My first encounter with bad weather.

U

Unregistered

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I had my first encounter with bad weather this weekend. Me, and another more experienced IFR rated pilot decided to make a short 30 min flight. There was a stationary front over our area and the ceilings were lower that we would have liked but we felt they were high enough to make the flight in a safe manner. There were patches of light rain/drizzle in the area - but plenty of sunshine as well. We contacted FSS and looked at the weather and decided to make our flight.

The flight to our destination went well. We only had to steer around one small cell. We completed our business and took a quick look at the weather to see that the conditions had not changed. We took off and headed for home. The return trip was a little more challenging as we had to divert to the west a bit to get around some rain/fog (with 0 vis) in our path. To me it felt as if we were flying from one patch of sun to another. As we neared our destination and turned on AWOS we realized that making it home at that point in time was not going to be an option. They were reporting 1SM vis and 400ft OVC.

We kept going west a bit more and decided to head back (towards the weather) to an airport that's only about 7 SM from our home base that was reporting 7SM and 2000' ceilings. I experienced a bit of anxiousness as we were heading to our alternate and it felt (to me) as if we were in an ever shrinking bowl of good weather. We got on the ground just fine and taxied up to the FBO to wait out the bad weather. It only took about 20 minutes for it to blow over. We called the AWOS at our destination and it was reporting 10SM and 5000' ceilings. We headed out to the plane fired her up and got home with no problems.

I really feel it was a good learning experience for me and it reinforces the need for me to continue my training and get my IR.
 
Sounds like a good flight to me. Real IMC is a lot different beast than just being under the hood. Knowing that you cannot just look up and still make you approach and landing brings up a real sense of how serious this type of flying is. Sounds like you made some good choices for this practice flight.
 
woohoo! That's what avoiding weather should be! Much better than my first experience, thats for sure.
 
Unregistered said:
we realized that making it home at that point in time was not going to be an option. They were reporting 1SM vis and 400ft OVC.
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I suppose your home airport does not have an ILS?
 
Glad this VFR flight worked out well, and that you see the utility of that instrument rating on which you are working. Did you consider swapping seats and filing?
 
Ron Levy said:
Glad this VFR flight worked out well, and that you see the utility of that instrument rating on which you are working. Did you consider swapping seats and filing?
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Ron, is there a requirement that they actually swap seats? With my CFII, we of course file under his name and he's right seat. With an instrument rated pilot (non-CFII) in the right seat, couldn't you designate him/her PIC as of a particular point in time and get a pop-up clearance?:dunno: Or was your "switch seats" merely metaphorical?
 
Ron Levy said:
Glad this VFR flight worked out well, and that you see the utility of that instrument rating on which you are working. Did you consider swapping seats and filing?
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Is the original poster not IR? The original post

original poster said:
Me, and another more experienced IFR rated pilot
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implies that he is IR rated???
 
Bill Jennings said:
Is the original poster not IR? The original post



implies that he is IR rated???
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There are a lot of other clues in there too, like he diverted to his alternate because his primary airport was reporting 1SM and 400OVC. Definetly not VFR and he had an alternate in mind. I think it was an IFR flight into IMC and it was past his personal minimums.
 
orginal post said:
The return trip was a little more challenging as we had to divert to the west a bit to get around some rain/fog (with 0 vis) in our path. To me it felt as if we were flying from one patch of sun to another........I really feel it was a good learning experience for me and it reinforces the need for me to continue my training and get my IR.
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Doesn't sound like IFR to me but other parts did. Confusing.:(
 
Unregistered said:
I really feel it was a good learning experience for me and it reinforces the need for me to continue my training and get my IR.
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This is the part of the post that says the pilot is VFR only.
 
gprellwitz said:
Ron, is there a requirement that they actually swap seats? With my CFII, we of course file under his name and he's right seat. With an instrument rated pilot (non-CFII) in the right seat, couldn't you designate him/her PIC as of a particular point in time and get a pop-up clearance?:dunno: Or was your "switch seats" merely metaphorical?
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Not, it's not a legal requirement (as long as there's a full set of flight controls in the right seat -- can't do this in a throwover-yoke Bonanza/Baron unless the yoke is thrown over), but it is a very strong safety recommendation. Cross-cockpit instrument flying isn't something as easy as one might think without having tried it, and it takes some time to become proficient at it. The other alternative (letting the non-IR pilot in the left seat do the flying) raises other problems, like whether the IR pilot in the right seat can tell when the pilot flying is getting over his head, and whether he can successfully take control in a bad situation and recover cross-cockpit. Flight instructor training covers these problems, but it isn't included in any non-CFI IR pilot training (airline co-pilots have their own full set of instruments -- no cross-cockpit required).

As backing, there are fatal instrument flying accidents on record involving non-IR pilots in the left seat and non-CFI IR pilots in the right seat acting as PIC while the other pilot flew (and yes, there are post-mortem ways of determining who was flying). So no, my "switch seats" was not "merely metaphorical."
 
Original poster here.

I am not IR rated. I was PIC for the VFR flight. The weather closing in around us and that feeling that I had "wishing I were on the ground" is why I chose to post Unregistered.

It was a good experience. I didn't make all the right decisions and I have learned from it. Even tho I admit to not making all the right choices let me say that I don't feel the outcome was ever in doubt - that IR pilot with me says he felt the same.

If nothing else, I've altered my personal minimums a bit to be more realistic - based on what I don't want to encounter if I were the only certificated pilot sitting up front.
 
Unregistered said:
Original poster here.

I am not IR rated. I was PIC for the VFR flight. The weather closing in around us and that feeling that I had "wishing I were on the ground" is why I chose to post Unregistered.

It was a good experience. I didn't make all the right decisions and I have learned from it. Even tho I admit to not making all the right choices let me say that I don't feel the outcome was ever in doubt - that IR pilot with me says he felt the same.

If nothing else, I've altered my personal minimums a bit to be more realistic - based on what I don't want to encounter if I were the only certificated pilot sitting up front.
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Ya know, this was probably a good experience. You've now gained respect for weather and you've seen what its like up there. :)
 
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