My safety pilot says "ok, you can take the
hood off now, we're in the clouds".

Wow. Had he let that happen intentionally? Or was that just his lighthearted
way of alerting you to an accidental cloud penetration?


I think it was intentional. He seemed pleased, in the same sense that an
instructor giving training (under an IFR flight plan) is pleased when actual
conditions are encountered. I don't think he realized that nobody was
separating aluminum at that point (though he knew we were VFR and I made it
clear that we were to remain VFR).

It's not all that easy to judge 500 feet from the bottoms of a cloud - they
always look closer than they are, and maybe he misjudged or overcompensated.

Ok.. what do I do? Climb, descend, turn around? We were pretty low to descend
blind out of the clouds, but my safety pilot said we had ground contact and I
descended out of it pretty quickly, told approach we were IMC, descending out
of it and turning around for home and went back to the home airport, where I
shot a practice approach there. I also made it clear that my safety pilot's
job was to keep us sufficiently clear of clouds, granite, and aluminum.

Although I stayed mostly under the hood, I did peek more than occasionally to
be sure we were sufficiently clear of these impediments to good times. In
retrospect, perhaps I should have ripped off the hood, bonked him with it, and
tossed him outside. Ironically, he's very safety conscious when it comes to
equipment - wanting backups for the vacuum and electrical system, and the
latest and greatest in GPS technology. (seems to be a trend - nobody looks at
the sectionals any more), so I was unprepared for this particular event.

Jose



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