"Michael" wrote in message
om...

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.

Do you think this is a function of the weather patterns in our geographic
areas (i.e. scattered airmass storms vs. frontal storms)?

In other words, if you were to move to Pennsylvania do you think you would
retain more or less the same summer utilization of your airplane?

My guess is that your thunderstorm philosophy would shift to that of
Northeast pilots while you were flying here.

I think part of this relates though to a definition of "cancelling" a
flight. I fly to Florida fairly often and I do not think I have ever had to
cancel a morning flight, yet more than once I have diverted somewhere due to
afternoon thunderstorms. When I have had to divert and then I do some
hangar flying with local pilots, usually the reply is, "You know down here
you have to plan to get your flying done by 2PM" -- I've heard that from
newly minted private pilots and from CFIIs who are "local" in Florida.

Even in Pennsylvania I guess we need to consider what it means to "cancel" a
flight. Earlier this week I returned from Mackinac Island Michigan to my
home base in Western Pennsylvania with a stop in Eastern Ohio to drop off a
passenger. There were thunderstorms enroute over the Great Lakes but I was
able to use my radar/spherics/datalink to reroute myself about 50 miles out
of the way on the first leg, thus completing the segment to Ohio by about
2PM. Yet by the time I was ready to complete the final 100-mile segment
home there were storms building enroute and near by destination as the
trailing edge of a frontal system. I "canceled" the flight until the
following AM, although I suppose I could have just "delayed" it until 11PM
when the storms had cleared -- clearly departing in the afternoon was not an
option because it turned out that a group of cells was right over my
departure airport between 6PM and 9PM.

So I think in part it depends on our definition of "cancelling" a flight.
If I lived in Florida and never "scheduled" a flight from 2PM to 8PM, then I
guess I might never "cancel" a flight in Florida.


--------------------
Richard Kaplan, CFII

www.flyimc.com