Forward from a pilot friend: Real interesting ride-along with a guy in his brand new RV-10, which had taken him almost 4 years to build. His first cross-country, in this very well equipped aircraft. What could possibly go wrong? We can ALL learn from this.
The G5 way off to the right doesn't help much if the EFIS tanks. Ideally the backup instruments are closer to the field of vision.
I just want to know why, when visibility of the ground returned, the decision to stay VFR was not made. He said unfamiliarity with the terrain, but in the video he looks really high and a quick check of the "chart" will show elevations of the ground. Sounded like the airport was also under 25 miles out. I think Page is also on the lake, not much terrain over the lake.
Wow, that looked like it was either Jerry flying on final or the early part of a graveyard spiral developing. Amazing to see how fast you can get into a steep spiral turn in IMC when things get busy. Looks like it is time for me to do some more unusual attitude training and work under the hood. I do wish that more actual IMC trainings was possible during PPL instruction. But with the lack of an IFR equipped airplane and instructors hesitant to go Actual, I never got deep into the clouds.
A couple of things. When the first contact was made with ATC, he was at 10,300, that is roughly 6000' above field elevation, and 25 miles from the destination. There is 5000' of elevation to lose down to pattern, thats 10 minutes at 500' per minute, 25 miles at 140 over the ground is, off the top of my head, about 10 minutes. Why at 10 minutes out has he not yet checked the weather at the destination airport, or started his descent? When ATC gives him the weather, the ceiling is 6500', I'm not the most studious, but metars are given in AGL. So add 6500' agl to field elevation of 4317', means the ceiling is at 10,800. He is right at the bottom of the clouds, both by the numbers and visually. Flying the approach will run you all over, why not start the descent that needs to have been already started and get out of the clouds? He could see the clouds, but he does not appear to try and avoid them. Pitot heat? That was the first thing I thought when his airspeed quit working. Never needed it in 20 years? does Texas never have a freezing level under the flight levels even in the winter? If the pitot froze, was he picking up ice on the wings? If a scenic flight, why fly at 6000' AGL anyway? Especially that close to the destination. He did keep his cool and fly the airplane even though he was behind the airplane. Good job on that!
Wow, what a chitshow. All in all, except for what he noted, not a bad job, good result. Could happen to any of us. Surprised that fancy avionics doesn't bark at you when temps drop to freezing.
At least he was IFR and current. Here's one that could have turned out ugly. I really hope I never feel the need to get there that bad ...
..I don't understand how "oops, I'm IMC?!" happens, at least during the day I notice he conveniently pans the video to jump from the VMC to the IMC portion. Whatever happened to planning ahead, cloud clearances, etc He handled it all well from what I can see.. but at some point he made the decision to continue ahead and fly into IMC as opposed to turning around / deviating Maybe it can happen to some of us, but this isn't one of those things like a bird strike that really CAN happen to all of us just by sheer dumb luck. This involved some active decision making that brought him there.
Yah... not sure why he didn’t request the IFR sooner. I had a situation like that coming back from DC to Ohio. Somewhere around crossing the Ohio River, the scattered went broken and then full under cast. Destination was showing broken to scattered. Didn’t matter... hello Cleveland Center, I need an IFR clearance to my destination. Grumman, maintain VFR, squawk xxxx, I’ll have your IFR shortly. A few moments later, Grumman have your location as.... advise when ready to copy. Easy easy...
I have essentially the exact same set up. The cockpit of the 10 isn't ginormous so it's very easy to fly off of the G5. In my setup both alternators and both batteries and both G3Xs would have to fail to rely on the G5. If all that happens my goal is to just get out of IMC.
