wabower
Touchdown! Greaser!
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Wayne
My only point was to agree with Jay that the specific set of conditions in which one could actually make the case that the only discriminator in order to launch or not launch is the ability to fly in-clouds, is very very limited. More often than not, these WX particulars simply make single engine piston flight cumbersome if not unsafe for what is being attempted at accomplishing (recreational flight).
So in your mind, the only categories for use of a GA airplane are business and recreational? Should everyone who uses their plane for personal travel just pack it up and go to the house?
In any event, both you and Jay are wrong about the utility and usage of IFR capabilities. Having flown GA piston airplanes over a high percentage of the country for many years and nearly 10,000 hours, I know for a fact that the number of days in which IFR capability was either necessary or reassuring (not sure about the wx, maybe VFR, maybe MVFR, maybe IFR for all or part of the trip) is significant. None of those days included "scary" weather, but were just days when the weather wasn't CAVU.
Most of those days didn't include icing or convective, and consisted of punching through a low layer of a few thousand feet or less (on climbout or descent) or shooting an approach to get below a ceiling that is much higher than minimums. None of these tasks are particularly dangerous or daunting, but are easily achieveable by an IR pilot but difficult (and perhaps even forbidden) by a VFR pilot.
Which puts the VFR-only pilots not far behind the IR folks when the day is done. Put simply, you ain't flying thru that squall line, overflying it or outrunning it...and that windshear ahead and behind it? Your wife is gonna nag u all the way to the destination for not waiting the extra 4 hours. And that's the south.
When you immediately default to thunderstorms and severe icing as your "discriminator for flying in clouds" you are ignoring the majority of weather conditions for which IFR capability is most useful. I agree that there are some days like that, when there's no question about whether a trip can be completed, and there's no reason to even go sit at the airport hoping it will happen. The fact is, however, that there a lot more days when the weather precludes VFR but is imminently flyable with IFR capabilities.
It's also interesting to note (if you've actually seen it first-hand) that on the days when "ain't nobody flying GA" that the same limitation often applies to airline schedules as well.
During the time I flew frequently for business or personal travel, I (initially) thought that the airlines would serve as a backup when the weather exceeded my capabilities. I quickly learned that they were not much better at making schedule on those days than I was, even though their equipment was clearly much better-equipped to handle it. I also found that if we were waiting for a line of thunderstorms to pass, I could often launch much more quickly because the airports that I used didn't have 40 departures lined up ahead of me.
New England or perma overcast Midwest with that nice little sprinkling of embedded rime ice in-cloud? Yeah, makes me all giddy just thinking about leaving those VFR fools in the dust as I file away in my 800 fpm climb contraption.
Yeah, those thousand foot layers of winter clouds across the midwest are deadly adversaries. Sometimes it takes almost a minute to climb or descend through them. And there's usually no ice in them anyway, although the forecasters have warned that it will cover you up like a cheap suit.
In short, IR ticket doesn't by you much time in the single engine piston class. I even go back to my days as an IR student. Frankly, the only time instrument actual was accomplished was in the most benign IMC you could encounter. Morning low cloud overcast in the summer, where no icing or convective was associated with said low cielings. By mid morning the crap was broken up enough to make the VFR yahoos rocket away through the holes, and by mid afternoon ALL the bugsmashers regardless of flight plan are racing home to avoid the convective stuff that will flip that smile upside down until all your CFI-ATP-MEL tickets fall out of your pocket by attempting to airline your way around in a single piston of any size.
That's as good a job of exaggeration, oversimplification and misstatement of facts as anybody has done on this thread.
So yeah, I stand by my assertion that in aggregate, we're talking a couple hours tops, for what a single engine piston can accomplish blasting VFR vs blasting IFR in same aircraft. The sheer thought of accomplishing a STAR on a CAT A aircraft just makes me wanna drive. LOL
And you're just as wrong now as you were on the first post.
Most aircraft owners I know are not instrument rated. go figure. They sure got the money for that Sr-20 though, and yes they're almost exlusively over 45 years of age. And yes it is the internet, of course I'm generalizing...
So your cut-off for "the older guys" starts at 45? How old are you? How much actual experience have you accumulated in using GA airplanes for travel?
Look, if the training was free, a la GI Bill, then yeah everybody go for that ATP. Alas my generation wasn't that lucky, we're late to the party, so cost matters.
Late to what party? The GI bill obviously helped pay for some training, but many people (including all the pilots that I knew at the time) paid for their own. Suggesting that my generation got a free lunch might not be a good idea if/when you show up at the airport and look to see whose hangar doors are actually open.
I still think a guy who is never going to upgrade to turbine equipment and who merely wants to share recreational flying with his family and friends, could stretch his buck much much better by having recurrent under the hood training and still gain the same level of instrument cross-check (safety) an instrument rated pilot does, sans the added cost for demonstrating proficiency in approach and NAS navigation procedures.
And by so-doing, be certain that he will miss numerous opportunities to complete trips comfortably and on schedule.
That was all.![]()
Like most grasshoppers, you've still got a lot to learn. :wink2: