"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:laeXe.376007$xm3.315405@attbi_s21...
Sorry, but I disagree. Any rule that forces me to evade or avoid
basketball-sized clouds with the same urgency as 70-story CBs is stupid.
What "urgency"? You *intentionally* flew your airplane into the cloud.
There would be no urgency at all, except for your choice to approach the
cloud.
Under normal circumstances, a pilot can easily avoid the smallest clouds
without any effort at all. If the clouds are really as small and infrequent
as you are describing, no dramatic maneuvering would be required at all.
I stand to be corrected, but if I remember correctly, you stated in your
ORIGINAL post you were at 4000 feet circling the cloud, which is an IFR
cruise altitude.
No, the puffies were forming at "around 4000 feet." I don't remember the
precise altitude, but it was some odd height, like 3700 feet.
The previous poster erred in even considering the altitude. IFR traffic can
and does fly at any altitude.
Regardless, we were over rural Iowa. Would I have been playing around the
puffies in Chicago airspace? Of course not. But I was in some of the
most unpopulated airspace in the country.
The FARs do not distinguish between Class E airspace in the middle of
nowhere and Class E airspace smack in the middle of a densely populated
area. It's all Class E, and everyone is required to follow the same rules.
I don't think it's possible to compute the odds of a mid-air collision in
this area
Of course it is. You can compute the odds of anything.
let alone one caused by an IFR plane popping out of Yugo-sized cloud 300
feet below his assigned altitude.
Again, of course you can.
In fact, I would guess that the odds of being hit by an asteroid in flight
are about the same.
Even if the computed odds are exceedingly small (and I am positive the odds
are greater than being hit by an asteroid), that doesn't change the legality
of the practice. Furthermore, lots of pilots have relied on the "big sky"
theory of traffic avoidance, and followed it to their doom.
Pete
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