Late in August 2015, a 55-year-old Pennsylvania lawyer bought a 1981 A36 Bonanza. A private pilot with an instrument rating and around 800 hours of flight time, he had, according to a friend, “a lot” of IFR experience in a fixed-gear, fixed-pitch Piper Cherokee. The Bonanza, however, equipped with a Garmin 530 EFIS navigator and a flight director, was more airplane than he was used to.
He quickly obtained a “complex” checkout—six hours in flight and an hour and a half of ground instruction—from an instructor whom he knew. The instructor showed him how to set up the Garmin for IFR approaches, but the approaches they flew together were in VMC, without a hood. The instructor cautioned the pilot not to fly in actual IFR conditions until he had more experience with the airplane and its equipment.
