It’s been slightly more than seven years since I obtained my private pilot’s license. I always knew I wanted to continue my training beyond that and the instrument rating was next in the logical progression.
I had heard from various folks that it would almost certainly prove to be the most difficult of any rating I would get so I went into it duly warned, but you really can’t fully understand what you’re getting into until you’re there.
I found it every bit as challenging as I was told it would be and then some! There were the usual challenges around schedule, instructor, and airplane which led to on-and-off training over the course of several years and resulted in considerable frustration at the length of time it was taking.
About a year ago, I finally took and passed the knowledge test and began flight training once again but with the added impetus of knowing that I was now on a two-year time limit until I would have to take the knowledge test again. This along with friends who sometimes led, sometimes pushed, sometimes dragged me, kept me moving forward. It still wasn’t fast, but it was steady.
Learning to visualize the invisible courses, fixes, and patterns that make up instrument flying and always knowing where you are in relation to them when you have nothing more than the instruments for visual reference was a struggle for me. Being able to understand and create a picture in my mind of what those lines and numbers were telling me was a new and different experience for me.
Dealing with the IFR training environment is actually quite a bit more challenging than flying in the actual IFR system it seems. Juggling VFR radio calls with hypothetical IFR ones with amateur ATC controllers (i.e. flight instructors) and doing multiple different approaches back-to-back are examples of this.
There were positives too.
I was blessed to have access to a flight simulator which definitely saved me hundreds of dollars in training costs. Even the life changes that resulted from the pandemic became an unexpected blessing when my schedule opened up to allow training that otherwise just wouldn’t have been able to happen.
Even so, in the middle of endless training sessions it was easy to get so bogged down in the hundreds of tiny details that are instrument flying that it was sometimes difficult to see progress and there were a few times I wondered if I should even continue. How could I ever gain the skill and confidence necessary to pass a checkride? But slowly, steadily, it was happening even when I couldn’t see it.
Those countless hours of training in the airplane or on the sim, drilling procedures, reviewing oral questions, memorizing checklists, systems, et cetera were paying off and one day things began to click into place.
About a month and a half later, I was poised to take my checkride. Although pretty nervous beforehand, I took each part of it in stride. One question at a time during the oral, one task at a time during the flight portion, and I was thrilled to hear the examiner tell me I had passed. On November 21, I became an instrument-rated pilot!
Lessons learned include the following:
Don’t give up. Just when things look most hopeless is often when the most significant progress is being made or is about to be made.
Enjoy the journey. No matter how long it takes, as long as you continue putting one foot in front of the other, you are progressing.
Take time to step back now and then to recognize and celebrate how far you’ve come.
Obtaining my instrument rating has undoubtedly been the toughest mountain I’ve yet climbed in my aviation journey, requiring grit, determination and persistence like nothing else I’ve ever done. Was it worth it? Absolutely!
Achieving the summit and looking at the magnificent view from here, or, perhaps more aptly put for instrument flying, breaking out of the clouds and seeing a beautifully lit runway exactly lined up in front of me has been well worth the struggle and gives me a feeling of accomplishment like few other things I’ve done in life. It’s grown me both as a pilot and a person and stretched me beyond the limits of what I thought I could achieve.
I would be remiss if I didn’t thank my friends, including my instructor, Nathan, and fellow instrument student, safety pilot, and many times pseudo instructor, Jakob, for their patience and perseverance in coaching and cajoling me through the training process. Thanks for not giving up on me!
Have you reached a milestone recently? Passed a checkride, given your first or hundredth Young Eagles flight, flown your homebuilt for the first time? Tell us about it at EAA.org/Submissions.