Dude, I'm a Tomahawk pilot and professional filmmaker for over 33 years, having worked on 65,000 individual productions (yes you get that many working in news as a director), and also have major film studio credits. Your video editing, music and information are absolutely fine. You have a beautiful family to love and look after and you don't need to be spending zillions of hours searching for royalty free music. It is sad that these days people take to attacking others to feed their own ego's. Keep up the great work!!!

Video was perfectly fine, especially for someone who is clearly new to making videos. Watched the entire video myself. On topic, great landings o/

I get your point. I see it now. I was thinking in my head how it's supposed to be when I did the video but I see the way it is easily interpreted. I will update the description text to explain that. Cheers!

Ah, thank you for the clarification. I can see how the percentage can get up there when measured that way.

@@Rodhernwell I mean in order for something to make it into the dataset - it has to be reported. 99% of pilots who flew into a cloud on accident and made it out don't report it. AOPA doesn't make things better with misleading statistics, or by referencing that ancient VFR into IMC simulator experiment where they flew an overloaded Bonanza with the max aft CG. I do think you can talk about the importance of not flying into a cloud without lying about it.

To be fair, that's in the definition of "fatality rate": the percentage of people who get into an accident that die from it. What you're thinking of is better termed mortality rate.

3 hours of instrument flight is mandatory for all private applicants in the US. Not nearly enough to be useful I have to assume, but it's better than nothing.

@@alk672 Hopefully enough to understand and avoid the danger

In Australia being under the hood is a required part of student pilot training. I remember at YBOK being made to fly completely under the hood from before engine start and was going to be until touchdown. The instructor handled taxi. Inbound another student pilot of ours who was out in the training area called inbound at the same location seconds after we reported inbound. Instructor had me take off the hood and search for him to avoid a mid-air. We joined downwind and a split second later S____y called joining downwind. I looked behind and right on our tail was his Tomahawk, I immediately called him and said "break, break, break." Thankfully he immediately began an orbit for spacing. Another time we were at YAMB, and we were using half of the cross runway as the F-111's were using 15/33, so we took off into wind and landed with a tail wind. S____y came in to land, locks up the left brake because his heels weren't on the floor, so he locks up the right brake in order to skid straight and blows out both the main tires/tyres. Took 10 of us from 11 Flight to physically carry the Tomahawk off the runway and off onto the grass until we replaced the tires/tyres. That knucklehead now flies 737's for Virigin Australia.

I have hundreds of hours with MS flight sim from my younger years that I also feel has helped with instrument flying 👍

You went inadvertent IMC three times in two years? You should probably buy a lotto ticket.

If you fly a lot, statistics will be against you. Flying on the gauges is an easy skill to learn. Skipping that is never a very wise thing to do.@@priceyA320

@@priceyA320my thought exactly :)

Flying in MSFS i couldn’t maintain level flight very well and learning to fly in RL fixed that cause i learnt to use a reference on the canopy glass and look into the distance. MSFS helped IFR flying cause you werent really looking much outside until i got VR. It would be interesting to fly RL IMC and see if i could cope. With a good instructor of course.

I'm very happy with this Tomahawk. It has a great ratio of balancing fun with statistically low operating costs

Great post. That flying day of mine was a great introduction to flying in cloud because of how stable it was. You're right..... building cumulus clouds with possibility of embedded cumulonimbus would be a risk to avoid

Errrr... even airliners avoid that kind of weather, so yeah... What's sad is that in many parts of the country freezing levels or high terrain basically make instrument rating useless. Many experienced pilots simply don't fly single engine pistons in clouds, period, due to every single risk becoming potentially fatal.

Thank you! 👊

I agree, I see passengers get even more nervous with low wings that only have 1 door (cherokees, Mooneys etc)

I agree. I fly out of airports that seem to have strong crosswinds most of the time and I really like how my Tomahawk handles them vs the C172 I rented before. The Tomahawk has 2 doors as well. You should get up in one if you get the opportunity. They are fun!

@@planeswithperry Good to know. I've never seen one, but I'll definitely be on the lookout!

I'm looking forward to the development of technology where we might be able to get some certified options for these aircraft that won't cost a fortune. "One can hope" 🤣

It's a RAM mount. The part that holds the phone is a RAM X-grip. You can mount it various ways. I have been experimenting with mounting it onto a blank plate where I don't have an instrument installed, and also mounting it to the left side of the windscreen using a RAM suction cup mount. It's a 50/50 opinion at the moment but I'm starting to lean towards mounting it with the suction mount instead.

I think realistically it's not nearly as bad as they tell you. It is true though that the risk of going into the cloud without an instrument rating is still close to suicidal. What is also true is that a third of people who died after losing control in IMC were instrument rated. So there's a lot to be said about whether having an instrument rating makes it better or worse. What I would claim with confidence is that an unfinished or not current instrument rating is definitely the worst option - it gives you just enough confidence to fly into it and not enough skill to fly out.

@@alk672 I did a lot of night flying, commuting between two locations, over mountains. Many nights were just completely black with a high overcast. No lights above and no lights below. Yes that is VMC but I was really flying by reference to the instruments. A couple of times there were unforecast clouds - I could tell by the reflections from the strobes. But that didn't change anything, really. I let ATC know (I always use flight following) and all they could tell me was what the nearby reporting stations were reporting and I should be fine soon. So I just continued on until I popped out. This was an unfinished instrument rating but I never intentionally went into clouds yet it can happen as it did with me. Just keep your cool.

​@@flyer617my issue with this kind of flying wouldn't even be the fact that you're basically flying on instruments with no separation provided (gambling with your life), but mostly the thought of what happens if you lose your engine. You're over mountains, at night. Even if there were places to land - you can't see them. So you die. I'm not sure how anyone thinks it's worth it.

@@alk672 Separation is low risk as I am on flight following talking to ATC and have ADSB backup. Also, the route is extremely low traffic. As to the engine, there are a couple things you can do (besides not running out of fuel!). One is to know the area and route and keep ForeFlight "earth view" running so you can see where the fields are in the valleys. Practice using a safety pilot, with practice this is pretty cool. Second is to fly at a high enough altitude, and on a path that keeps you within gliding distance of at least one airport at all times. I was taught - even before my instrument rating - to understand the approaches of the fields I fly over. The clouds I went through for a minute or two would not have prevented me from using my landing light when getting down near the landing field. All flying entails some risk, you mitigate what you can then decide. Nobody is forcing you to fly at night. I happen to love it.

It's like a lot of things in aviation. I find when I fly, I circle back to refresher tasks all the time.....even to the point of waiting for a windy day and cranking out 10 circuits for a "workout"

I guess that depends on your experience level. I have a pro pilot retires and hasn't flown for ten years. I got news for you it comes back just like learning a bike.

I'm a low time pilot working towards my instrument rating and commercial license. I don't pretend to be something I'm not 👍

My Tomahawk stalls a little more pronounced than the C172s and Cherokees I initially trained on but I would say it's still pretty docile and predictable.

@@planeswithperry Yes that was my point about the Beech Skipper I learned to fly in,when you were practicing power on power off stall’s it would just snap in the blink of an eye.

That's interesting. I have never seen a Skipper in person (only a few sales ads). I'll keep my eyes open for one and see if I can get some seat time 👍

@@planeswithperry Hey let me know if you ever find one I haven’t seen one in decades the one I learned to fly in N3839G no longer registered with the FAA.

We had a flight plan filed. The airports we took off from in the video do not have ATC at the airport. Good radio communication on your positioning as you fly is key. There were 2 other aircraft we encountered along our flight but we had approx 10 mile spacing between us and the next closest aircraft.

Grummans are nice aircraft! I would love to have one on a move up to a 4 seater

I'm still navigating the whole "content creation" path and am very amateur at it....tweaking things with each video. So far KZfaq is a funny thing....while you want longer, I get a lot of messages saying "cut out this, cut out that" and retention graphs show people usually have a 10 second attention span ("TikTok generation"?). On this flight the cloud mass was so stable there wasn't a lot to get disoriented from. I'm going to be doing a lot more instrument flying in coming months and will cover off the points you want to see in further detail 👍

That’s assuming everything goes well. The moment you lose your engine or go partial panel for whatever reason - you wish you were in VMC.

Cessnas are nice! Before my Tomahawk I mostly rented a C172

This one has an identical twin somewhere in Canada but I'm not sure if it is still flying. I have some spare fairings painted and pinstriped the same as mine which makes me think I have the fairings from that other plane and it may have been parted out.

@@planeswithperry yeah being parted out sucks 😞 However with clever engineering and ingenuity. Even after a plane has been parted out. If the airframe is still viable. You can pull anything out of a museum to make it fly. 3°Nose up for steady flights ✈️

@@planeswithperry another interesting part is I was adopted in my father had to sell his air coupe to buy me. Barn storming was cool 😎

You're spot on! It's one of the reasons why I try and do most of my instrument training in the plane vs the stationary sim at the flight school. Until this flight, my instrument time has been while wearing a "hood", or wearing "foggles". Some people train with those in fairweather conditions and I feel like they are doing a disservice to themselves. I like to pick windy days, or summer afternoons with lots of turbulence for my instrument training. That way you get subjected to rough air that mimics weather systems in clouds a little better. I had a lot of flight sim time in my younger years but I didn't like continually upgrading my PC to keep up. I see footage of the new Microsoft Flight Sim and it's mind blowing!

@@planeswithperry It is. I've thought about recording and posting some of it. I love manhandling a heli onto oil platforms or building landing pads in LA. It's almost bird like. Couple things I don't like -- Much of the resolution turns to minecraft close up. And for those that take simming as a substitute for the expense and rigor of actual flight, I don't like that auto rotations, vertical ring state, or engine red lining are poorly or not at all modeled. Most people don't seem to care but how do you know what it feels like to "fly real" if you don't know what the boundaries feel like? How do you know how to avoid VRS if you can't get into them no matter what you do? DCS on the other hand DOES model VRS, in the Blackhawk TOO well. You're dropping out of the sky and you hardly did anything to instigate it. Don't know if that thing is as droppy as DCS seems to think it is. Wouldn't think the military would be very pleased if they were that touchy in real life. Anyway, enjoyed your video. Nice to see your take on the matter.

@@planeswithperry Oh one more thing -- Heli simming in VR felt so intuitive it really made me think I could pilot a real one if I had the chance. One day I actually took an intro flight in a Robinson. Flying 1000 feet in the air without the doors was a little unnerving -- the idea that literally dying by stepping out was not modeled in the sim LOL. The instructor pilot said I was equivalent to about 5-10 hours of training. I was pleased with that assessment LOL.

What is a "shit" ton?

@@user-zr6pl6nb6z An hour or two every day for the last year and a half. That's in VR, regular screen been flying flight sim on and off for decades. So in actual hardcore "in the seat" flying (less motion rig), between 500-1000 hrs. So I guess that translates to a 100:1 conversion rate of sim to real time equivalent. Pretty piss poor LOL.

An instrument rating is an ad-on to a private pilot certificate that requires lots of extra training and flight time. I suppose you could maybe combine them, but that sounds like pure torture! As for "just trust your instruments," that can be much easier said than done! One time on a GPS LPV approach, I caught a glimpse of the ground from my foggles and immediately for some reason my eyes recalibrated my balance system to tell me we were banked heavily to the right. It was a very sudden and powerful urge to bank the airplane, and it took good concentration to trust my AI. It only went away when I "broke out" of the clouds and took my foggles off. I can only imagine what that would feel like in actual IMC...

The aircraft being flown also must be IFR certified in regards to the instrumentation and navigation avionics. That is an additional expense for aircraft maintenance. My Cessna’s instruments work and are accurate but they still must be certified for IFR flight. During my biennial flight review, most of my flight is simulated IFR.

Haha I bet that would be a tough demand to make if you're doing it for a living!

Speaking as someone who has spent hundreds of hours hand-flying in IMC, the vestibular illusions can be very strong and very convincing. As humans we rely on our inner ear to keep our spatial orientation while on the ground, where we spend the vast majority of our time and where gravity is the only force acting on us. In flight, various other forces come into play, and our inner ear is simply not equipped to create a mental picture of our orientation in space unless those inputs are augmented by visual cues. If we cannot see outside, our brain cannot correct our inner ear and only proper training and discipline can overcome our natural, human, very powerful urge to put the aircraft where it “feels right.” This is what kills VFR pilots who fly into IMC without training.

You obviously have never flown an airplane.

Note taken. Sorry this free video hurt your feelings today

Most instructors I know still don’t file or have a pop up IFR for when need to doing the IFR rating.

That's the plan as I plug away on the hours needed for the rating

Awesome hawk! No trauma here

Only people who are basic pilots rather than real aviators call it a Traumahawk, and likely never flew one.

You don't need clearance, or an IFR flight plan, to fly into IMC in class G airspace. You just need to be instrument rated.

All music or was it certain parts? I'm trying to make my next videos better.

@@planeswithperryplease turn off the music completely: the cockpit real time conversation is more relevant and interesting 😀

I can't simply "turn off" the music. The video would have to be deleted, modified, re-rendered and re-uploaded to KZfaq which I will not be doing, but I took feedback from you and many others for consideration on future videos. Cheers.

Thanks for the feedback Jim. That has come up often. Thanks for wording it nicely. I'm new to video editing but will watch for that on future vids. Cheers!

I have learned I can't please everyone. 100 people can watch a video and 100 people will have differing opinions. I'll check the music on the next one. Have a great day

Yep, that's already been established. It was one of my early videos. Cheers

Mission accomplished! I'm not happy until you're not happy!

In the intro I explain how I was going to intentionally do it. When I actually fly into it for the first time there's a clear discussion that you know it's intentional. In my written description I explain it's also intentional. I'm sorry this free video disappointed you. Cheers

@@planeswithperry that's not what I meant at all

@@mofayer I always wanted to see what it was like to fly into a cloud when I first got my PPL so I got an instructor to let me fly through a few clouds with him serving as PIC on an IFR flightplan. It was a complete non-event the times I was expecting it, a little bit of a drop as soon as the plane broke into the cloud followed by a short time on instruments. The climb out on the return flight after lunch was much more entertaining, what was just a thin hazy overcast layer when we arrived was much thicker when we left. I had no problem at all keeping the plane level as we climbed through it for about 500 feet or so. But although I was maintaining heading with no problem, I had an irrational disquieting feeling that I might be drifting towards a parallel runway.

What a pointless comment....

I'm new at making videos and learning off each one. Thanks for your feedback ("useless" - got it). The next vids will be better. Cheers