"Mark Astley" wrote
Require? No, of course not, if you're content to get beaten senseless
cruising around down low.

So what you're actually increasing is comfort rather than capability.
Not that there's anything wrong with that - I've been known to file
IFR myself just because it was more convenient or comfortable - but
it's not the same thing as not being able to make it VFR.

A hazy NJ summer can easily be less than 3 miles,

Really? I'm there quite a bit, and I can't recall the last time the
haze made the visibility less than three miles. Not saying it can't
happen, but I don't see it happening much. What I do see a lot is a
tendency to dramatically underestimate visibility.

Whenever I fly with a student in hazy conditions, I always make it a
point to ask him what he thinks the visibility is. Then I point out a
distant but prominent object that I know is further than that, and ask
him how far away he thinks it is. Then we either find it on the map
and fly to it, until he realizes the visibility was a lot better than
what he thought.

In my experience, I've NEVER had a pilot with less than 1000 hours
fail to significantly underestimate the flight visibility in haze.
Just one of those things I've started noticing since I started
teaching.

then there's the occasional freak occurence like smoke from Canada blowing
down into your airspace.

Yeah, that happens. I remember when the smoke from Mexico blew into
Texas. I had about 300 hours then, and I remember thinking how bad it
was, and wondering if I was busting VFR mins. Now that I've racked up
several approaches in 2-4 miles of vis I know that it probably never
got worse than 4 miles. Sure seemed worse at the time though.

Michael