flyingcheesehead
Touchdown! Greaser!
Rather than hijack the Gaston's web site thread, I'm gonna start a new one...
Lance,
I'm not Spike but I do qualify as "others."
If the weather is questionable at all, I file - And that means anything from 6-mile or less visibility en route all the way down to 200-1/2 at the destination.
However, most of the rest of the time I go VFR. That allows me to just have fun and take a detour to look at something without asking permission. Also, with Chicago so close by, any time I'm going east I prefer to depart VFR; if the destination or anything else east of Chicago is IFR I'll simply file from SBN or something else along the way but on the other side of Chicago. That way, rather than going waaaaaaay out and around, I can go directly to Waukegan and head down the lakeshore VFR, then climb out and pick up my clearance from South Bend Approach after I'm around the end of the lake.
There are other times I'll file (going over the lake in the short time each year where I'm comfortable with it, for example) but my default flight over hospitable and familiar terrain in good weather is going to be VFR.
So now, I'm curious as to your thought process: Why do you always file?
Spike, just curious why you wouldn't file for a flight like this. I pretty much always file, so I'm just trying to learn how/why others approach things differently.
Lance,
I'm not Spike but I do qualify as "others."
If the weather is questionable at all, I file - And that means anything from 6-mile or less visibility en route all the way down to 200-1/2 at the destination.
However, most of the rest of the time I go VFR. That allows me to just have fun and take a detour to look at something without asking permission. Also, with Chicago so close by, any time I'm going east I prefer to depart VFR; if the destination or anything else east of Chicago is IFR I'll simply file from SBN or something else along the way but on the other side of Chicago. That way, rather than going waaaaaaay out and around, I can go directly to Waukegan and head down the lakeshore VFR, then climb out and pick up my clearance from South Bend Approach after I'm around the end of the lake.
There are other times I'll file (going over the lake in the short time each year where I'm comfortable with it, for example) but my default flight over hospitable and familiar terrain in good weather is going to be VFR.
So now, I'm curious as to your thought process: Why do you always file?