where can you fly?

"Armitage Shanks" wrote in message
m...
Hi,

Once you're a qualified private pilot, where can you/can't you fly?
For instance, say I spot an interesting cloud formation. Can I just
take off, fly up to it, ascend the vertical walls of the cloud and fly
through its troughs and valleys in exploration of a formation that
will only ever occur once?

Brother clouds aren't as interesting as one would think, and they're
difficult to deal with.
First, they're constantly changing and moving-sometimes rapidly. Second,
hard things come out of clouds moving very fast- "airplanes", I think
they're called. Regulations and good sense require you stay away from clouds
by various intervals above, below and laterally. Finally, IF your aircraft
had sufficient performance, and some clouds build vertically faster than
civil aircraft can climb, and IF you could maintain cloud clearance, you'd
be in a place where you could well have a real problem maintaining contact
and reference to the surface. Not conducive to a long aviation career.
All to see... a white surface lacking definition, up close.

While I wouldn't recommend darting through the troughs and valleys VFR, you
could do it IFR.
Enroute VFR and at a prudent distance the clouds are scenic. A glance
usually does it, and then I'm back scanning for traffic.


Can I hover 100 feet over a city, or next to a high-rise building?

You could do that, I suppose. Soon, you wouldn't be "a qualified private
pilot" and you'd have significant legal problems as well.
Wally