Andrew Gideon wrote:

That statement was made during an ASF presentation I attended a while ago.
It puzzled me. Why would a IR pilot fly VFR into IMC?

I'm not sure myself, but I do remember an incident that was presented in a
safety videotape. The pilot involved intended an IFR flight from Frederick, MD
to the west. She was delayed in a business meeting and discovered when she got
to the airport that her flight plan had expired. Rather than file a new one, she
took off VFR under low ceilings intending to file in the air.

Frederick is under the control of the Baltimore ATC. The ground rises to the
west. Baltimore wouldn't clear her until they could pick her up on radar, and
you have to get pretty high for them to do that in that area. While trying to
get clearance and climbing to avoid terrain, the windshield went opaque.

She came out of the clouds in a spiral at over a 70 degree bank, recovered a few
hundred feet above the ground, and returned to Frederick to file a flight plan.

George Patterson
If a man gets into a fight 3,000 miles away from home, he *had* to have
been looking for it.