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Chapter 1 - Starting Your Instrument Rating 1-3

In certain parts of the country (i.e., Southern California), early morning and late evening
stratus clouds make it easy for IFR students to obtain actual instrument experience.

Fig. 5

rating here. Sorry, there is no instrument rating for hot air balloon pilots (but if there were,
you certainly wouldn’t have to worry about airframe icing, right?).
To count as a cross-country flight, you must make a landing more than 50 nauti-
cal miles from the original point of departure as shown in Figure 4. Fortunately, the
cross-country flights you made as a student pilot can be used to at least partially
meet this requirement. Just to make things clear on the cross country issue, you can
land at as many airports as you like on a cross-country flight. To count as a cross-
country flight toward the instrument rating, one of the airports you land at must be
a straight line distance of more than 50 nautical miles from the original point of
departure. Suppose you land at an airport that’s 40 miles from the original point of
departure, and then proceed to another that’s 51 miles from the original point of
departure. Does this count toward the instrument rating? You bet it does.
Granted, most applicants working on the instrument rating soon after obtain-
ing their private pilot certificate will have to work hard to acquire the minimum
cross-country flight time. Here’s an idea that may help you clear this hurdle.
When you and your instructor begin the approach phase of your instrument
training, you’ll probably make instrument approaches to different airports. If so,
elect to make some of these approaches to airports that are more than 50 nauti-
cal miles away. If your wheels touch down at those airports (you can do touch-and-
goes, that’s OK), then the entire flight counts toward the requirement for 50
hours of cross-country time as PIC. The reason you can do this is that it’s legal to
log PIC time as that time during which you’re the sole manipulator of the controls
of an aircraft for which you are rated. If you received your private pilot certificate
in a single-engine land airplane, then you’re rated to fly a single-engine land air-
plane. If you’re taking your instrument training in a Cessna 172, for instance,
then you’re allowed to log the time as PIC when you are the sole manipulator of
the controls, even if your instructor is on board. This doesn’t necessarily make
you the legal PIC, but it does allow you to log the time as PIC. You were the sole
manipulator of the controls during the flight, weren’t you?
Regarding the instrument training time, you’ll need a minimum of 40 hours of
actual or simulated instrument time. Let me explain what instrument time is for
purposes of meeting this requirement. Whenever you are flying solely by reference
to the instruments—in other words, without reference to the horizon outside—
you are accumulating loggable instrument flight time.
Now, it would be great if nice, mild, real instrument conditions were always
available close to the airport whenever you wanted to train (Figure 5). You’d get
all the actual instrument conditions you could possibly desire. Very realistic. But
not a very realistic possibility in some parts of the country, like Palm Springs,
California, unless you want to spend about 40 years getting your 40 hours (but
mostly getting a sunburn).
Conveniently, there is an alternative available. Simulated instrument time is
Fig. 4 logged whenever you are flying entirely by reference to the instruments with your