Informal poll for the IR's: do you fly single piston in IMC?

[Publishers]

I vote with the soft IFR crowd,,, use it to get above or below cloud decks with plenty of room on either side.

 

[avbug]

I never said I was a "crazy outlaw pilot".

Actually, you did...

Risk is an inherent part of the type of flying I do. I accept that level of risk and have no problem with it. If that makes me a crazy outlaw pilot, so be it.

I tend to post for the lowest common denominator. Personally, I don't fly single engine piston powered airplanes in instrument conditions, as stated at the beginning of the thread. Others clearly do. I have never stated that doing so makes one an outlaw, although I do see their actions as stupid, and foolish, and I make no apology for stating for the record that anyone who beats their chest proudly after dragging their knuckles through the gravel to shout at the full moon that they take risks...is a bloody idiot. Especially in the air.

Now certain operations require more care. Flying ag requires carefull attention to loading, turning, obstacles, drift control, mixing, spacing and gaps, and many, many other technicalities particular to the job. A heavily loaded ag airplane is a heavy airplane, no matter what the actual weight, as it's a minimal performance aircraft. You know that, I know that.

One might say an aircraft that is capable of one hundred feet per minute sustained climb on a good day is a hazard. Putting that aircraft in flight is a risk. We eliminate that risk by ensuring that we are able to dump the load. Now performance due to the weight isn't a risk; we eliminated the risk by opening the back door. Unless we allow it to be, it isn't even a hazard any more. Unless we choose to accept more risks. Instead, we find the risks, and we elimiante them.

Obstacles in a field are hazards, each and every one. No doubt about that. From powerlines to standpipes to illegal power connections some yahoo tries to make from a run on the edge of the field to his shed in the middle of a quarter section...without a single pole to give away his little trick. This is a hazard. We go blowing into that field without looking, we're taking a risk. One might assume that ag flying is all about risk management, and say we've been there so many times before that we are taking an assumed (and therefore managed) risk...after all, we were there yesterday, and nothing was there yesterday...

But instead we eliminate that risk by taking a turn around the field before we spray it. Good habit. You know that. I know that. You know people who are dead because they failed to do it, and so do I. It's not academic for them. It's a life and death issue, and if you fail to check a field before you spray it, it will eventually kill you. Again, we both don't believe this. We both don't assume this. You and I both know it, because we know dead people who proved it to us. Perhaps even had it driven home ourselves in clear and unmistakable manners, no?

So we take a turn around the field for the wife and kids, or the mother-in-law, or just for the sake of professionalism, and we verify that the field is clear of obstacles. Even though we were there yesterday. We perform risk elimination. We seek the risks as though our lives depend upon it, because our lives depend upon it, and we eliminate them. One by one, individually, second by second, throughout that flight.

A tree is at the end of the field. We are unable to climb over the tree. Our aircraft performance is physically incapable of clearing that tree. Or barn. Or whatever. It's a hazard. Our line is right toward that tree; it has to be that way to avoid skips in the field. Are we taking a risk? We're faced with a hazard in that tree, to be sure. It will be a risk if we try to go over it. So we don't. We eliminate that risk, and we go around it. Powerlines down there, can't go around them...a risk. We reach the end of the field, pull back on the stick, the airplane rotates, but it doesn't climb. You've experienced it, I've experienced it. The hazard powerlines have just become risk powerlines. We don't try to outclimb them. We push, and go under them. Not out of chance, not out of desperation, but because we've already inspected them and know there's no fence beneath them, and at their lowest point in the run, we can go under them. Doubtless you've done it, I've done it. We don't think, we know.

I don't recommend this act for every reader of this forum. Ag flying is highly specialized work which can and does kill people...very often under very avoidable circumstances during a tiring day in a strenuous cockpit where few second chances are offered...but under circumstances which are avoidable when risk elimination is practiced.

to be continued...

 

[avbug]

...continued be to...

You may or may not eliminate every risk. You may not even identify every risk. But you must never stop trying. Ever. The moment you say to yourself that flying is risky and therefore you're just going to accept risks, then you've failed, and you're playing a fools game in which you WILL ultimately lose.

It's never a matter of if you'll have an engine failure. It's a matter of when. You WILL have one eventually. It's never a matter of if you'll have an instrument failure. It's a matter of when. You WILL have an instrument failure. And so on. Accordingly, knowing what can happen, we plan such that we open the back door. We have alternates. We train partial panel. We know our engine out proceedures. We calculate performance for the worse-case scenario. We know our runway lengths. We wear helmets for special operations where we need them, we wear fire resistant clothing, carry emergency gear, and know what to do when we're on the ground in the environment over which we're flying. We prepare our minds.

I'm watching daily the local arabs going through life with an attitude of "God willing." They have their own sayings for it, but that's the function of life here. No aimed fire...pray and spray, because if allah wishes to hit someone, then their rounds will find their target. Run across the road because they'll make it if allah wills it. It's all about risks...they accept risk because they are fatalistic in their approach to the concept that it's okay...the risk won't harm them unless God wills it. Drive in traffic like a madman, takeoff through the desert at eighty miles an hour without being able to see over the next rise...and hope it isn't a wadi or gully or cliff (three weeks ago I nearly went over one when the driver just managed to turn when it was a cliff over the next rise). That's no way to be, but when I hear pilots braying about accepting risk, I see the exact same attitude. A pathetic third-world uneducated mindless mentality which is absolutely fatalistic. Can't avoid risk, it's everywhere, so go ahead and jump. And again, I make no apologies when I say it's WRONG!!!

You CAN eliminate risk, and if you don't practice it, you KNOW the consequences.

I'm not nearly so concerned about you as I am the student that reads these threads, and comes away with the idea that it's okay to accept risk. You go fly yourself into a pole or play partial panel. You told us you had the partial panel training long ago, and have full confidence in your skills. I don't do regular partial panel training...you're probably far better at me when it comes to retaining specialized flight skills over long periods, but if I'm going three weeks without having done a particular instrument practice (and partial panel is a perfect example), my perishible skills are already oxidizing into a pasty caste of rust. Perhaps you're one of the special cases who really believes that flying and flying instruments is like riding a bicycle...but it's not. You do that...but don't try to convince, by purpose or default, the lowest common denominator who reads your posts that it's okay. It's not okay.

During my last sim recurrent, I was given an unusual attitude. Look down, close your eyes (no, I don't cheat), okay, now open them. It's either going to be nose up, or nose down. Decreasing performance, or in a dive with increasing airspeed, either way, probably turning. Nose down, airspeed high. But he had me inverted, nearly 45 degrees nose down, and he failed the attitude indicator. My initial reaction was wrong, and it wasn't until I cross checked the copilot ADI and the standby gyro that I figured out what was occuring. My copilot never did figure it out until we had recovered. Personally, I've never found myself in a nose-down dive inverted with a failed gyro. I may or may not. What I can tell you is that while I do fly regular instruments (right now, 90% of my flying involves finding weather and penetrating it), my partial panel skills aren't top-notch. I'm glad to have an extra set...and an extra skilled body in the cockpit to boot.

Point is, you may be exceptionally exceptional, and can handle any risk with aplomb. You may have been trained for your instrument rating, and can now handle anything thrown at you without breaking a sweat. I'm happy for you. I can't. I do sweat. I do need frequent training. I find myself constantly learning in the air, and each time I do, I often find learning one thing teaches me two things I didn't know...my own awareness of my own uneducation and ignorance grows exponentially with each thing learned. Accordingly, with each lesson learned, I am reminded not to take chances. My own judgement in the cockpit has been gradually formed by this event and that such that I have learned not to push myself, my aircraft, or my environment too far. The air is bigger than I am. The airplane is mine so long as I respect it or give up control, but I am a speck of dust against a towering cumulonimbus clous, against a tall granit mountain, and to a truth, against the awesome power of a set of thin grey powerlines that wait at the bottom of a risk-accepted descent out of a cloud where I had no business in a piston powered single engine airplane. Accordingly, I don't go there.

You do, more power to you. If you choose to call yourself a crazy outlaw pilot, as you said in your own words, so be it.

Accepting risk is your choice. It's your right. Demand it at the top of your lungs, bray proudly about it if you will. It's still a stupid act, for which no quarter will be given from my cheap seat.

 

[agpilot34]

Excellent post, Avbug. Believe me, I DO understand what you're saying. I think we have the same view about most of this, just seem to be expressing it differently. I agree that a pilot MUST always be planning ahead to minimize, even eliminate risks as much as possible. No, I dont consider myself as an overly exceptional pilot with super human instrument skills. I try to keep my skills current as best I can. Like you, I get concerned about some of the stuff I read on this forum and others, that a new wet behind the ears pilot might pick up and take as gospel truth. There's some really bad advice out there, that's for sure.

 

[avbug]

That's pretty much what I thought. Neither of us would be alive if we didn't think that way.

You've heard it before...everybody thinks you're a cowboy because you fly ag. I've been called it before, and folks don't believe one can be a professional and still do it.

I had a conversation just this morning with a potential F/O about CRM. He had taken a course on CRM a year or so ago, and commented that it's ridiculous stuff...only applies to airline pilots. CRM isn't necessary in small aircraft, or in operations outside scheduled passenger, he opined.

I said I thought the same requirement applied to all operations, and immediately thought back to this summer in a single pilot airplane when I failed to complete the before takeoff checklist, and powered up with the control lock still installed. I powered right back...and it was the seventeenth load of the day and the seventeenth takeoff in what had been a tough day...but the fact was that in my single pilot single seat cockpit, I failed to exercise CRM...and it could very well have killed me. I failed to find and eliminate a risk...in fact, I created one.

I told him that in a single pilot airplane, be it single seat or bigger, I still tend to read the checklist challenge and response, even though I'm the only one there. If someone else is there, the routine doesn't change, they just get incorporated into the act. Likewise, all other aspects of CRM are important, right down to organizing the cockpit for the mission. This very summer another screwup highlighted my own CRM failure...and a failure at risk elimination. I made a run down a canyon with a target at the bottom. I'd been asked to make a turn at the bottom and take the drop out of a turn, but the rotors weren't acceptable, and I felt a straight downhill run was better for my escape.

It was. Until I finished the run and hit the rotor...and got smacked in the face by two bottles of water, a crash axe, the handle of my knife, and a packet full of charts and papers that I thought were secure. I was given a load and return, and while I was loading, everything that smacked me went flying out the window. The first thing I did when I got done that day was reorganize my cockpit, lash down what wasn't lashed, and purchase additional holders, packs, and whatever else I needed to make the cockpit safe and convenient. I can imagine what might have happened had any of those escaped items found their way behind a rudder pedal, or floated up behind the panel to short something out. Another example of a failure to eliminate a risk. Or even to find it. On the other hand, a good example of finding a risk...and eliminating it.

I guess that's the point I was trying to make...risk elimination is something that almost universally we all do. However, introduce it as such, and as we've just seen, almost universally most pilots balk at the concept...until they realize it's a part of the routine they probably don't even think about.

My own mission where that's concerned is to get people thinking a little more about it...even if it takes a little rubbing the wrong way, and some controversey to get the job done.

 

[Fearless Tower]

That's actually one of your better posts, Avbug. I've long suspected that is what you meant by eliminating all risks. Thank you for actually clarifying it.

 

[agpilot34]

yeah, I do the checklist out loud also, even by myself. On the one day a week that I have an observer flying with me, I make him do his part as well. Good CRM is deflinitely NOT just for airliners.

 

[Publishers]

Avbug always offers great advice and reasoning. We have had a great deal of discussion here about the Cirrus and the accidents that have happened. I think part of the problem is that the parachute system while excellent actually encourages risk taking by giving a feeling that there is a way out. That combined with all the information provided by new avionics is leading them down a path to a risk that you might not really understand.
Look at the poll here among pilots who are most likely more qualified and they do not even want to fly IFR.

 

[pilotyip]

why does this keep popping up as a new post?

 

[unreal]

why does this keep popping up as a new post?

Because people keep voting on it.