azpilot
Line Up and Wait
- Joined
- Jul 27, 2015
- Messages
- 821
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azpilot
I am a fairly new pilot. I am at about 75 hours now. About 20 of that is cross country. I recently made my farthest journey from home to an airport that is about 150 nm from my home airport. It was a lot of fun. The weather that day was marginal (my marginal, not official marginal), and it made me nervous. Not the bad kind of nervous, but a good kind of nervous.
Anyway, I am trying to figure out how I maintain the proper cloud clearance requirements. Most of the flight was conducted in class G airspace, and it was day, and I was above 1,200' AGL, so the VFR minimums are 1 mile with 500/1,000/2,000. In my particular case visibility was well over 20 miles, so we were good there. I was certainly not above any clouds, and there were no clouds to my sides. But there was a layer above me.
I had planned on making the flight at 7,500 feet. As we climbed up to that altitude, I was getting VERY nervous. I felt like I could nearly reach out and touch the clouds above us. Then, I noticed another plane, that appeared to be about 1,000 feet above us cross going the opposite direction. This perplexed me quite a bit. Here, I thought I was about to but the 500' below rule, and there is another plane that is 1,000' above me going the other way, and I can see him just fine.
So, the question I have is, how in the world am I supposed to know how close I am to clouds? I feel like the only way I could know for sure, it to get close enough that I basically start to enter it, and the quickly descend to get out, but that would be illegal and dangerous. Any thoughts? Is this just something I am going to learn with more experience?
Anyway, I am trying to figure out how I maintain the proper cloud clearance requirements. Most of the flight was conducted in class G airspace, and it was day, and I was above 1,200' AGL, so the VFR minimums are 1 mile with 500/1,000/2,000. In my particular case visibility was well over 20 miles, so we were good there. I was certainly not above any clouds, and there were no clouds to my sides. But there was a layer above me.
I had planned on making the flight at 7,500 feet. As we climbed up to that altitude, I was getting VERY nervous. I felt like I could nearly reach out and touch the clouds above us. Then, I noticed another plane, that appeared to be about 1,000 feet above us cross going the opposite direction. This perplexed me quite a bit. Here, I thought I was about to but the 500' below rule, and there is another plane that is 1,000' above me going the other way, and I can see him just fine.
So, the question I have is, how in the world am I supposed to know how close I am to clouds? I feel like the only way I could know for sure, it to get close enough that I basically start to enter it, and the quickly descend to get out, but that would be illegal and dangerous. Any thoughts? Is this just something I am going to learn with more experience?