"Roger Long" om
I ran into an old client today and we stumbled on to the flying topic.
Turns out he got his PP a couple years ago and bought a plane.
He said with a completely straight face that he's thinking of getting an
instrument rating because he "flies in IMC a lot." He does OK but would
like to be able to ask ATC where the other planes are and fly into towered
airports.
Why "towered airports"? Anyway, anyone who does much night XC frequently
experiences brief periods of IMC. And, there are many parts of North
America where, more days than not, XC VFR is "not recommended" by flight
service due to possible patches of IMC en route. People who fly a lot of
VFR XCs get used to figuring out what they're going to do when the weather
starts to close in. The cardinal rule is getting sure knowledge that a VFR
airport is close by. If you have 50NM to go and you know that your
destination is *for sure* VFR and you have flight following, many, if not
most IFR pilots wouldn't bother to file an IFR plan if they're only going to
experience a few minutes of IMC. It's illegal, but people have been doing
it regularly for years.
With moving map GPS, weather in the cockpit and better communications, this
will only increase. There was a good article in AOPA Pilot, I think, about
this. They called it flying "Prentend VFR".
What does ATC do when they see a 1200 target boring through what they know
is solid IMC?
They wouldn't know unless someone flying close by told them.
Le Moo
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