The way I teach basic instrument flying is the same way I was taught 45 years ago, and, when I use it to train my students, seems to be very effective, and many of them are amazed by the transformation in their skills. I really don't know why that is, because I would have thought that all instrument instructors would teach the same basic techniques; yet so much of it seems to be new to so many students who have already been through a basic instrument flying course that I can only assume that either they haven't been trained properly or, for some reason, it hasn't sunk in. So I am making this video to try to plug that gap, and simply reproduce the basic training I give my students. This video is aimed at the bulk, but not the whole of the GA IFR community. It assumes a non-pressurised light aircraft lying somewhere between C172 and Navajo Chieftain. There is little difference in the training between six-pack instruments and glass, and I will use examples from each. In later videos I also intend to cover both OBS and HSI and both RBI and RMI. This video only covers basic instrument flying. If it goes well and reaction is good, I'll do one on tracking, holding and approaches (both precision and non-precision.) Later, if the COVID 19 lockdown continues long enough, I may cover Autopilot, RNAV and PBN. For ease of production and distribution, I have made it as one continuous video, but I would strongly discourage you from watching it that way. Watch a section, then go practice, either on an aircraft or on a simulator. If you use a simulator, I recommend X-Plane and I strongly recommend using a force feedback yoke, with the trimming set up as accurately as possible. Good force feedback yokes are expensive, but so is flying an aircraft, and, in my opinion, you will save money by spending the money on a yoke, then spending many hours practicing on the sim rather than in the air. X-Plane and Brunner have played no part in the creation of this video and are unaware that I am making it. I recommend them only as a very satisfied customer. I will not benefit whether you buy their products or not. If you do have X-Plane, then I am able to provide remote training anywhere in the world by connecting our X-Plane installations together and setting up a conference call. You can find me, Timothy Nathan, on the PPL/IR Europe website. Before we start on instrument flying, there are three preliminary exercises that should be done VFR/VMC. Firstly, fly along in VMC at your normal cruise settings, adjust the aircraft symbol on the AI so it is exactly in alignment with the horizon, then gently change your altitude by 100', first up, then down. Consciously notice and internalise the size of your attitude change in the windscreen and in the AI. Do this a few times until you have a feel for how the pitch on the AI compares with the real horizon. Try to memorise what you have discovered. Then the second exercice, still in VMC/VFR, teach yourself to trim absolutely perfectly, so that the aircraft flies hands off and remains at exactly the correct altitude and on the correct heading (as I will discuss later, use the rudder trim to prevent any yaw or wing drop.) Practice that trimming at different speeds, in climb and descent, in different configurations of flaps and gear and in turns until you can do it all intuitively. A bit later in the video I talk about trimming techniques and it is worth watching that bit before you do this exercise. And the third important exercise is to determine power settings for different configurations. You probably already know the power setting for climb and cruise, indeed there are probably AFM or POH instructions, so most of this exercise is about settings for the descent. Take a careful note of the power setting, either RPM or MAP as appropriate to your type. Personally, I tend to keep cruise power in the initial descent and just go faster, but if you don't have a turbo charged aircraft you will want to gradually throttle back as you descend. Now fly at 2000' and lower approach flaps, but with the gear up (if applicable). Adjust power so that you are flying at the speed you would normally fly an approach, which is typically faster than Vref. For IFR touring aircraft it might be around 100-120 kts, for twins and turboprops about 120-130 kts. Make a careful note of that power setting. If you have retractable gear, lower it and allow the nose to drop to about 500fpm. You will probably find that the power setting is the same as in level flight without gear, but if you need to adjust it make a note. If you have fixed gear, reduce the power but leave the trim alone, and discover the power setting necessary to descend at 500fpm. Keep a careful note of that power setting. You are going to need these settings later. Of course, you will need to go through these exercises for each aircraft type you fly, whether in reality or on the sim. So, let's start on how to fly on instruments. The big first lesson is that you should focus as much attention as possible on the attitude indicator. Whatever else you are doing, changing frequency, looking at plates and charts, going through checklists or whatever, it is back to the AI. If the AI is in the right place, nothing else can go wrong. If it is very slightly in the wrong place, then other things, such as altitude and heading may go slightly wrong, but very slowly. So, if you have other tasks to perform, and have limited spare capacity, don't even bother with the other instruments, just keep darting your eyes back to the AI. Then, when your capacity increases again you can expand your scan to other instruments to check that you are still exactly on altitude and heading. A lot of instrument pilots who have not been well taught, have forgotten what they were taught or have simply slipped into bad habits, chase the instruments, which effectively means that they are perpetually in a state of pilot induced oscillation. This is usually at its worse on the ILS, where the pilot is trying, and inevitably failing, to follow the ILS indications directly, rather than starting with the AI, then looking at the heading and rate of descent and only occasionally at the ILS indications. There is a pyramid hierarchy with the AI on top, the performance instruments (Altimeter, DI, ASI and VSI) in the middle and the navigation instruments (HSI, OBS, ADF) at the bottom. Any adjustment you want to make to a performance instrument (such as changing altitude) is achieved on the AI and then checked on the Altimeter. Taking that one step further, if you want to adjust on the ILS, you determine the new heading but again, you execute the plan on the AI. Once you have grasped that concept, you will transform your instrument flying, and indeed be able to make it an unconscious skill, like driving your car, where you are no longer having to think about the instruments but can free your mind to do other tasks, like planning and management. So the AI is the king of the instruments and you use it to make any adjustments. If your altitude is a little wrong, you look at the AI to change pitch slightly. You then wait before next looking at altitude, because you are flying pitch attitude, not altimeter. You then readjust the attitude back to level flight. The same is true if the heading needs adjustment. You correct on the AI then, when back on heading, go back to straight and level on the AI. It must be emphasised that changes to the AI to make corrections are very small. As I hope you discover when you do the VMC experiment I suggested earlier, the amount of pitch change, as indicated on a classic mechanical AI is very small, often as little a millimetre. It is a precision tool. Also, an important point about the reliability of the AI. We place our complete trust in them, indeed we trust them with our lives and the lives of our families. But sadly they can and do go wrong, and the most common failure, particularly on light singles which only have one vacuum pump, is vacuum supply, and we should check the vacuum gauge on a regular basis, maybe with FREDA checks, maybe more often. These days, with standby electric horizons being so cheap, I would suggest that all aircraft should have an independent backup instrument. If you rent, you might like to look at the many low priced AHRS units which can give you a good attitude indication on your phone or tablet. Once you have this technique mastered, it is remarkable how long you can leave it between looking at any other instruments. When I am training my students, I cover up all the other instruments (or, on the sim, zoom right into the AI) and get them to fly the AI super accurately for maybe 60 seconds. In that time (and it's a long time) they rarely end up more than 50' or 5° off. So, to reiterate, if you keep the attitude correct, everything else remains correct. The easiest way to ensure that the attitude remains correct, even when you look away, is for the aircraft to be completely in trim. The technique for trimming is often referred to by instructors a select-hold-trim. Select the attitude you want, hold the attitude and feel what control inputs you need and trim those forces away. I recommend students never to have more than one finger and one thumb on the yoke. That makes it very easy to feel whether you need to be pulling a little with your finger or pushing a little with your thumb to maintain attitude. You then unload that pressure with small adjustments to the trim until the pitch attitude is exactly right to maintain the performance required (normally level, but the same is true for climb and descent) without any pressure on the yoke. This is why it is so important on the sim to have force feedback controls. You also need to trim to fly straight. Most of us are not lucky enough to have aileron trim on our aircraft. That generally comes in at the higher end of the C172 to Navajo range we are talking about. Having said that, my own aircraft does have aileron trim, but I can't remember the last time I used it, so it is not a great boon. But we nearly all have rudder trim, and I recommend using that to ensure that neither wing drops. Some purists might argue that the ensuing configuration may be a bit out of balance and that that is obviously a bad thing, but I disagree. If the amount of out of balance you create by using the rudder to keep the wings level is more than a smidgeon, then I suggest that you ground the aircraft until you discover why. Either the balance ball is not level on the panel or your airframe is twisted. If, on the other hand, it is only a smidgeon, then the effect on performance and passenger comfort will be negligible and the safety and workload benefit of keeping you flying straight even when you are not looking at the AI or have your hands on the controls is enormous. In extremis, it could save your life, as it prevents a spiral dive when you are distracted. So, I have talked about maintaining an attitude and the importance of trim to put in the minimum of control input to keep both level and straight, the next obvious step is to say that, once the aircraft is trimmed, any control input from the pilot is likely to have a negative, rather than beneficial effect. So, the next exercise is to practice getting the aircraft or simulator perfectly in trim, then just letting go. You should be able to get it to the point where you can leave it untouched for maybe 60 to 90 seconds without your heading changing by more than 5° or your altitude by 50'. Remember not to react to small changes in attitude, altitude or heading, because the natural stability of the aircraft will generally fix them. Just watch and see what happens. And that, of course is a game changer. If you can reliably take your hands off the yoke to do other stuff, like look for a plate, or even eat a sandwich, then instrument flying has suddenly transformed into a non-event. I once sent a student off for his initial IR, and the feedback was that, while it was good to see that he was relaxed and accurate, the examiner did not approve of him actually having his arms folded across his chest as he flew the ILS to minima. I don't recommend this, I only mention it to emphasise how relaxed instrument flying can be. Staying with the attitude indicator, let's move on to the next issue where I may differ from some traditionalists, but where I have found a technique that students can really latch onto and produces great results. As far as I am concerned, the AI should always be showing one of nine pictures. Three positions in pitch times three in roll. Let's start with pitch. In every aircraft in the C172 to Navajo range that I have flown, there are only three places where pitch should be. Level, 8° nose up and 2½° nose down. Those pitches give you the performance you want. On a traditional vacuum, mechanical AI, it can be quite difficult to pitch accurately, particularly in some models where pitch angle isn't marked. You may just have to remember, or, if you own the aircraft, mark on the instrument the three pitches. This is one of the great benefits of glass, where pitch is multiplied to be much clearer and it is easy to pitch to within ½°. The first pitch, level, should be self evident, though there is a little more to say in a minute. If your AI has a moveable aircraft symbol, then you should carefully set it such that it reads level at cruise speed, then leave it alone. In any of the aircraft in our range, the climb position of 8° nose up gives the speed and rate of climb parameters you want at full power or, in more powerful aircraft, climb power. If you are familiar with flight director, you will be aware that there is a take-off/go-around or TOGA button to be pressed before take-off or in the go-around. When you press TOGA, the command bar goes straight to 8° nose-up and that is what you are expected to fly. Obviously you need to get the engine cooling right on very hot days and you might need to lower the nose and fly faster and sometimes nearby terrain means that you want the best angle of climb at the expense of forward progress and engine parameters, but put those exceptions out of your mind while you build your skills. Put the nose at 8° in the climb and things will work out for you. Similarly, in an unpressurised light aircraft there are a small range of rates of descent that you ever want to achieve. For your enroute descent, you want to descend at 500fpm. That is simply because you want to reduce the rate of descent as much as possible for the sake of your passengers' ears, but the minimum rate of descent permitted in an IFR controlled environment is 500fpm. That is to say that when you are cleared to descend, unless the controller uses an expression like "descend when ready" or "at your convenience", then he will is planning for you to start your descent promptly and descend at a minimum of 500fpm. So, we want the minimum rate of descent for passengers and that minimum is 500fpm. In every aircraft in the range of aircraft we are talking about that I have flown, that 500fpm is achieved at 2½° nose down. However, as we are going to discuss later, other rates of descent are required for final approach. In a slow aircraft or in strong headwinds that rate of descent can be as little as 250fpm, though most of the time in most of the IFR aircraft we are talking about it is more typically around 450-600 fpm. But the great thing is, it seems that in the C172 to Navajo range we are discussing, a 3° approach with approach flap and gear extended is achieved, at the desired speed by setting 2½° nose down. Now whether that is because of the basic laws of aerodynamics, or because it's a design rule or whether it is a conspiracy on the part of designers, I can't say but the upshot is that the only pitch angle you need for descent is 2½° nose down. So I promised you three pitch positions, and you have them, 8° nose up, zero and 2½° nose down. But I also promised you three angles of bank. Firstly you need to know that all IFR turns are made at Rate One, which is to say 3° per second, 180°per minute, or two minutes to turn through 360°. The only exception is if you get the instruction "Avoiding Action" in which case you make a Rate Two turn, but I have only had that instruction once in 45 years of IFR flying, so we can safely ignore that in basic training and I say again, all IFR turns are Rate One. When flying rate one turns, I teach my students not to refer to the turn coordinator or turn needle, but to make the turn on attitude only. There is a simple equation to calculate angle of bank for a rate one turn. Divide your airspeed by ten and add seven. That means that at 100kts you need 17°, at 120kts 19° and at 140kts 21°. 100 to 140kts is a big range of airspeeds, yet the difference in angle of bank is only 4°. Furthermore, the most important time to fly accurate turns is in procedures and holds, and most of our type of aircraft are going to fly those at between 120 and 140kts. Admittedly, that doesn't include the bottom of the range, the normally powered C172 and PA28, but it is good for the higher powered versions of those airframes, like the Skyhawk and Arrow, which are more likely to be used in an IFR environment, and right up to the Navajo. So, if we are flying at 130kts, the angle of bank for a Rate One turn is 130 divided by 10, 13, plus seven is 20°. At 110 kts its 18°. So, you know what I am going to say. The only three angles of roll you are going to use IFR are 20° left, centralised and 20° right. I promised you a range of three and that is they. Thus you have three attitudes in pitch and three in roll. That gives you a total of nine pictures you are going to see on your AI. Straight and level, straight climb, straight descent, left turn, right turn, climbing left turn, climbing right turn, descending left turn, descending right turn. And why have I explained that at such great length? Because I want you to internalise, remember and thoroughly grasp that if you are looking at a picture that does not match one of those nine you should be asking yourself why and 99 times out of a hundred the response should be to put the AI on one of the nine positions. Providing it is matched by climb, cruise or descent power as appropriate then those pictures are going to keep you safe and performing well. Now, I have been a little disingenuous, because there are going to be times when you are making small corrections to altitude and heading when you’ll be making small changes in pitch and roll but nonetheless it’s a very good rule of thumb to always be in one of those nine slots. They will fix any mess you have got into, and, at any rate, not make matters worse. Finally, before we leave pitch attitudes, I said earlier that you should set the aircraft symbol to normal cruise straight and level. But there will be times when you are flying straight and level slower, for example in the hold, or faster, for example against a headwind. Just like when you use external references in VMC, as you slow down you need to raise the nose. In glass, the pitch angles are clear and it is easy to memorise your attitude in terms of degrees. But on the small AI usually fitted to small aircraft, it can be more tricky. In this example, there are no pitch markings at all. I have seen this in older small Pipers many times. They make life much more difficult! In my experience, the best thing to do is have an inner voice saying things like “the orange is just touching the white” or * “the blue is the same width as the orange and the white”. It might sound a bit silly as I say it now, but it works in flight when you have a lot of other things to think about. The same, but opposite is true in high speed flight, except that the pitch angles are smaller, so you might be saying “the orange is halfway down the white.” Let us now move on to bringing the other instruments into the scan. In the case of the six-pack that means the other five instruments arranged around the AI, in the case of a glass PFD it means taking notice of the tapes and HSI, but the effect is much the same. As I have already said, if you are doing other things, you only need glance back to the AI, but when you are focussing on accurate instrument flying, you need to ensure that, as appropriate for the stage of flight, altitude, heading, airspeed and rate of descent are also exactly right. These instruments are called performance instruments because they measure the performance we are achieving. And I mean exactly right. As we will be discovering later, when I am talking about procedures, it is much easier to fly very accurately than it is inaccurately. There are two reasons for that. One reason is that if you deviate you have to correct and then get back to where you were. That’s two things that are going to occupy your brain cells, whereas just staying in the right place in the first place is easier. The second reason is that if you start a procedure at the wrong altitude or pointing in the wrong direction, everything else goes to pot. Take, for example, the descent on a two dimensional approach, without vertical guidance. If you start at the correct altitude and adopt the correct rate of descent (which, we will see later, is easily calculated), you will float through each check altitude correctly. But if you start at the wrong altitude, even by 50’, you will be constantly recalculating and adjusting all the way down, taking your attention from horizontal tracking and checks. Your workload will be a lot higher than if you had just got it right in the first place. So our aim is to fly as accurately as possible with the minimum effort. We have already established that the attitude indicator is the master instrument and very much the focus of our attention. We use a technique called radial scan to bring in the other instruments. That means looking at the AI and then across to a performance instrument or tape, then back to the AI, then onto another performance instrument and so on. But we are trying to use the minimum effort; and having to scan all the other instruments every time is an unwarranted effort. For example, if we are flying straight and level at a steady power setting, do we need to check the airspeed as often as the altitude? Of course not. We might want to check it every so often, to check for icing or pitot blockage, for example, but in straight and level flight it’s not going to change, so there is no point focussing on it. So that thought takes us away from the concept of the radial scan to the technique we really need – the Selective Radial Scan. The selective radial scan takes out of our scan the instruments that are not useful for what we are currently doing, leaving us only with those that are really informative. Before we start looking at specific selective radial scans, a word about bugs. Bugs make the scan so much easier. So use whatever bugs you have. Most of us have heading bugs, but those of us with glass will also have altitude, airspeed and vertical speed bugs; you should always use whatever bugs you have, because they make the scan so much easier. Personally, and this really is a personal choice, I leave my airspeed bug on 130kts, not because I am always flying at that speed, but because that is my preferred speed at the times I am monitoring it, in the climb, in procedures and on the approach. The easiest example of selective radial scan is straight and level. What do we need to know to ensure that we are straight and level? Well, the clue is in the name. The DI, with its heading bug set, tells us if we are straight and the altimeter (with its bug on a glass tape) tells us if we are level. So, the selective radial scan for straight and level is AI, DI, AI, Altimeter, AI, DI, AI, Altimeter and so on. We occasionally look at other instruments, including engine instruments and navigation instruments, but our focus is just on those three. Do not make the rookie mistake of trying to use the VSI to stay level. It is too laggy to be useful. It is only used in steady state, in a descent. Let’s have a look at some other scans. When we are in a level turn, we don’t need to keep looking at the DI, because it’s going to be some time before we reach our desired heading. So the only performance instrument we need in the turn is the Altimeter. But most of us need altitude more than usual because we need some back pressure in the turn. So, as we enter the turn we automatically and immediately raise the nose a tiny bit, maybe 1°, but it is difficult to judge, and that is why we need to look very often at the altimeter. So the Selective Radial Scan in the turn is AI, Altimeter, AI, Altimeter. In the climb we are generally mainly concerned that we don’t go too slowly, both because we want to avoid stalling and spinning, but also because the aircraft we are talking about almost exclusively have air cooled engines where the combination of high power for the climb and low airspeed can soon result in excessive CHTs. Thus we climb at a planned airspeed. We still need to remain straight, so we also have the DI in our scan. But in our kind of aircraft we climb at about 6 – 800 fpm, so if we are climbing, say, 3000’, it’s going to be three or four minutes before we get there, so there is really no point in scanning the altimeter to start with, though we gradually introduce it as we get close and transition to straight and level. So the Selective Radial Scan for the climb is AI, DI, AI, ASI, AI, DI, AI, ASI, and so on. In the descent, as we said earlier, our considerations are different. Obviously we need to keep going straight, but our focus is also on vertical speed. In the cruise descent we want this to be exactly 500fpm, and in the approach we want it to be whatever we calculate to maintain the glidepath. As with the climb, it is going to be some time before we reach our desired altitude or decision altitude, so we can safely not include the altimeter into the scan initially, gradually including it as we get closer. So the Selective Radial Scan for the Descent is AI, DI, AI, VSI, AI, DI, AI, VSI, and so on. Although climbing and descending turns might seem to be the most complex of our basic instrument skills, from the point of view of scan they are actually the easiest. The reason being that, in climbing turns you only need to scan airspeed (because it is a while before you reach heading or altitude) and in descending turns you only need to scan Rate of Descent. Indeed, during climbing and descending turns, I tend initially only really focus on the AI, because the rest looks after itself. Then you must then gradually introduce heading and altimeter as you approach your target. Which leads me to anticipation. It is obvious, I hope, that if you approach a position with a rate of change and only change your attitude when you arrive, you will overshoot. This doubles your workload, as you now have to re-intercept from the other side and then correct onto your desired altitude, heading, track or whatever. So for crisp, accurate and low workload instrument flying you must anticipate your target and start to make adjustments as you get close. My experience of lower skilled instrument pilots is that, while some don’t anticipate at all and increase their workload, most anticipate too soon and end up increasing their workload by making a number of small adjustments. Anticipation is going depend on speed, momentum and, in the case of tracking, which we will move onto in the next video, the angle of turn, but for the range of aircraft we are talking about, C172 to Navajo, we can certainly start with some rules of thumb. In climb or descent, some people suggest 10% of Rate of Climb or Descent (so 500fpm translates into 50’). By all means try that, but it’s also going to depend on the inertia of the aircraft and I have found that that is a little too much. I would suggest trying 30’ for starters. It might be 20’ for C172 and 40’ for a Navajo, but it’s not going to be far off. So maintain the 8° pitch up, or 2½° down all the way to 30’ from your target altitude, then gently but positively move the AI to your known level attitude, and the altimeter will settle at the desired altitude. If you are climbing relatively slowly, That is to say that you airspeed is relatively slow, then you may need to adopt a pitch up attitude appropriate to that lower speed then gently lower the nose as the speed builds up. Remember to keep the climb power on until you have reached cruise speed. 30’ may not seem much, but if you use more you’ll be fighting your way to the correct altitude for a lot longer. In the turn, I would anticipate by 5°, which usually is also conveniently the width of half the heading bug. So, again, fly a 20° bank angle until you reach 5° to go, then roll the wings gently but positively to level. In some aircraft a tiny dab of out-of-turn rudder also helps. The DGI or HSI should settle on the desired heading. That is all I have to say about basic instrument flying. As I said at the beginning, if reaction to this video is good, I will go on to make more about tracking, holding, approaches, Autopilot, Glass and PBN. 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