| You are right, but I believe gkedzierski is right too. It is indeed common for trainers to start telling these things to student pilots early on during their training. I think the reasoning behind that is to instil the right instrument scan practices while people are fresh in the cockpit before they even consider IFR training. > You can't get the leans or somatogravic illusion flying in daytime VMC. You are 100% correct on that. Just to explain to others reading us: VMC means visual meteorogical conditions. Roughly and informally that is when you can see. While IMC would be instrument meteorological conditions, that is roughly and informally when you can't. Just to illustrate how dangerous these "leans" can be there is this NTSB report about such a case: https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/... People might also know this one as the tragic helicopter accident which killed Kobe Bryant. The pilot had 8,577 hours of total flight time, and he was the chief pilot of the company. So you would count him as an experienced pilot. Yet as he flew into thick fog, according to the NTSB report, he got the "leans". That is he had the illusion that he was ascending while in reality his airplane was banked and turning. Sadly they flow into a hillside and all 9 people aboard died. A tragic case. It is hard to know exactly when the pilot lost all visual cues but according to the report there was about a minute between the pilot reporting to ATC that they are climbing to get over the clouds and them impacting the terrain. Things unfortunately can go sideways very fast in IMC. |