Instrument training: Staying visual

So much of teaching instrument flying is done with the student under the hood, flying on the gauges and spending 90% of your time working on approaches, that it's easy to forget the benefit of having them fly visually from time to time.

Today's flight was one of those IFR training trips that didn't work out as planned, but provided a great opportunity to teach real-world instrument flying.

The plan was for a short IFR cross country from Crystal to Mankato and back.

The trip down was pretty normal. There were some minor buildups and a small area of heavy rain a little west of our route. With the exception of two minutes of light rain we were in good VFR conditions all the way down, so I kept my guy under the hood until we got down to minimums on the GPS 22 approach into MKT.

The trip back wasn't quite as uneventful.

We'd checked the weather in Mankato and the radar was showing a few areas of light rain along our route, certainly nothing to be alarmed by.

Almost as soon as we were airborne I knew we were in for a challenge. I could see lightning flashes directly ahead and more off to the west. Heading east didn't look terribly promising, with plenty of dark clouds and obvious heavy rain.

As I pondered our options, my student was blissfully unaware under the hood.

Minneapolis Center handed us off to Minneapolis Approach and the approach controller almost immediately asked us if we had weather radar or a Stormscope. We had neither of course, so he advised us of a large cell along our route and offered to vector us around the back side, to the west, as best he could.

I let the situation play out for a while then asked my student to take off the hood so he could get some real-world experience staying visual around an area of convection.

I'm pretty certain he thought I was insane when he looked outside and saw a wall of lightning just off our right side and another set of bursts straight ahead in the distance.

I can't say I blame him and I would have thought the same thing. So I explained our options: Stay visual and if we didn't find a big gap, turn tail and get dinner back in Mankato.

We had a great out as everything to the south was beautiful VMC. Virtually the entire horizon to the south was clear and we were still in good visibilities as well so it was worth a look to see if we could find a safe way through the line of thunderstorms that had started popping up since we'd last checked the radar, maybe 20 minutes prior.

The key, IFR or VFR, to dealing with thunderstorms is to stay visual, don't get too close and always have several options to retreat. If you get down to one or two options, it's time to take one of them and wait for a better day. Actually, if you get down to one or two options you've waited too long and should have done something sooner.

But as long as your option bucket remains full and you can stay visual and a safe distance away it's reasonable to proceed, albeit with a healthy eye toward extreme caution and prudence. There's no sense messing with a thunderstorm and only an idiot would knowingly fly into one.

Make no mistake, my yellow streak is wider than most when it comes to dealing with thunderstorms. I've had the misfortune to fly directly through one (as a passenger, scared out of my wits) and will never, ever fly through one again, either as a passenger or the pilot in command. Been there, done that, got the nightmares, no thank you.

Anyhow, we asked approach for clearance to descend to 4,000 feet, told them we needed to turn an additional 20 degrees left to avoid the cell then started working our plan.

As it turned out, we were able to skirt the largest of the cells by paralleling it for about 15 miles. That course had us headed directly toward a second cell but it was comfortably off in the distance and we still had beautiful weather just a few miles south.

Approach dropped us down to 3,000 feet which was fine with me and we kept one eye on the cells and the other peeled to make sure our escape route to the south remained free and clear.

Finally, a large gap appeared. We had nearly unrestricted visibilities through it and we'd travelled far enough northwest that we could just see around the backside of the cell we'd been trying to skirt. Sure enough, it was clear behind so we flew through, caught about 30 seconds of moderate rain and headed back on course to Crystal.

We never encountered more than a few seconds of light turbulence the entire trip and the winds were calm and the air as smooth as glass when we landed at Crystal.

My guy didn't get as much time under the hood as I'd planned, but hopefully it was still a good lesson.

Sometimes the best plan for instrument flying is to just stay visual. And make sure you have plenty of options.