The logbook & instrument hours

[Dangerous Beans]

Does anyone know how FSX determines what are instrument hours ?
Over the holidays I'v taken five flights in the default 737 totaling 9.8 hours all flown at night and thanks to Active Sky Next and the good old UK weather all flown in fairly lousy weather.
according to the FSX logbook of those 9.8 hours only 1.4 of them where classed as instrument.
I thought a lot more of them would have been instrument hours seeing as most of the time I was flying through and over heavy clouds, rain and thunder storms unable to see the ground and usually only able to see the runways when I got within a couple of miles or so.

[dandog]

Set up a flight plan, fly IFR and it will count as 'instrument' hours in the log book. You can fly night VFR. You can even fly in IMC weather without an IFR flight plan in FSX, but the hours will not count as 'instrument' time.

[Dangerous Beans]

I used IFR flight plans for all the flights, they were set to Direct - GPS for the routing though, could that have anything to do with it maybe ?
It doesn't make sense to me. I would have rated that at lest 6 of the 9.8 hours should have been IFR, or even all of them seeing as they were all at night

[Lane Street]

Pretty sure you have to be in IMC for FSX to count it as instrument time.

You could file IFR, fly a three hour flight that takes off and lands in the clouds yet spends most of the time above the clouds, and only have a few minutes of instrument time.

Unfortunately no foggles in FSX.

cheers,
Lane

[Dangerous Beans]

Ah I see, so if I'd stayed in the clouds instead of flying above them they would have counted as IFR ( I had to google IMC BTW ).
I would have thought that just not being able to see the ground would have qualified.

[dandog]

I checked my log book and surprised myself. Then I did a Google search on the subject. Apparently, MS Flight Sims are stingy with the 'Instrument Time'. The ground weather has to be IMC for instrument flight per what I was able to research. That is why only part of an IFR flight gets logged as 'Instrument Time' in FSX. That was what surprised me. Only small amounts of what I assumed where IFR flights were logged as 'Instrument Time'. I had never really went over my log book slowly and carefully. Quite interesting.

[Skyhawk_310R]

I cannot speak to exactly how FSX determines IMC or VMC conditions, but flying VFR on top of clouds does not count as loggable hours for actual IMC. Of note, technically, you can fly under IFR while in VMC. I don't want to get too complicated but think of Instrument Flight Rules as simply how you choose to fly. You can fly VFR or IFR. If you choose to fly by VFR, then obviously you must adhere to VFR cloud clearance rules. However, if you choose to fly under IFR (which really means in most cases you file an IFR flight plan and activate the plan with ATC) you can fly in both visual meteorological conditions (VMC) or instrument meteorological conditions (IMC).

If FSX does this perfectly, then it should calculate your distance to clouds and when you are inside the VFR cloud clearance limits, then that counts as IMC time flown. The FAA is strict on this as it goes further and says you can log actual IMC hours only when you have to use your instruments to maintain aircraft control, which means you have to actually be inside a cloud, or at least close enough to clouds so that you have no reference to the visual horizon.

So, based on your description, when you were flying in FSX under IFR but doing so while in VMC, that should not count as instrument time.

Hope that makes sense!

Cheers,

Ken

[fliger747]

Flying the big iron the question of logging IFR is an interesting one. We always fly IFR, always! but sometimes it is visual out! but the plane cannot be flown in the airspace visually? Asiana proved that for many a visual approach is an emergency procedure. The planes are easy to fly bit must be flown within incredibly tight parameters for a successful outcome. Almost all night flying is total instrument flying.

For light aircraft in FS I would go with the actual Imc or night over dark terrain. You can takeoff
under VFR, fly over the mountains IMC and land at another airport making a non precision approach to high minimums, but have most of the flight loggable.

Its about out more than hours, but hinges average out as the hours accumulate.

tom