(Richard Kaplan) wrote
I stay on the ground when my flight would need to penetrate more than
scattered storms, i.e. I don't fly in situations when I can get boxed in
behind me or if I need to cross frontal thunderstorms.

Depending on how you interpret that, this kind of approach would have
me grounded half the year. In reality, since I got the stormscope I
have never cancelled a flight for T-storms.

I don't think I'm any different than other experienced IFR pilots.

I think you're dramatically different from experienced IFR pilots on
the Gulf Coast. I suspect you're no different from the pilots in your
neck of the woods. All the Gulf Coast IFR pilots I know who have
equipment and experience comparable to mine have spherics and use it
agressively.

On the other hand, most of these same pilots consider known ice on a
piston airplane something of a joke.

My suspicion is that this has nothing to do with the relative
capability of the equipment or risk tolerance of the pilots and
everything to do with experience. We get very little icing here, and
thus never really learn about it. We know that the ability of a
piston airplane to handle ice is limited, but we don't know how
limited, and we're afraid of getting in over our heads. Since we will
never have the opportunity to develop the necessary experience to get
true utility out of a known-ice plane, we don't bother with it.

On the other hand, we get T-storms every day, and thus become very
familiar with the associated weather patterns. Since we have plenty
of relatively mild T-storm weather (scattered to isolated) to practice
our skills in the course of normal IFR travel (there's no need to go
looking for it) we get very familiar with how our spherics eequipment
works and how the weather patterns develop. We know that the risk of
getting boxed in is real, but we're not too worried about it because
we know how this happens and how to bail out.

Michael