snippercr

I get a little irritated when I hear that sort of stuff. I used to think our school was too conservative with solo IFR mins (used for building for commercial cert) being 2-3 miles and 3,000 feet (depending on local vs xc and dav vs night). But I've heard many schools do not permit solo IFR.

That worries me. I think of the day we send our students out to some ma and pa FBO with planes from the late 60s and they can go IFR solo for the first time. I want them to be in well maintained aircraft and after the flight being able to talk to a CFI about it because almost every solo flight a student comes back with a question.

rickair7777

AOPA has some good risk management tools, matrices which you can use to account for various risk factors to make a go-no/go decision.

The problem with just setting absolute minimums is that they may restrict you necessarily if all other factors and conditions are great for your flight. Then you will make an exception, and eventually your minimums will become meaningless. The matrix allows you to account for favorable conditions which may offset not-so-favorable conditions.

ryan1234

I agree with Rick.

Having 'personal minimums' is great and all... but in real life there are 100 different variables that you have to weigh. Having a good understanding of these variables and how they affect your decisions is way better than just setting 'personal minimums'.

I'll probably catch some flak for saying this but.....It may not be a bad thing to be pushed a little past your comfort zone... but it's also a fine line of being safe.


on a different topic, but relevant...I've heard similar arguments from CFIs about setting personal airport minimums for newly made private pilots - some say they won't land a 172 at an airport less than 4000' feet long, won't take-off with more than half the x-wind component of the aircraft. I don't really see too much sense in that. It seems like a lot of schools have gone almost overboard on making conservative decisions.. (i.e. training environments being extremely tightly controlled). Those students are used to having, say, an ILS and a 10,000' runway for an aircraft that can land in 700'.

ok that's enough useless information for now

PW305

I'm kinda with Ryan here... but everybody is different. Some guys need a nudge out of their comfort zone, and some need to be reeled back in a bit. Just don't limit yourself too much... there are lessons to be learned and valuable skills to develop out there.

I also would give different advice to a budding professional pilot than I would a weekend warrior. When you're flying a lot and training towards your commerical/CFI or even further, you're knowledge base is so dynamic that one flight may re-write all those 'personal minimums'. Conversely, you'll come back from a flight someday and say, "I never want to do that again"... hopefully you didn't exceed your ability, but maybe you just stepped to far outside your comfort zone. Be safe out there and have fun!

Ewfflyer

I like the above comment. If you never leave your comfort zone, you will never really "learn" about weather. There's doing this, and just being dumb. But honestly, not flying because an Icing Airmet? I hope you mean icing to the surface, or maybe into your cruise altitudes. But guess what, you can still go fly, just go lower. Experience what it's like to get stuck under/over a cloud deck.

When I was flying freight, I had several low-time folks fly with me, and I'm glad I had the opportunity to show them what flying is actually about, how to manage weather situations, etc... I wish everyone had this opportunity!

WMU av8tor

Let me reword this a bit, The minimums stated above are my personal minimums for when I'm the sole pilot on board. If I'm with a CFI or more experienced pilot then me I'm willing to go into much lower wx than I would if I was alone. My thought is that if I'm alone carrying my parents and sister or friends then that isn't the best time for me to go out and try things that I have very little experience with. I very rarely go flying just for fun as the sole occupant in the airplane, usually the plane is filled to capacity with fuel, baggage, and people

WMU av8tor

There was one time during my training when I got a wx breif and noticed that the TAF said "CB" in its forcast for the time period that I would be flying, I figured that would be ok because the radar showed just rain so I preflighted the a/c but then when I walked in to find my CFI and told him I was ready to go he looked at me wierd and asked why I was even thinking of going anywhere near CB clouds in a SR20 without wx radar. I was so angry cause I had just spent 45 minutes getting ready for the flight!

detpilot

That's not true- each student gets a personalized card with their own weather minimums, and the ceiling can be as low as 1500 feet.

That's unfortunate, but not representative of most CFI's at WMU. I personally feel it's my duty expose my students to as much (safely) as possible, because I do believe that our school shelters students a bit too much. Again, kudos for getting experience outside of WMU.

WMU av8tor

I have been told before by several CFI's that we are strictly not allowed to do solo IFR flights no matter what our pq cards say.

detpilot

You're correct- no solo IFR. But 3000 feet is not the minimum ceiling for solo flights.

Dude... I'm sorry...