We shared last week that everybody needs to earn an instrument rating.
Today, we're going to talk about how to go beyond
the ACS in that instrument rating.
Hey, everyone. Jason Schappert here of MzeroA.com,
and you are listening to the Instrument Pilot Podcast,
brought to you by our number one rated online at ground school.
Visit GroundSchoolAcademy.com, check it out.
Honestly, I want you to take a free two-week no-strings-attached trial
of that ground school.
MzeroAtrial.com to check it out and learn more.
Just would be honored to have you as a part of our Tuesday afternoon webinars,
just spending time.
It's not just, "Here's a course, and good luck."
It is the mentorship.
It is the community.
There's such an aspect to it.
Only a ground school member could explain to you
what it's actually like in there.
But, we just create fans for life through there.
And, it's an outstanding, outstanding community that
the MzeroA nation has created.
We didn't have anything to do with it.
We just made some great videos, and the MzeroA nation took it from there.
MzeroAtrial.com if you want to check that out and learn more.
Today, I want to chat with you for the Instrument Pilot Podcast.
Last week, I encouraged everybody on the Private Pilot Podcast that
you need to become an instrument rated pilot.
I believe I ended it by saying,
"There is no better way to keep yourself safe, your spouse, your son,
your daughter, your best friend, whomever that may be that you fly with,
brother, sister,
to keep them, your co-pilots, safer than earning an instrument rating."
Not just earning it, though.
Earning it and abiding by it.
Just because I've earned my instrument doesn't mean I go
blazing through thunderstorms, I go shooting down to minimums.
It doesn't mean any of those things.
You all know me, and you know that even with my instrument rating
and CFII and all ATP and all these different things I have,
it doesn't intrigue me one bit to go flying in two-three-Mike-Zulu
down to minimums.
It doesn't intrigue me one bit.
I will do it on the very rarest of occasions, usually,
for a video, usually, with another pilot,
and usually, with what you don't see is all the prep behind-the-scenes
of a lot of instrument approaches just to
get at that level to be able to deliver it.
And, you'll notice that.
You'll see, I'm not paying attention to cameras,
I am just focused on flying this approach.
And, the most recent one was, probably, it wasn't even to minimums,
but flying into Hayward out in, leaving Hayward.
I'm sorry. Flying into Livermore, California
for the AOPA flying with Wayne.
Actually, Wayne did all the flying.
I got to just talk, and Wayne did a phenomenal job with that.
But, I want to share today
a little bit on how we can go beyond the ACS.
Remember the ACS, Airman Certification Standards,
I had a checkride examiner explained to me once.
He was in reference to the PTS, but it's still the same.
Or, the truth is still the same even though it's now the ACS,
is that the ACS is the worst you can do and still become a pilot.
It's the absolute worst you can do and still become a pilot.
When you say it that way, it's not very intriguing, is it?
You go, "Wow, no one wants to get a 70% on their written test, do they?"
That does not intrigue me in the least bit.
Would you go up to your passengers and go, "Hey, I did just enough to get by.
Do you want to go fly to the clouds with me?"
I don't think they're going to end up saying "yes" to that proposition here.
So, how do we go beyond the ACS?
Well, I'm going to offend or upset a few people to start with this.
But, if you have been following MzeroA for a while,
you know my opinion on this.
I am not the biggest fan of accelerated courses.
Let me explain before anybody who owns or is alumni of an accelerated course
posts a bunch of mean comments.
And, I read every comment, by the way, good, bad, ugly.
And, I take each of them.
Some with a grain of salt, and some, I like the good, constructive comments.
Nasty ones, I don't care for very much.
But, I like the good, constructive comments.
If you disagree with this, please,
you can leave a good, constructive comment.
It's not going to break my heart.
I am not the biggest fan of accelerated courses.
Allow me to elaborate.
I believe that, in some, not all, but in some accelerated courses,
you are studying and prepared to do one thing,
which is pass that checkride.
Oftentimes, in my experience with accelerated courses, again,
this isn't a general statement,
this is my experience with some accelerated courses,
you live your life in a bubble.
You fly in somewhere perfect like Arizona where there's never any clouds.
Everything is always flawless.
You're there for two weeks.
You fly every day.
It's a rote memorization and study, study, study.
It's, "These are the approaches you're going to shoot on your checkride.
By the way, here's the examiner.
The examiner always asks this."
It's almost like you have a gouge for things.
They are prepping you to one thing, which is pass the checkride.
And, here's where the fear comes.
There's nothing wrong with that.
You get the checkride passed.
And, obviously, you were, too, ACS guidelines.
Albeit, maybe, just barely.
I don't know.
Then, you come back home from Arizona to a place like Florida,
where we get nasty afternoon thunderstorms
and towering cumulonimbus clouds and terrible radiation fog
in the early morning and late evenings, sometimes.
And, you think that just because you have your instrument rating,
you can go shoot an approaches down to minimums.
And, that is not the truth.
Now, I realize there is very much a place for accelerated courses.
Accelerated courses should not go anywhere.
I believe there's a place for them.
Let me tell you what I believe is the place for an accelerated course
like an IFR course.
I said last week in the Private Pilot Course,
I believe everybody should have their instrument rating.
You may say to me, "Jason, I'm a father.
I'm a mother of five.
I work a full-time 9:00 to 5:00 job.
I come home. Then, it's full-time parent.
It is everything I can do just to get all five kids fed and in bed
and up for school the next morning.
There is no time for flight training, but I know I need my instrument rating,
because the one weekend a month that I am able to fly,
I want to be that much safer."
I look at that person and say, "I get it. I understand.
Take your two weeks off that you get from your job or whatever it may be.
And, yes, if you want to commit it to aviation, I am all about that.
Go, commit it.
Go, knock out your accelerated course.
Get your instrument.
However, I have one very strong stipulation.
When you come back,
you don't go flying in actual conditions.
You don't even really file an instrument flight plan, for that matter,
unless you have a CFI onboard.
You come back and you need to do three or four actual IFR lessons
with the CFII back home in the airplane you're going to be flying in, etc."
I'm okay with an accelerated course if that is your life circumstances
or something similar, and you just need to get it done
because you want to make you a safer pilot,
as long as you come back and realize you're going to need some extra,
some remedial training, perhaps.
Just because you have the certificate in your hand
doesn't mean you can go flying in the clouds
and flying in the thunderstorms.
Do you understand?
Maybe, I'm just being too much of a parent at this point,
but that's my opinion.
We're all allowed to have an opinion, right?
Again, if you disagree, leave me a comment below.
I am open to hearing that, because I'm not saying,
don't do accelerate courses.
I'm saying there's a place for accelerated courses.
It is just not my preference.
Again, my professional opinion.
Because, what I ultimately want you to do is I want you to get up there.
I want you to get real-world training.
It's not just shooting three approaches into your home airport
and calling it a day.
That's not real world.
I said in the Private Pilot Podcast last week,
it's not just flying out to the practice area
and steep turns slow flight stalls and coming back,
because you're not going to do that in the real world.
In the real world, it's you and the spouse and the family pet,
and you're going to the lake house, or whatever it is, the mountain house.
Or, you're just flying for vacation.
That's what you do in the real world.
Into new airports, over new terrain, seeing new people, new FBOs,
possibly, a new rental airplane, if you rent or fly in a club.
That's what I want you to prep for.
That's what I want you to focus on, is the real-world applicability of this.
So, remember,
you need 50 hours of PIC cross-country time to
even take your instrument checkride.
Now, I want you to earn some of that beforehand.
As I shared last week in the Private Pilot Podcast,
it's advantageous to earn, maybe, about half of that beforehand
before you start your training.
Earn the rest in your instrument training.
Don't do just the minimum IFR cross-country.
Do everything.
I want you to fly real cross-countries above and beyond.
Where are the destinations you were going to go?
Maybe, the grandkids live in Tennessee and you live in Florida.
It's not a bad little hike up there.
Why don't you make the hike up there?
Make the little day trip up there, have lunch with the grandkids,
and you and your CFI head home.
It's a whole day.
But, you know what? Block it with your CFI.
Compensate them accordingly for their time, and, all is good.
And, you've now tested a real flight that you're going to be making
with your family in the future.
That's awesome.
That's the kind of real-world applicability
I want you to get out of an instrument rating
and in your instrument training here.
Make your lessons across country, if you don't have those 50 hours yet,
and get and earn that real-world training.
Two more little things, and then, I'll let you go.
Simulate adverse actual time.
I did my entire instrument rating having never stuck my head in the clouds.
It's embarrassing to admit.
But you know if you've flown in actual IFR conditions,
there is such a difference between being under the hood
or under the fogles and actually being in real IFR conditions.
It is night and day different.
I encourage you, with your CFII,
to earn some actual instrument flight time,
because there's bumps and everything else that
goes along with flying through a little cumulus layer.
Or, there's just the immersion of flying
through a nice stable stratus layer as well,
and seeing that beautiful runway break out in front you.
That is a rewarding feeling.
Anybody who's ever done that, you break out around 600 feet
and there's the runway, there's the lights.
It's like, "Whoa, this instrument flying stuff is cool.
This makes sense now. This is what this is all about."
It keeps you energized and excited, too.
Get some actual time.
Don't shy away from days that have actual IFR conditions, obviously,
unless there's icing and thunderstorms.
If you cannot, you cannot.
But, a nice stable strata stay, where the freezing levels nice and high,
I'm all about a day like that as long as I can break out
well before the minimums, 600, 700 feet or so nowadays.
Lastly, I want this.
In your IFR training,
if you really want to take your training beyond the ACS,
try to stay in the same airplane.
Let me explain.
You know from your early instrument lessons,
if you've done or just think back to your private pilot training,
how easy it is to fall behind the airplane, isn't it?
It's so easy to fall behind the airplane.
And, when you fall behind the airplane
going through the sky at 90 knots in IFR conditions,
it's even harder to catch up.
Little things, like you could fly from R172 to our Cessna 150.
In one, the tachometer is here. In the other, tachometer is here.
They fly a little different. They're different tail numbers.
You think I'm losing it now, but listen.
Even something as simple as a tail number change is enough to
throw you off two or three seconds.
I was listening for two-three-Mike-Zulu, but it was five-one-two-Romeo,
or it was five-one-two-Mike-Zulu, whatever it is.
Listening and keen into a different tail number,
trying to listen for a new tail number.
Was that for me? Have you ever said that?
A new tail number can throw things like that off as well.
It would benefit you greatly to fly the same airplane, if you can,
through all your instrument training.
Actually, when people say they want to buy an airplane,
I say this is one of the best times to buy an airplane.
I'm not talking economically
because I don't know when you're watching this.
I'm talking about in your flight training,
private pilot rent an airplane as much as you can, because think about it.
You beat the snot out of the airplane, didn't you?
You had hard landings.
You probably flat spotted tires.
You burned out a brake pad.
You did all sorts of things that you wouldn't want to do to
an airplane that you own, right?
You leaned it out too much.
You checked the mags.
It actually went to off a little bit too long,
a lot of things you could have done
that just slowly erode at that poor airplane.
Beat up someone else's airplane.
Then, for instrument, I would encourage you to think about
purchasing an airplane, because learning in the airplane that
you're actually going to fly IFR in, that you're actually going to put
the spouse and the kids in,
that's advantageous,
because you're learning on the platform you're going to actually get out there
and perform in.
And, that is important to me.
So, again, always strive to go beyond the ACS.
The ACS is just the minimum.
It's the worst you can do and still become an instrument rated pilot.
And, in instrument flying and just in aviation in general,
nobody wants to do just enough to get by.
Trust me.
I hope you're really enjoying this.
Don't hesitate to go back.
Listen to the Private Pilot Podcast.
Listen ahead the commercial or the CFI podcast as well.
We produce all four of these podcasts, one each week for you all,
to fulfill that mission of making you a safer, smarter pilot.
So, if there's anything at all we can do this week to
help fulfill that mission of making you that safer, smarter pilot,
please, please, please, don't hesitate to reach out.
Enjoy the rest of your day.
And most importantly, remember,
that a good pilot is always learning.
Have a great day, guys. We'll see you.
Take a two-week free trial of our Online Ground School
and see why Aviation Consumer Magazine
named it the Top Online Ground School on the market.
The first thing you'll notice is that we never teach to the test.
We teach real-world skills, they're going to keep you
and your loved ones safe when you fly.
Now, it's because of this real-world teaching,
You'll pass your knowledge test and your checkride with flying colors.
With one membership, you get access to all our courses.
Plus, weekly webinars with myself and this outstanding MzeroA.com team.
It's really like an interactive TV show broadcast from our studio,
where you get to interact with a team of CFIs.
We also offer live support and email support
to make sure you succeed.
Now, one thing you'll notice is that MzeroA is like nothing else on the market.
It is truly a flight training community geared towards making you
a safer, smarter pilot because a good pilot is always learning.
It's much more than a slogan for us, it is truly a mission.
So, click below and take a two-week and no-strings-attached trial
of our top-rated, private, instrument, commercial and FOI courses.
Once you join our flight training community,
I promise you will never want to leave.