Basic instrument maneuvers

What this lesson is for: teaching basic attitude instrument flying and unusual attitude recoveries from the right seat, to a Student who is not an instrument student.

You hold an instrument rating, and that is exactly the problem. You know how to fly instruments. What you have never done is teach somebody who cannot, in an airplane where nobody else is looking out the window.

Read:

• FAA-S-ACS-25, tasks AI.XI.A through AI.XI.E, in full. Write down the tolerances.
• 14 CFR 61.109(a)(3), from live eCFR, on the day. Read what it actually requires, and write down all six things it names. Four of them are this lesson. Two of them are not in ACS Area XI at all. See below.
• FAA-H-8083-15B, 2012, the cross-check material in chapter 6 and the unusual attitude material in chapter 7. It carries three change documents. See the note below.
• standards/MANEUVER-LESSON-SHAPE.md, addition 2.

Deliverable: Three things. First, write the preflight ground lesson you will teach on basic instrument maneuvers. Second, write the sentence you will say to a private student who asks whether this training means they can fly in clouds. Third, write your hood session plan: the exercises in order, how long each runs, and what you will say before the hood goes on about who is looking outside.

About FAA-H-8083-15B, because it is the oldest source this program cites. It is a 2012 edition with three change documents: an errata sheet running through October 10, 2014, an April 2015 addendum on angle of attack indicators, and Addendum B of November 2019 on ILS false courses.

None of the three changes anything this lesson teaches, checked against all three on 2026-08-14. The cross-check and its three errors are in chapter 6, spatial disorientation is in chapter 3, and unusual attitudes are in chapter 7, and no change document touches those pages.

One thing to know before you read chapter 7. The errata sheet corrects page 7-7, where "turn-and-slip" should read "turn coordinator". Read the errata sheet first; it is two pages.

A private pilot applicant with about twenty hours, doing the instrument training 61.109(a)(3) requires. Not an instrument student.

Teach this as a short instrument course and you are teaching the wrong thing well. The content would be correct, and you would produce a private pilot who believes they have some instrument capability. That pilot is what the accident record is largely made of.

Verbatim from live eCFR, read 2026-08-14 at title 14 currency 2026-08-12:

3 hours of flight training in a single-engine airplane on the control and maneuvering of an airplane solely by reference to instruments, including straight and level flight, constant airspeed climbs and descents, turns to a heading, recovery from unusual flight attitudes, radio communications, and the use of navigation systems/facilities and radar services appropriate to instrument flight

Six things, and ACS Area XI lists four of them. Straight and level, constant airspeed climbs and descents, turns to a heading, and unusual attitude recovery are AI.XI.A through AI.XI.E. Radio communications, and the use of navigation systems, facilities, and radar services, are in the regulation and are not in Area XI.

This matters at the moment of signing. Teach only what Area XI lists, then endorse a private student's three hours, and you have endorsed training the regulation describes more of. The four maneuvers are the flying. The last two are what makes the training survivable in a real encounter, because a pilot in cloud who cannot talk to anybody and cannot work the box is not much better off than one who cannot hold a heading.

So this lesson covers all six. The hood session includes at least one radio transmission and one navigation task. That is standard 6.

Under the hood, you are the only person looking outside.

In every other flight lesson in this program, two people are scanning. Today one is, while also teaching, monitoring, and planning the next exercise.

You will brief this out loud, in the airplane, before the hood goes on. And you are graded on whether your scan survives your own instruction, because that is the failure this lesson is written around.

A disoriented Student does not tell you they are disoriented. They go quiet, they get rigid on the controls, and their inputs get bigger and later.

Take the hood off. Within five seconds. And do it as an instruction, not a question: "hood off, look outside, I have the airplane" rather than "are you all right?"

Taking the hood off costs you nothing. Leaving it on while you work out what is happening costs you the thing you are trying to protect.

1. What 61.109(a)(3) training is for, and what it is not.
2. The cross-check, taught to somebody who has never had one.
3. Straight-and-level, constant airspeed climbs and descents, turns to headings.
4. Fixation, omission, and emphasis: the three cross-check errors, and what each looks like.
5. Spatial disorientation, which has to be shown rather than described.
6. Unusual attitudes, nose-high and nose-low.
7. Being the only person looking outside.
8. Running a hood session: setting it up, watching it, ending it.
9. The inadvertent instrument encounter, which is what this training is actually for.
10. Recognizing the Student who is overloaded, and taking the hood off.
11. Radio calls and navigation under the hood, which the regulation names and Area XI does not.

1. Teach your preflight ground lesson, framed as survival training.
2. Brief the lookout arrangement out loud before the hood goes on.
3. Demonstrate straight-and-level, climbs, descents, and turns to headings from the right seat, narrating your cross-check so it is audible.
4. Demonstrate unusual attitude recoveries both ways.
5. Run a hood session, maintaining the traffic scan alone throughout, including at least one radio transmission and one navigation task under the hood.
6. Recognize the disoriented Student and remove the hood.
7. Take the airplane at the threshold, out loud, three-way.
8. Critique, self-critique, then listen.

1. You deliver the preflight ground lesson on basic instrument maneuvers, covering all seven items of the brief, and state what 61.109(a)(3) training is for and what it is not, in terms a private student will take seriously.
2. You brief the lookout arrangement out loud, before the view limiting device is fitted, stating that you are the only person looking outside.
3. You maintain a traffic scan throughout the hood session while instructing, and do not go head-down in the cockpit for more than five seconds at any point.
4. You fly straight-and-level, constant airspeed climbs and descents, and turns to headings by reference to instruments, to the tolerances the current tasks specify, from the right seat, while narrating the cross-check.
5. You demonstrate and teach unusual attitude recoveries, both nose-high and nose-low, and teach the nose-low recovery in the correct order with the reason.
6. You include at least one radio transmission and one use of a navigation system or radar service while your Student is under the hood, because 61.109(a)(3) names both and ACS Area XI does not.
7. You name a cross-check error by name when the Simulated Student produces one, rather than only correcting the resulting deviation.
8. You remove the view limiting device within five seconds of the Simulated Student going quiet and rigid, and instruct rather than ask.
9. You take the flight controls using the three-way exchange, out loud, in both directions, including at least once when the airplane was not offered.
10. You deliver a critique naming the error, its probable cause, and the correction for at least two of the errors flown.
11. You deliver a self-critique before hearing the instructor's.

Standards 2, 3, and 8 carry this lesson. Teach beautifully and stop looking outside and you have failed it, and you will be told so in those words.

Falling short does not block lesson 38. No proficiency gate. It triggers the visibility rule in policy/REMEDIATION-VISIBILITY.md.

• Teaching it as a short instrument course. Right content, wrong framing, and the framing is what your Student keeps.
• Not briefing who is looking outside.
• Your scan degrading while you instruct.
• Demonstrating instrument flying without narrating the cross-check. The skill is invisible. An unnarrated demonstration shows nothing at all.
• Correcting the deviation instead of naming the cross-check error. Fixation, omission, and emphasis have names for a reason.
• Asking a rigid Student whether they are all right.
• Teaching the nose-low recovery as a pull.
• Letting unusual attitudes turn into a game. Two each way, briefed, then stop.
• Long explanations while your Student is under the hood.
• Fitting the hood at altitude instead of checking it on the ground.
• Teaching the four Area XI maneuvers and calling the three hours done. The regulation names six things.

• Bank exceeds 45 degrees at any time under the hood.
• Airspeed reaches 1.2 Vs1 or exceeds the maneuvering speed for today's weight without correction applied.
• A descending spiral develops and is not stopped within two seconds.
• Altitude passes 1,500 ft AGL descending.
• Your attention is inside the cockpit for more than ten seconds while your Student is under the hood.
• Your Student is disoriented or rigid and the hood is not removed within five seconds.
• Either of us is unclear about who is flying the airplane.

Hard floor: instrument work terminated by 1,500 ft AGL, and no unusual attitude started below 3,000 ft AGL. North Aero policy, not regulation.

The ten second item is about you, not about the airplane. Under the hood you are the entire collision avoidance system, and a threshold that only watched the attitude would miss the real hazard of the day.

Positive exchange of controls, both directions, every time.

Three slots, all currently empty: VS-37-1 Exemplar on AI.XI.A, VS-37-2 Error on AI.XI.D, VS-37-3 Error on AI.XI.E.

This lesson is complete and deliverable whether or not its Video Slots are filled.