Matthew
Touchdown! Greaser!
A few months ago I (VFR) was getting in some IMC time with a CFII.
There was a cloud layer that ATC had cleared us into, and had given us a block of altitude so we could stay in the clouds. The layer we were in was part of a front and not very far from us, at our same altitude, the skies were clear.
We got a pretty excited 'traffic alert' from ATC due to oncoming traffic - probably VFR. We turned left and through some breaks in the cloud layer we were in I saw the other aircraft pass by on our right. If he was really 2000 ft horizontal spacing from the clouds for VFR cloud separation, then that's as close as we got, but still closer than I liked. Had we not gotten the alert, we would have popped out of the wall into severe VFR and things would have gotten interesting.
Another note to self: Just because you're in IMC, doesn't mean there isn't somebody else close by that isn't.
I don't really know how close we were to being on the same altitude or converging courses. What triggers a controller to issue 'Traffic alert'?
There was a cloud layer that ATC had cleared us into, and had given us a block of altitude so we could stay in the clouds. The layer we were in was part of a front and not very far from us, at our same altitude, the skies were clear.
We got a pretty excited 'traffic alert' from ATC due to oncoming traffic - probably VFR. We turned left and through some breaks in the cloud layer we were in I saw the other aircraft pass by on our right. If he was really 2000 ft horizontal spacing from the clouds for VFR cloud separation, then that's as close as we got, but still closer than I liked. Had we not gotten the alert, we would have popped out of the wall into severe VFR and things would have gotten interesting.
Another note to self: Just because you're in IMC, doesn't mean there isn't somebody else close by that isn't.
I don't really know how close we were to being on the same altitude or converging courses. What triggers a controller to issue 'Traffic alert'?