"Dan Foster" wrote in message
...
In article link.net,
Iain Wilson wrote:
Anyone IR without having actually flown in IMC? My checkride is around
the
corner and I've no actual IFR yet. I'm itching to experience it but the
damned weather isn't co-operating (seemed the same way with the PPL!).

Not much of an answer, but I can tell you that the one place you *DON'T*
want to pursue your IR training is in the Mojave Desert area (about an
hour's drive northeast of Los Angeles, USA) -- 360 days of perfect VMC
conditions, 4 days of degraded but still VMC conditions, and only one day
of actual IMC per year on the average.

With its wide-open desert areas and sunny skies, I think it'd be a dream
for me to do VFR flying there But completely the opposite for doing any
IFR flying in IMC conditions.

Of course, given that they've got a major military base in the area with
all sorts of exotic planes in the air... not likely to be much general
aviation air traffic other than these crossing via a carefully controlled
north-south corridor (as I understand it)!

I still can't believe I was able to see the base from about 1 1/2 hours
out
(by car) given the desert was such so flat and wide-open with perfect
atmospheric conditions. Although it sure did have that illusion-like
quality to it -- seemed like it was 20 minutes away but in reality, about
90!

-Dan

Thanks for the promo, Dan. Take a look on the north half of the LA
sectional and you'll find a number of GA airports. My home patch happens to
be IYK (Inyokern, locally we refer to it as IYK International). WE pretty
much deal with the MOAs and other Special Use Areas.
From the south end of the region, starting at Palmdale, a pretty tight
corridor runs north and south through an MOA, just as you said, until you
get past the Naval Air Warfare Center at China Lake. A couple of east/west
corridors exist. One going just about even with Palmdale headed to KDAG and
HEC. Another pushes east/west from IYK through what we call the Trona
Corridor. That one just skirts the southern boundary of R-2505 with a little
bounce over R-2506 at 6,000MSL. Most times you can request and get clearance
through -06.
As far at the weather, it is like you said severe-clear most of the
year. But the winds, ah the winds. In the spring we can get winds like you
can't talk about. The National Weather Service classifies a hurricane as
having winds faster than 75MPH. We've done that. And the dust storms -- a
couple years ago a north wind picked up dust(sand) from Owens Lake (just
norht of IYK) and delivered it to San Diego. We call those quarter-inch
winds. The wind blows hard enough to carry quarter-inch gravel.
Well, that may be an exageration.
I'm in the midst of IR training -- flying out of Edwards Aeroclub at
Edward AFB -- and I appreciate the problems of no actual. My instructor
promises me we'll cross into the LA basin a couple of times so I don't have
to wear the Foggles.

Tailwinds....

Casey