THIS MANUAL is aimed at the private and commercial pilot interested in obtaining an instrument rating and the already rated pilot wanting to do refresher work.
As it has been written for the general aviation pilot, airspeeds, expected clearances, and altitudes used are based on a high-performance, retractable gear four-place, general aviation airplane, unless otherwise noted. Jet and other high altitude (above 18,000 feet) IFR operations are best left for coverage in other texts.
One area most neglected by many current texts on instrument flying is that of air traffic control.
This is the most complicated (it seems) part of flying IFR. One of the primary aims of the Instrument Flight Manual is to cover this subject in somewhat more detail than usual and yet keep it as uncomplicated as possible. Whether this is successful will, of course, be judged by the reader.
One concern that arose during the writing of this manual was that of repeating certain things already covered in Student Pilot’s Flight Manual and Advanced Pilot’s Flight Manual, such as flight instrument operation, airplane performance, and other areas. In each case the attempt was made to add to the previous material information that would directly apply to instrument flying. It was felt that the repeating of basics was necessary to have the book complete in itself. The question was whether the reader of this book has immediate access to that basic material (or had forgotten, for instance, how a vertical speed instrument operates), so the information was inserted. In most such cases, new illustrations were drawn to show a different view of the situation, even though the ones used in the first two books would have worked as well.
Needless to say, the charts in this book are not to be used for navigation purposes. The Air Traffic Control system is changing fast. Many changes had to be made to the manuscript during the process of writing because of this and finally a cutoff date for changes had to be set. If by the time this gets to the reader’s hands some of the particular example airport approaches no longer exist, please consider them as general examples. As far as frequencies are concerned (FSS, Center and tower), even the Airman’s Information Manual is hard put to keep up with changes and it takes at least six months for a big revision of a book, so use the AIM for such existing numbers. The same goes for Weather information...
William K. Kershner