Inadvertant IMC

Somehow getting into IMC unintentionally. This takes off from another
NG re;IMC with helicopters. I've experienced it several times with
both FW/RW and more often than not, without any gyros in the aircraft.
The box is opened .... anyone care to get into this one? Should be fun
Ol S&B

Well, not to play word games, but 'cloud' is worth discussing. How
small or how translucent must one be before it doesn't count as a
cloud? Think of a vapor trail as one kind of off beat example.

Even more fun is to pull some gees in very humid air -- we create our
own cloud, and we are close to it.





On May 23, 9:26 am, "Ol Shy & Bashful" wrote:
Somehow getting into IMC unintentionally. This takes off from another
NG re;IMC with helicopters. I've experienced it several times with
both FW/RW and more often than not, without any gyros in the aircraft.
The box is opened .... anyone care to get into this one? Should be fun
Ol S&B

What happens is you have good weather on both ends of the trip, so if
you encounter clouds en route, you think, well this is just temporary;
I'll duck under and in a few minutes I'll be clear again. Then you
get lower, and lower, and if the visibility is 3 mi in haze the next
thing you know you're in it. After the second time this happened I
immediately started work on the IR. Fortunately, I've never had a
problem trusting my gyros.

On May 23, 9:30*am, Tina wrote:
Well, not to play word games, but 'cloud' is worth discussing. How
small or how translucent must one be before it doesn't count as a
cloud? Think of a vapor trail as one kind of off beat example.

Even more fun is to pull some gees in very humid air -- we create our
own cloud, and we are close to it.

On May 23, 9:26 am, "Ol Shy & Bashful" wrote:



Somehow getting into IMC unintentionally. This takes off from another
NG re;IMC with helicopters. I've experienced it several times with
both FW/RW and more often than not, without any gyros in the aircraft.
The box is opened .... anyone care to get into this one? Should be fun
Ol S&B- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Tina
I'm curious as to your background. You have answered a couple of my
posts displaying more than a casual knowledge of aviation. ???

Lots of time and what could be considered dual instruction in an
M20J, took various writtens for fun, but for other reasons never
became licensed. I have no desire to go off solo by myself now. I am
very comfortable hand flying approaches to minimums and less (much
less).



Tina
I'm curious as to your background. You have answered a couple of my
posts displaying more than a casual knowledge of aviation. ???

On May 23, 11:42*am, Tina wrote:
Lots of time and what *could be considered dual instruction in an
M20J, took various writtens for fun, but for other reasons never
became licensed. I have no desire to go off solo by myself now. I am
very comfortable hand flying approaches to minimums and less (much
less).





Tina
I'm curious as to your background. You have answered a couple of my
posts displaying more than a casual knowledge of aviation. ???- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Hmmm... so essentially you have no experience as PIC or even as a
student with serious training? Hand flying to minimums? Are you
talking about using some kind of computer sim?
Cheers Ol S&B

I am very good friends with a CFII, have a husband who owns and uses a
Mooney for business and pleasure, and I fly with both pretty often. I
am not licensed because when I was interested in that I could not get
pass Class III physical. I probably have almost 1000 hours at the
controls.


Lots of time and what could be considered dual instrucbetion in an
M20J, took various writtens for fun, but for other reasons never
became licensed. I have no desire to go off solo by myself now. I am
very comfortable hand flying approaches to minimums and less (much
less).

Tina
I'm curious as to your background. You have answered a couple of my
posts displaying more than a casual knowledge of aviation. ???- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Hmmm... so essentially you have no experience as PIC or even as a
student with serious training? Hand flying to minimums? Are you
talking about using some kind of computer sim?
Cheers Ol S&B

In article
,
"Ol Shy & Bashful" wrote:

Somehow getting into IMC unintentionally. This takes off from another
NG re;IMC with helicopters. I've experienced it several times with
both FW/RW and more often than not, without any gyros in the aircraft.
The box is opened .... anyone care to get into this one? Should be fun
Ol S&B

I always wondered how this could happen? How could you inadvertently
fly in IMC conditions? Couldn't you see this coming?

The year was 2000, returning to Alaska from Oshkosh with the wife in our
'57 182. I had around 1000 hours at the time, Comm/Inst but hadn't flown
IFR except working on the rating and one short flight the weekend after
getting the Instrument rating.

We had departed Slave Lake headed to Grand Praire. The radar picture
showed showers between us and there but it looked good enough for a "go
take a look flight". As we got around the west end of slave lake the
ceiling was coming down and viz dropping in light rain. I stayed low
enough to keep ground contact and continued working west. The rain on
the windshield made it look as if the viz was very low, but looking to
the side I still had fair viz so I continued on. It wasn't very long at
all however before I realized I had now worked down to about 500 AGL and
really couldn't see. G Hmm, not how the heck did I get here!? Right
at that time we crossed over a dirt strip so I hit autostore on the GPS
(just in case we had to get on the ground real quick) and started a 180.
With a few miles and a couple of minutes we were out of the gloom and
back into good VFR. We spent the night in Slave Lake and had a
wonderful pasta/shrimp dish at the motel with the big green roof. G

So that's it happens.

On Fri, 23 May 2008 14:13:13 -0800, Dale wrote:

In article
,
"Ol Shy & Bashful" wrote:

Somehow getting into IMC unintentionally. This takes off from another
NG re;IMC with helicopters. I've experienced it several times with
both FW/RW and more often than not, without any gyros in the aircraft.
The box is opened .... anyone care to get into this one? Should be fun
Ol S&B

I always wondered how this could happen? How could you inadvertently
fly in IMC conditions? Couldn't you see this coming?


I'm sure that if you fly regularly through the seasons you will
eventually get caught. It has happened to me 3 times now.

I did an early morning flight along the coast that seemed to be ok
except that I eventually couldnt see much. the airport nearby was
reporting cavok with unlimited visibility. I think it was just a huge
area of humid air that condensed into a fog while I was in it. took 5
minutes to fly clear on instruments.

I went out once in huge cotton wool clouds and had a canyon between
the clouds zipper up at over 150knots. it engulfed me in the middle of
a steep turn trying to escape it. about a minute or two to fly out of
that one. happened right beside the home airstrip.

I took off once to return across australia with departure along a
clear corridor between clouds. that was almost a forced landing on a
freeway when the cloud pattern changed and it socked in to the ground.
the local controlled airport had a regional airliner on short finals
and one up his bum. they let me do an expedited circuit to get out of
that one.

the saving grace for me has always been that the 29,000 hour pilot who
put the panel together that I fly put an artificial horizon in an
otherwise day vfr panel. I've come to think that every aircraft should
have an AH in it. It has saved my bacon on 3 occasions now.

I did some research once regarding the difficulty flying into cloud
could present. stratus cloud is almost a non event apart from the
icing considerations. what I discovered in australia is that cloud is
very commonly about 300 miles wide and can be as much as 3,000 miles
long as it travels across the country. if you got casual about it and
just poked into cloud because it was in front of you you could end up
totally stuffed in a hurry.

Getting caught in cloud isnt incompetence or stupidity it just happens
because of the rapidity with which metrological conditions can change.
it probably takes a tenth of a degree change in temperature to change
cold saturated clear air to opaque cloud. Ive seen a cloud face streak
through saturated air at over 200knots without any perceptible
turbulence or wind.

....good fun though when you live to tell about it.
Stealth Pilot

"Stealth Pilot" wrote in message
...
Getting caught in cloud isnt incompetence or stupidity it just happens
because of the rapidity with which metrological conditions can change.
it probably takes a tenth of a degree change in temperature to change
cold saturated clear air to opaque cloud. Ive seen a cloud face streak
through saturated air at over 200knots without any perceptible
turbulence or wind.

My favorite "changing weather" story is the time that a ground fog popped up
under me when I hadn't been airborne more than five minutes. Now normally a
ground fog would not be a problem, except that I was in a training glider doing
a student solo, and I suddenly couldn't see the ground under me! Due to the
lack of either an engine or natural lift, waiting it out or flying to a
friendlier airport was out of the question.

As it turned out, an airplane scouted an upwind hole for me. I was able to
spiral down and then barely made the runway from that vantage point.

Yes, weather does sometimes change without notice and can do so faster than
we can escape.

Vaughn