Congratulations Greg! RTW in 2019?
HAHAHA! As much as I would love to, I don't think so. I've got a full time job that wouldn't do too well without me for 4-5 weeks, a wife and a 4-year old at home that just wouldn't understand (not yet anyway) and a small business on the side that would promptly derail and let the smoke out without someone to keep it between the ditches. I've built the airplane for it, I've got myself as the pilot mostly squared away in the head for it, and I've done a large amount of research on it, but unfortunately reality says it will have to wait a couple of years. I do expect to make some long trips in the next couple years though, starting with some Caribbean and Bahamas runs, and a trans-Atlantic to Europe pretty soon, then maybe Greenland for some cold-weather experience and Hawaii for a long-distance test. One step at a time, you never get to the end of a marathon by being in a hurry. The longest leg I've made so far nonstop is just over 1000 nm (6.5 hours) from Reno to home in west Texas, and I landed with better than 3 hours fuel on board (no ferry tank, just wing tankage), so I'm looking to continue stretching that, to find out what it takes to keep both the machine and the pilot happy with long-distance legs.
Cross country trips are much more do-able with that rating. I don't use mine when it looks at all tough or me or my plane aren't quite right, but there have been several times when it enabled us to get off and make our way safely to the next stop. John
Oddly enough, just over 800 of my almost 1100 total hours are cross-country, I know that's not common among pilots. A big factor in that is that where I live, using a private strip, is 33 nautical miles to the nearest "real airport" and it's not a place I would go frequently - so almost everything I do is better than 50 miles which qualifies for cross-country. I've used VFR flight-following for almost all of my time when I was really "going somewhere" further than about 75-100 miles, and that does a really good job of preparing you and exposing you to the IFR system. VFR flight-following is just "IFR-lite" and it's a great way to get over nervousness on the radio and learn what is expected, what is accepted, and what is not.
Congratulations! IMHO IFR is like getting a Masters degree in flying - mentally quite challenging, but immensely satisfying when you make the grade. In my case, I thank my IFR ticket for getting me into building - its hard to stay current without your own plane, or easy access to one.
Go fly and enjoy moving the needles around with your new ticket!
Hugely satisfying.... I've got 42 hours of time (hood and actual combined) and better than $5k real dollars invested in it (instructor plus airplane), and I did it on the cheap. It was still enough to keep me up a few nights, and it was three hours after the test before my blood pressure approached normal. I had a fantastic instructor, a great DPE, and I still learned a bunch on the checkride. The examiner emphasized that he was an instructor first and an examiner second, and gave me every opportunity to arrive at the correct answer during the oral without giving any indication of what he was looking for.
Nice! I hope to follow your example shortly. I have done all my IFR training in my RV7. Holding altitude and headings are a continual challenge.
Yes it is - and the VOR approaches through the Garmin 430W hunt left and right like a bloodhound. The examiner even commented during the approach "maybe the heading mode on the autopilot while you're guiding it from the Garmin display would do a little better...." and of course it did. The RNAV and ILS track quite nicely, but the VOR not quite as much.
Well done! Now the hard part is keeping it current.
What I would suggest is go IFR in one direction to keep current and hone your skills but then go VFR for the return leg just to enjoy the simplicity of flying.
It might be helpful for others planning to go this route if you could give an overview of your panel and it's capabilities and then a brief recap of the check ride.
We started with about 3 hours of oral - a full hour of which was focused on my airplane (experimental) and I had about 20 pounds of paper for evidence of just about every question he could possibly ask - my approach was to flood to room with data and know without a doubt I could answer any question about the airplane and the way I built it with paper backing it up. That worked perfectly and he ended up quite happy to fly in it, which he didn't have to do.
The actual flight portion was just short of 2 hours, we started with a planned IFR cross country that involved the briefing, crank, clearance, takeoff, intercept of the outbound Victor airway and climb to altitude, then cancel and return to the airport. We advised Approach this was an IFR checkride and they accommodate everything we wanted. We started with unusual attitudes then he had me fly a coupled approach on the first run in to show I know the autopilot system, then went missed and did a couple holds on the inbound to the next approach and handflew that, then another vectors to final with approach asking for 110 knots or greater with a Phenom on my tail (coupled with Garmin issues that I had to straighten out) and full published miss, then another coupled approach to circling for a visual landing.
Total all-in, was 5 hours start to finish. Most of an hour of that was because of an experimental airplane he was unfamiliar with.