Flight Thru Instruments NAVAER 00-80W-7

FOREWORD
Airplanes are made to fly. Pilots are trained to fly them. But until the plane and pilot are airborne they contribute nothing whatever to the modern military program. Modern military missions, with their demand for precision flying at all times and under all conditions, cannot wait for daylight - or CAVU (ceiling and visibility unlimited).

The pilot who cannot fly through instruments, therefore, consigns himself and his plane to a part-time job and places both in the premodern era where usefulness was limited by the amount of daylight and visibility. A pilot's usefulness in this age is almost proportional to his ability to fly through instruments.

With the advent of the first flight-indicating instrument, flying cased to be strictly by contact. With the addition of each new flight-indicating instrument, flying by visual reference to the ground or the horizon became less important and less used, until today, it's instrument flying or else! And that is what it will be tomorrow. With the array of accurate and reliable instruments that are now standard equipment in all modern planes, flight is effective, precise, and successful under all conditions. These servants of flight attitude and performance are yours to command and to use if you will, but you must understand what they tell you and learn how to use them.