"Ron McKinnon" wrote:
How on earth could you be an Instrument rated Pilot, or even a
non-instrument rated pilot for that matter, and be 'pretty ignorant
of weather' ???

Most people get very little exposure to making real weather-related
decisions during training. Most of the time in training, you depend on
your instructor to make decisions for you, and just go with the flow.

I don't do any primary training; mostly club checkouts and BFRs and high
performance upgrades, things like that. Presumably these are people who
have already received training in weather. I try really hard to impress on
my students that I want them to make the go-no/go decision, and then defend
it. I'm often amazed at just how ill-equipped many of them are to do that.

I had one guy not long ago, recent instrument rating, working on his
complex transition. We had a lesson scheduled one day where it was IFR,
with freezing levels around 3-4000. He wanted to go flying. He says he
got a FSS briefing and it sounded OK (I can't imagine what the briefer told
him). I had to drag him step by step through DUATS, and show him how to
read the FD reports (he had never seen one before). He had no idea what I
was talking about when I mentioned "airmet zulu", nor how to read one.

By mid-morning, the system had a half-dozen pireps of moderate icing at the
altitudes we would have been at.