What Is Current?
By Richard L. Collins
June 2008
 Over time I have been asked by many pilots how one might stay IFR current when flying few hours. I have always tried to help on this but because I was flying a lot I really couldn't relate to the problem. Now I can relate because I fly less frequently, sometimes only once a month. And I have learned that there has to be a method to maintaining instrument currency when there is a low level of activity.
I fly two airplanes, a new 182 and a Cessna/Columbia 400. Both have a Garmin G1000 glass cockpit and GFC 700 autopilot. So long as I meet the currency requirements for landings, three in the past 90 days, I'm fine on that part. Also, that requirement holds only if you carry passengers, which I seldom do, so it is a moot point. IFR is a whole 'nother matter. I easily stay legally current but, especially with the G1000 system with autopilot, legal is far, far from enough. So, I devised a system and while it is well in excess of the requirements, it, believe me, is an absolute minimum from a comfort-level standpoint.
I use a 60-day limit and require six approaches in the past 60 days along with at least two IFR legs in the system in the past 60 days to even remotely consider myself current. Also, one of those two things has to have been done in the past 30 days, so I am never more than 30 days away from having done a deed.
One of my pet peeves about training is that many pilots fly the same approaches to the same airport over and over. To avoid that, on my last approach flight, I did six approaches at five different airports, all in 1.9 on the 182's Hobbs meter.
We departed Frederick, Maryland, did a VOR approach to Martinsburg, West Virginia, a GPS to Runway 29 and to Runway 11 at Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, an ILS to Runway 9 at Hagerstown, Maryland, an LPV to Runway 16 at Carroll County in Maryland and an LPV back into Frederick. While not a long cross-country flight, there were legs and transitions to be flown between approaches to make it as much like the real world as possible. There were also missed approaches. Nothing was repetitive and I think that is a key to getting any value out of instrument training, whether initial or recurrent.
To mix it up, I flew approaches with the autopilot, with the flight director and using raw data. However it was done, a lot of input into the G1000 and autopilot was required and this was good exercise. My safety pilot on this journey was Matt Meissner of Frederick Flight Center.
I will always keep the regulatory simulated instrument flight regulations satisfied by taking a safety pilot as required, but to satisfy my 60-day requirement I am perfectly content to fly at least some of the approaches VFR and without a safety pilot. I do, however, enjoy the extra pair of eyes for traffic.
To me, maintaining currency at operating the avionics system in the airplane is far more exacting than flying the airplane while using a vision limiter. View limiters are truly lousy simulations of actual instrument flight.
One contrived trip that I flew to get in my two IFR legs was from Frederick, Maryland, to Morgantown, West Virginia, and back in the 182. Morgantown has always held special IFR meaning for me because that is where I launched on my first-ever actual IFR flight. The airplane was a Piper Pacer and the date October 19, 1955. I had flown in clouds in uncontrolled airspace before then, but that was the first time on an IFR flight plan with a clearance and in clouds. That, though, is another story. For the 2008 flight the weather was very much like it was on 10/19/55: clear to the east but cloudy at Morgantown, which I wanted so there would be an actual approach on the flight.
One thing that I do while droning along is to explore everything in the G1000 system. This is important because even though both airplanes that I fly have G1000s, the software version is different and this is magnified because the 182 has WAAS and the 400 does not. There are more differences there than you might expect. You can't even configure some of the screens to be the same.
As I was flying toward Morgantown I was exploring, and at one point I switched the CDI from GPS to the VOR just to see what it looked like. Then I switched it back to GPS and, a minute later, noticed that the heading was wandering. The autopilot had been in the navigation mode, using GPS for information. When I changed the CDI, that put the autopilot in the roll mode and it did not return to GPS when the CDI did. Navigation had to be selected again. That should have told me something about a situation that was to come on the approach, but the light bulb in my head failed to illuminate.
I am not exactly sure what happened on the approach but as the airplane was tracking inbound, on what I thought was a coupled approach, it developed a case of the wanders. I could see where I was and where I was going on the multifunction display and it was not directly toward the airport. Even though I had flown 31 hours with this system, including seven dedicated to learning the system, I had the sudden realization that I didn't know what I was doing in relation to the autopilot on this particular approach.
Confusion and clouds don't go together, so I turned the autopilot off and adjusted the heading manually, but the flight director was cocked up to one side in a confusing display so I killed that as well and flew the approach manually using raw data.
Apparently, when the G1000 switched from GPS for lateral navigation to the localizer, that nullified my selection to couple the approach. The autopilot reverted to roll mode when the nav source changed. I talked to Mac about this because he is far more into autopilots than I am, and he said that was how the autopilot is programmed. Seems nuts to me, and I thought back to how simple autopilot life was with the one that would only hold a heading or track a nav signal.
With a G1000 system with autopilot, and especially a WAAS G1000/GFC 700, you follow the protocols precisely or things get confusing. This is especially important for pilots who have flown technically advanced nonglass airplanes with Bendix/King or S-Tec autopilots or even G1000 airplanes with Bendix/King autopilots. Flying an ILS with a Garmin 530, for example, I know pilots who, when the 530 automatically switches to the localizer on an approach, switch back to the GPS because it is smoother than a lot of localizers. The autopilot is perfectly happy to track the glideslope and the GPS lateral navigation command, but that absolutely positively cannot be done with the G1000 system. And if you select the approach mode before the ILS signal becomes active, it will revert to roll when the nav source changes. The ILS frequency must be active when the approach mode is selected.
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