Mastering Your Instrument Scan: The Ultimate 5-Step Guide to Confident Flying

Introduction

It’s day 21 of the 31-day Safer Pilot Challenge, and today we’re learning the mastering your instrument scan technique. Welcome to the Safer Pilot 1 m0a Nation mzray online Ground School. Jason here—unfortunately, I’m drawn again today.

When’s the last time I drew? Was it the impossible turn? Remember how beautiful that picture was? That one will be equally beautiful, I promise. Hey, we’re talking about mastering your instrument scan, and I’m going to teach some instrument scanning techniques to you all today. There is no right or wrong answer—the right answer is what works best for you. How to test some of these methods I’m teaching you, so you can see truly what method works best for you.

The right answer is what works best for you. How to really test some of these methods I’m teaching you so you can see truly what method works best for you. By the way, who’s 21 for 21? Check. If you have some homework, don’t worry. Go back and get caught up on it as well. I’m going to teach you all four and a half five instrument scans here, and then we’re going to put them into practice. Because you know one thing about m0a is we’re all about that real-world prep. Let’s do.

1. Getting Started with the Six-Pack Panel

Let’s first build the foundation and then we’ll build the real world prep thereafter. Let me get myself situated here. Let’s start with a standard six pack and then we’ll talk G1000, at really any glass panel from there. But let’s start with the standard six pack again. This art is exactly that. It is, what’s it called, interpretive art. I interpret that it is beautiful. Mastering your instrument scan by understanding the basics of the standard six pack before diving into more advanced glass cockpit systems.

Work through our standard six pack. First off we know we have I’ll put R as for airspeed. I’ll put a T for our attitude indicator. Over here we have our altimeter and again turn coordinator. I’m assuming a standard six-pack. I realize some of you have what I call a shotgun panel, which looks like someone shot at it with a shotgun. The altimeter’s here, airspeed’s there—they’re kind of all over the place. Most aircraft in the 70s went to the standard six-pack panel. We’ll just put in for the directional gyro.

 You can put for heading indicator mastering your instrument scan as well if you’d rather. And of course our I. Okay, that didn’t end up being that ugly of a drawing. Maybe the 12-year-old handwriting could use some improvement.

2. Exploring Instrument Scanning Techniques

Let’s talk, though, real quick. Can I put this marker down? I want to share with you—we’ll call it four and a half scanning methods, real quick. Then we’re going to put them all to use.

The first is this: it’s called the T-scan. The scan essentially says everything starts at my attitude indicator, and I make this T shape over to my AirSpeed, back to my attitude, over to my altimeter, down to my DG—using these four really as my primary. Mastering your instrument can start with understanding this fundamental technique before branching into others. Making this scan where we attribute the turn coordinator and the vertical speed indicator to serve a secondary purpose.

That’s the T scan. The other scan is the inverted V. Inverted V, I start with my attitude indicator, right? And I can scan down to my turn corner, back to the attitude indicator, back to my VSI, and back. I can invert that as well to then scan DG up. And I kind of make this diagonal-like pattern throughout. 

Then there’s a lesser-known: the rectangular cross check, it’s called. And it makes a rectangle from my AirSpeed to my turn coordinator to my heading indicator, directional gyro, vertical speed, altimeter, attitude—and I just make this rectangle across. I guess you could invert it too if you so wished. That’s the rectangular cross-check.

3. The Wagon Wheel or Radial Scan Approach

My personal favorite, I don’t want you to use this, so I need to use this mastering your instrument scan —you need to use what’s best for you, because every mind is wired so differently. This is the one that works for my mind. I call it the Wagon Wheel method. 

Your glass panel pilots call it the radial scan, and that’s your half a check there, of the four and a half. Mastering Your Instrument Scan means finding the method, like the Wagon Wheel, that aligns best with how your mind processes information.

The Wagon Wheel: it’s a hub-and-spoke method where the attitude indicator is my hub, everything else is a spoke. Now I look at each spoke as I need it. For example, if I’m in a straight-ahead climb, I’m going to go: airspeed’s VY climb, yes. The altimeter is going up. Back to attitude. VSI. Am I turning by the way? Nope. Looks good down here. Let me just double-check. Nope, not turning. Okay, still. 

Airspeed’s getting a little high. Am I climbing faster? Yes. But that’s going to wane off soon. Everything always comes back to my hub. You can see how I’m thinking out loud here. This is my hub—spoke, back to the hub, spoke—as you need them.

4. Glass Panels and the Radial Scan

You don’t need to follow them in a specific pattern, although you could. You do it based on what you’re doing. If I’m just doing a level turn—a level standard rate turn—am I standard rate? Yes. How’s my heading? It’s coming up here soon. Confirm I’m not. Okay. Airspeed good. Great. Still standard. Great. You see how the mind works with that? On a glass panel, you call it the radial scan. Because on a glass panel, well, all of this is here essentially, right? All of this is here. I just have a giant attitude indicator.

A radial scan is very similar. I start in the middle and I radiate out to my tapes, not neglecting my turn coordinator, but everything happens here in the middle, very similar to that Wagon Wheel type method. Mastering Your Instrument Scan using this approach ensures you’re always centered, scanning effectively based on what matters most.

5. Introducing Perceptual Learning Modules

Do me a favor, and if you don’t know which one you use just yet, we’re going to put something through the test. So we have an amazing team here at m0a, and one thing we built inside the online Ground School is something called perceptual learning modules.

 And I want to work with you through a bunch of them now as part of Mastering Your Instrument Scan through real-world, hands-on learning.

6. Interactive Instrument Panel Testing

What I’m going to do is I’m going to flash an instrument panel in front of you—could be a six-pack, could be a G1000—for six seconds at the most. And you need to tell me what was happening. 

Was it a climbing left turn, a descending right turn, a level right turn, or a straight ahead? What was happening in that scenario? Was it a spin? Was it an emergency? Was the pitot-static system failure? What is happening? And every time we get it right, it’s going to speed up.

7. Practice Makes Proficient

Let me show you one of those tools now. Let me head down to my computer. Let me show you that tool, and let’s practice some together. All right, so once you log in to the online ground school—again, if you’re not an online Ground School member—you can still access this even as a trial member just for some fun. These tools are a key part of mastering your instrument scan, helping you build real-time decision-making skills through active practice.

Check that out, as I see a descending straight ahead. Just descend straight ahead. Did everybody see that? I was descending, going straight ahead.

Let me start to teach some of these so we can understand them better. Here: descend again, straight ahead. nothing’s changing. Wagon Wheel method—nothing’s changing. Confirm my descent. There it was. The same thing. a straight-ahead, no-turns descent.

Let’s do another one.G1000 now. climbing. climbing right-hand turn. So it was to the right, and it was a climb.

Let’s do another one. I see level flight, right? Everybody see level flight? level flight. level flight. It’s going to start getting faster and faster now as we work through these. So we started at six seconds and slowly started getting faster and faster, causing you to have to think: what is this showing me, right? digest it. And then in the airplane, we need to do something about it.

So is that—that was straight level flight, right? So straight and level. Let’s do another one. All right. climbing a left-hand turn. climbing left-hand turn left-hand climbing turn.

Next one. right-hand climbing turn. right-hand climbing turn. right-hand climb. Let’s do one more. Straight and level flight—how it should look on all your flights, right? straight and level flight.

8. Final Thoughts and Encouragement

Now I know we bounced between six pack and G1000, etc., that’s a little confusing. Let me tell you something: difficult learning is durable. It’s like going to the gym. You don’t go to the gym for 15 minutes and you’re just set for life, right? You go to the gym, you work out hard, you get a little bit sore, you rest, and you come back and you do it again in a day or two. learning is the same way.

That’s why we purposefully put some challenging ones in there. That’s why we’re speeding it up. That’s why we bounce between six pack and G1000—because your mind can flip just like that. These are called perceptual learning modules. There’s a lot of science behind it, and they’re a powerful part of mastering your instrument scan effectively and confidently in real-world conditions.