Practice IFR

[Urp99]

Quick question for the controllers on here. I'm living in southern Arizona for the winter, and would like to do some flying and shoot some approaches under the hood to keep my instrument skills proficient. Fly to an airport, shoot the approach, go missed, fly to the alternate, shoot the approach, that sort of think. I'm just curious if you have a preference, should I file IFR, or would you prefer I just pick up VFR flight following and request practice approaches?

 

[NovemberEcho]

I’m fine either way. Doing approaches at multiple airports IFR can cause the computer to get a little jinky sometimes with your flight plan but no big deal.

 

[Karnage]

Both work, though many times in the PHX area you won’t get anything but the visual on an IFR flight plan because they are unable to protect the missed airspace so you will end up having to cancel IFR and do any actual approach as a VFR practice approach anyways. From personal experience TUS and YUM approaches tend to be more accommodating to allowing you to stay on an IFR flight plan while shooting practice approaches.

 

[Stinger]

VFR approaches are usually a little easier on the ATC side of things. But it really doesn't matter too much.

 

[Urp99]

Thanks for the input guys, the PHX controllers have been really decent and accommodating to work with, even when they're really busy, and I want to keep things as simple as possible.

 

[DesertNomad]

I normally do them VFR at KRNO. I think one day we had a few clouds and I got a pop-up IFR clearance to do the last one before calling it a day.