Inadvertant IMC - DG1000, Manawatu, New Zealand

Strange, because I thought the commentary was well done and quite educational. The original, unedited video is still up:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8djWfNmJlKo

Uli
'AS'

PureGlide reaction video removed at request of Gliding New Zealand pending imminent safety advisory.
A very experienced and qualified instructor on a strong ridge day missed the students initial left turn, combined with loss of SA, IMC entry, over-G recovery for terrain and re-entry into IMC before second recovery and leeward escape to safe outlanding.

I have flown in similar conditions many times with students. To help the student understand the best position, we pay attention to the clouds and always fly on the upwind side and expect the best lift on the tallest clouds. He flew downwind of just that cloud. Like all ridge soaring, have any exit strategy away and upwind. If you see you re getting boxed in, it is OK to turnaround and fly through the same airmass you just experienced. When there was nothing ahead of them, wishful thinking must have kicked in.

I feel there might be more to learn if the entire GoPro video was shared. Somewhere along the way, the student might have been encouraged to fly this way. There was an accident on the Whites a while back that had these elements, lucky no one was killed in either.

Buzz

On 11/22/20 6:50 PM, Matthew Scutter wrote:
so even an untrained pilot should be able to keep the horizon level and the airspeed roughly constant.

If that were the case, there would be a lot fewer fatal VFR into IMC
accidents. Pretty much all power planes have an attitude indicators and
yet they still fall out of the sky when untrained pilots venture into or
get caught in clouds.

--
Dan
5J

On Monday, November 23, 2020 at 1:03:44 PM UTC-5, Dan Marotta wrote:
On 11/22/20 6:50 PM, Matthew Scutter wrote:
so even an untrained pilot should be able to keep the horizon level and the airspeed roughly constant.
If that were the case, there would be a lot fewer fatal VFR into IMC
accidents. Pretty much all power planes have an attitude indicators and
yet they still fall out of the sky when untrained pilots venture into or
get caught in clouds.

--
Dan
5J
While believing the instruments and controlling appropriately is vital; the difficulty I think,
is in suppressing misleading sensations. I convinced myself to do this on my first
cloud excursion ( in a stable glider with T and S ) and climbed 6000ft. Much later with
a WWII AH, I found it , in RAF parlance, a piece of cake. Add a GPS display and it is easier still.
An engineering training helps understanding what the instrument displays is a help.
I do not think I would have been brave enough to take an ASW 12 ( no brakes) into Cbs
as a team mate did in Yugoslavia, "72.

John Firth ( an old no longer bold pilot.)

In mid- to high-latitude maritime climates, of which Britain and New Zealand are fine examples, clouds are ubiquitous and cloud base is typically low. You have to fly in, around, above, or below clouds a lot of the time. In these countries, glider pilots are generally permitted to fly in these conditions, including inside clouds if properly instrumented and trained. This is quite different from the USA, particularly my (winter) home in the desert southwest, where regulations require us to stay well clear of clouds and those you encounter are usually two miles above ground at the top of a ten-knot thermal!

Having recently relocated to England (summer), I have had to recalibrate my approach to clouds. Earlier this year, a winch launch deposited me in the bottom wispies of a cumulus cloud (that caught my attention!) and ridge soaring is rarely cloud-free. Staying completely clear of clouds, as required in the USA, is practically impossible. I am slowly getting accustomed to my new damper surroundings, but feel that turn and slip as minimum and full gyro horizon (mechanical or electronic) are essential for safe flying. I am also paying more attention to where ground is, a necessary item as this video shows. Five knots of sink when you're 800 feet above terrrain doesn't give you long to sort things out.

Mike

My view of the video seemed much simpler -- and more avionics not really the key answer. They seemed to be running the front of the cloud with an easy out to the right, into the wind. There was a moment with a bit of leftward V shaped notch in the clouds, which they followed downwind. Then it sounds like the instructor got confused, and rather than turn right, follow the V shaped notch back to the right maintaining the path to the valley, they chose to go over the top of the clouds, with building cloud to their right. I was leaning to the right while watching! Clearly this brought them to the lee side of the ridge and a world of trouble. The first and most essential lesson, when flying in such conditions whether ridge or wave, always maintain a clear exit path! For ridge, most likely upwind. For wave, the exit path is often downwind. Perhaps being in the back seat is a tough place to make these decisions too, which require a lot of staring at clouds.

John Cochrane.

http://gliding.co.nz/news/latest-news/

I actually know of a chief flight instructor at a club that I no longer fly at who did this three times with three different people earlier this year.

But until somebody ends up dead there isn't a regulator alive that will do **** about it.