of the lesson is not to give you any privilege to fly in cloud or without visibility on your own, but more to arm you with a technique to get out of trouble if a poor decision has caused loss of visibility.

During your Brief, you’ll learn the following and more:
– Human factors at play during instrument flight
– Selective Radial Scan technique for flying on instruments
– Principles of operation for instruments in the cockpit
– recovery from unusual attitudes or inadvertent entry into cloud

Lesson Techniques

To attempt the Recreational Pilot Licence Flight Test, you must have logged 2 hours of instrument flying time during training. Therefore you’ll fly two Instrument Flight lessons in total. They are summarised as follows:

– Flight 1: Full panel instrument flying. 1.2 hours (0.9hrs logged on instruments)
– Flight 2: Limited panel instrument flying. 1.2 hours (0.9hrs logged on instruments)

The remaining 0.2 hours required to reach the 2 hour minimum will be achieved during your RPL PreTest Flight.

Click video below to see some IFR flying in a Cessna:

Resources

Readings

Before attending your Briefing and Lesson, you should have read the following:

  • The Flying Training Manual – Chapter 21 Instrument Flight
  • Basic Aeronautical Knowledge (BAK) – Chapter 8 Human Factors
    Additional general reading: continue reading through texts

bak_text_bookflying_text_book

Useful Links & Files

Nil

Instructor’s Tips

  • You will be taught a scan technique to keep tabs on all the important instruments. Keep the scan going and don’t fixate on one instrument, as the others will wander quickly if unchecked
  • Always trust your instruments over your sensory system, which is prone to disorientation and illusions
  • Until you gain a night rating or instrument rating, you should never have to rely on these skills in the real world
  • Gentle and controlled inputs will yield more consistent results

Questions

This section gives you an opportunity to search for information, which is a skill that will come in handy during your training. Use resources such as your text books or the Internet to answer the following questions.

  • Which instruments use the static system?
  • Which instruments use the pitot tube?
  • Which instruments use gyroscopes. Of those instruments, which uses an electrically driven gyo and why?
  • State the technique to recover from an inadvertent entry into cloud
  • State the technique to recover on instruments from an unusual attitude
  • What is ‘the leans’?

Learning Objectives

By the end of this Briefing and Flight, you will be expected to be able to:

  • recover from unusual attitudes on full and limited panel instruments
  • fly S&L, climb, descend and turn on instruments
  • recall basic principles of operation for the six-pack instruments and their failure indications