Regardless the depth of training or the level of experience, hand-flying on instruments is an arduous task that your life depends on. It’s a matter of juggling the controls so that six instruments stay where you put them and leaping on any diversions that moment your eyes detect them. Tardiness exacerbates a developing situation that is harder to recover from the longer you take to make corrections.
On the green side, those round dials were designed for the purpose of doing exactly that and each one complements the others to give you a big picture of the attitude, altitude, speed and bank angles in almost real time.
But when instruments let you down in flight, your awareness and ability to control an aeroplane in IMC are degraded and the big picture becomes more of a doodle.
After being alarmed with the complete failure of a Dynon SkyView in flight and relying on back-ups to make a precautionary landing at an airfield, I thought it was time upgrade my skills to include limited-panel instrument flying. I usually fly with a standard six-pack of clocks rather than sophisticated new glass, so did I know enough to survive if the six-pack became a set of four?
In front of the CFI
Lilydale Flying School CFI Matt Gault had his whiteboard prepared by the time I waltzed in the door for my limited-panel brief, and the fact that the board was full told me there was more to this that I presumed.
“Even as a VFR pilot you could find yourself in reduced
