Paul Tomblin wrote:

In a previous article, Ron Rosenfeld said:

On Mon, 24 Oct 2005 01:37:41 +0000 (UTC), (Paul
Tomblin) wrote:

I'm just not sure when the conditions are
going to be conducive to bringing the plane home, and the club is NOT
going to be happy about that.

Yes, they would have been much happier had you become an icing accident.


Well, the guy who had it booked for Monday and Tuesday wrote to me that
he'd been thinking of cancelling anyway because of the weather, so I feel
better about that.

This morning I look at the airmets, and there are two of them for icing,
with a narrow little corridor between them straight between BAF and ROC.
Not sure if I trust that narrow corridor to stay open, though. How good
are the boundaries of airmets? Are you ever going to encounter the
conditions outside the boundaries, or are they pretty conservative about
them?


I find the FAA weather guys to be pretty conservative about almost
everything, but even the best weather folks are wrong as often as they
are right. The FAA is especially conservative when calling for icing
and this is a real pain with the ever stricter FAA and NTSB
interpretations of "known icing." Now that forecast = known, it makes
flying in the northeast illegal for about 5 months of the year.

I tend to fly if there isn't rain at ground level and the freezing level
is at or above the MEA or I can fly VFR. However, I've flown a lot in
the winter and am reasonably comfortable taking on reasoned risk.
Everyone's risk assessment and tolerance is different and only you know
what you are comfortable with. If you are significantly concerned about
making the flight, then I'd say that alone probably says it isn't worth
it. Flying is supposed to be fun (unless you are getting paid for it)
so why make a flight that will give you white knuckles on the yoke?


MAtt