labbadabba
Pattern Altitude
I have a flight tomorrow, KTOP - KIXD - KSLN in the morning and KSLN - KIXD - KTOP in the evening. C172 with GX55 GPS, dual nav and DME, no AP. It's an adequate IFR plane but by no means state of the art.
Eastern Kansas will be socked in the next 48 hours LIFR/IFR CIGS with the slight potential of embedded storms tomorrow morning on the Missouri border. Vertical development should be limited to 10k feet so the storms won't be severe but they're still storms. Forecast cloud tops at 6k ft so I should be able to see build-ups above that layer. CIGS in eastern Kansas forecast between 1,000ft and 300ft all day tomorrow. KSLN has LIFR in the morning and MVFR in the afternoon.
I've got some IMC under my belt but I've not spend a lot of time flying on days like this, since getting my instrument ticket, I mostly bust clouds in cruise but I typically don't fire off into low ceilings. One mitigating factor in all this is my PAX happens to be a 10,000 hour CFII. He's a little uneasy about the TSRA (which chances seem to be decreasing), my biggest concern are the CIGS.
Eastern Kansas will be socked in the next 48 hours LIFR/IFR CIGS with the slight potential of embedded storms tomorrow morning on the Missouri border. Vertical development should be limited to 10k feet so the storms won't be severe but they're still storms. Forecast cloud tops at 6k ft so I should be able to see build-ups above that layer. CIGS in eastern Kansas forecast between 1,000ft and 300ft all day tomorrow. KSLN has LIFR in the morning and MVFR in the afternoon.
I've got some IMC under my belt but I've not spend a lot of time flying on days like this, since getting my instrument ticket, I mostly bust clouds in cruise but I typically don't fire off into low ceilings. One mitigating factor in all this is my PAX happens to be a 10,000 hour CFII. He's a little uneasy about the TSRA (which chances seem to be decreasing), my biggest concern are the CIGS.