There is the old saying "When the weather is too bad to fly IFR, go VFR."
Be careful of it.

But when departing from an area with low clouds and icing and flying to
better conditions, it can be a viable alternative to plan your trip with a
VFR segment into conditions where you can transition to IFR.

I have struggled with the conditions you describe in Michigan, and have done
the semi-scudrunning thing from northern lower Michigan into Indiana where I
could climb higher and pick up a clearance filed from a VOR for the rest of
the route. Terrain up there is pretty benign, but there are lots of towers
around the urban areas. Short trips over a familiar route can be made OK
under the clouds if they are not too low, but you really need an
up-to-date-sectional (meaning the current edition manually updated from the
VFR Chart Bulletins) and someone to follow it for you as you fly. I won't
repeat what I did, it was not a wise course of action and was not
well-planned. The clouds became lower than forecast and things started
getting nasty. A bad case of "get-there-itis."

If the ceiling is at least 1500 ft above the MEFs on the sectional (or 1500
ft above the highest obstacle near your path), you can often maintain legal
and safe VFR to a point where you can reach better conditions (in terms of
ice avoidance) and pick up a prefiled clearance.

Flying to a destination where you will have to descend through icy clouds is
hard to do legally in most lightplanes. There are strategies for minimizing
icing during the arrival, as discussed in other posts, but if you elect that
approach, you just have to recognize that it is not legal and make your own
choices.

If conditions (forecast or actual) permit, you might can plan to descend to
a low altitude, cancel IFR, and finish your trip under VFR below the icy
clouds, reversing the departure method discussed above.

I don't live up north, but I visit Michigan every couple of months. What I
have seen mostly is a low icy layer that is not too thick, and I have never
had any trouble descending through it. But if it is not too low and has
holes, I have always preferred to cancel IFR and get below it when nearing
my destination. You have to have holes, though, because the MVA/MIA may not
be low enough to get under it while IFR.

It is not uncommon for me to delay a trip (or make it earlier) to avoid
conditions that are too difficult. I usually hope to find conditions where
I can get down below the clouds when somewhere near my destination, but
recognizing that I may have to descend through them. So I look for
conditions that aren't too bad to allow that.

There is no one-size-fits-all answer, you just need a bag of tricks to draw
from. And yes, there will be a lot of times when you just stay on the
ground.

Stan


"Paul Tomblin" wrote in message
...
I cancelled a flight yesterday because on top of strong gusty winds there
was an Airmet Zulu for light to moderate mixed and rime ice, and on top of
that the destination was reporting layers at about 2,000 and 4,000 feet, a
freezing level of about 3,000 feet, with occassional ceilings of 800 feet
and rain. It seemed to me that I could probably fly between or above the
layers en-route, but I was worried about the possibility of having to
descend through two layers of wet (and possibly icy) clouds and maybe have
to do an approach to minimums in very gusty winds.

I know I did the right thing based on my low level of experience, but any
ice tips from the experts, especially up here in the Great Lakes area.

--
Paul Tomblin http://xcski.com/blogs/pt/
An Emacs reference mug is what I want. It would hold ten gallons of
coffee.
-- Steve VanDevender