"A Lieberman" wrote in message
.. .
On Sun, 19 Feb 2006 02:28:18 GMT, Matt Whiting wrote:

If one of my kids was in need of a transplant and had 24 hours to live
and flying to pick up the organ was the only option, then I'd take that
risk in a heartbeat. I would fly alone given the risk, but I'd do it
without hesitation.

However, such situations are extremely rare and thus don't factor into
normal decision making.

Excuse me?

What you describe above is the worst possible pilot decision one could
make.

With what you describe above, your mind will be far from the safety of
flying. I am sure get there itis would kill you and those on the ground
after you bought the farm.

And here I stay within the confines of the rules and regulations, you
accuse me of making bad piloting decisions for flying VFR over the top,
and
you want exceptions to break the rules and regulations that are suppose to
keep the airways safe. What exactly is wrong with this picture???

What you described above sure ain't safe or a good pilot decision in my
opinion.

Staying within the rules and regulations is one thing but they are only set
the baseline for acting properly. Good pilots build on the rules to create a
personal set of rules which go beyond the basics and one needs to recognise
the rules for what they are.
Accuse me of gold plating the rules fine but for me the rules only tell me
what's legal, not what's right.
The rules tell what's legal to retain IFR currency. Personally, it is not
right for me, so I do twice what the rules say.
The rules require the two yearly review, I go up with an instructor and try
things out whenever I feel like it and that is more than every two years.

I remember flying from Niagara Falls to Madison, Wi on the Monday of Oshkosh
last year. The weather was not good.

Set off OK but the headwinds were way above forecast for the trip and would
have taken me down to an hours fuel left on top of the reserve at MSN so I
decided to stop off at Flint. The weather forecast was not good across the
Lake, with a Convective Sigmet issued. However the weather was OK to
Muskegon, so we launched with MKG as the place to stop if it was too bad in
Wisconsin, but with plenty of fuel.

As we flew neared MKG, I got on to the FSS and got the weather update. It
seemed there was a strip of good weather 100 miles wide from Milwaukee
westwards 200 miles. On that basis we continued across the lake and made it
to MSN OK at about 13.00 local time. Once across the lake, then the
emergency alternate field kept changing. Later that afternoon about 4pm
Janesville was hit by a tornado.

The pleasure from that trip came from the actual flying for sure, but the
real sense of achievement came from the decision making that went on along
the way managing risk and applying my limited knowledge of mid west weather
with the information available from the FSS. The other thing that helped was
having 4 hours of fuel on hand when I landed. Too much, some may say, but
fuel was never going to be a factor for me, whereas it could have been.

Chris