Dude, Daryl, where do you work? I've finished my ppl, but like to keep flying with a cfi, and my former cfi doesn't do it anymore. I'd be willing to fly most places in western oregon maybe even sw Washington) to fly with a cfi like you.

contactflying wrote:Nosedragger,

I got an error message on the video. I don't have the best computer.

The Lady Be Good was a B-24 flying out of N. Africa in WWII. It did not return from a raid over Naples and was assumed lost in the Mediterranean. I saw a Walter Cronkite "You Were There" special on it in the 50s when they found it miles into Libyan desert in almost flyable condition. The coffee in the thermoses was still good. The crew, which had bailed out, were eventually recovered.

The golf architect who I started flying with, Press Maxwell, was a B-24 pilot in the same Group.

Contact

Those guys were tough. i can't imagine anyone walking over 100 miles across that hot desert. Fascinating story, I'm glad they found them.

Nosedragger,

They found the bodies years later. The unit thought they had gone into the sea.

To support the Cessna theory about the 180 degree out of inadvertant IMC using only rudder. No pilots in the plane, but the plane landed in the desert intact. The gear was up because it had not been put down. I have experimented with the Cessna 180 with my hands in my lap using rudder and the turn and bank needle. It works just fine.

Contact

hpux 735,

You might watch for the pipeline pilot that patrols in your area (there are pipelines everywhere) and catch him fueling. Most aerial patrol company's insurance forbids hauling passengers other than for the oil or pipeline company. However, they pay poorly and most of us are old guys with little they can take away. Anyway, I often had a student with me. They did the flying and I did the patrolling. It was safer and they learned a lot about weather and maneuvering flight techniques.

For example, all turns are energy management turns. Seeing the turn in the pipeline ahead, we pull up a bit, wings level, trading the too fast cruise airspeed for altitude. We turn at whatever bank is necessary to put the nose onto the target (right of way in new direction) quickly while allowing the nose to go down naturally (don't pull back on the stick or add power.) We level the wings before pulling up over the right of way in the new direction. The gravity thrust of the dive gives us extra airspeed to trade back for altitude so that we end up at the same altitude at which we began.

After a thousand energy management turns in three to five days on a patrol loop, you will be comfortable making all contact turns energy management. They are much safer turns. They are the only safe turn in maneuvering flight conditions.

Contact

Scud run? Old video my instructors showed me...

Good example of how NOT to scud run, if you can even call it scud running.

And a good example of how not to use all those fancy computer screens in the center of the panel.

Gump

UngaWunga,

IMC and VMC do not mix well. If he was observing terrain out the left window, he needed to be low enough to view terrain out the front windscreen. I think he was IMC and just wishing.

Gump flew in some, level terrain for miles, areas where he could fly IMC at 300.' In uneven terrain, especially in populated areas with many wires and towers, we need to be committed to staying in contact with the ground, regardless. Before we lose contact with the ground, we need to turn back. If we really messed up and now we can't turn back, we need to land. No! we may not save the airplane. It is now time to save ourselves.

According to accident reports and my own experiences, few die who fly all the way to the crash. We have to see the ground to accomplish this. Oh! Unless we fly IMC into a mountain. Scud running is not flying IMC and hoping we will see the ground again soon. We will. Scud running, except in very level terrain or over water, is a contact flying sport.

Contact

contactflying wrote: Scud running is not flying IMC and hoping we will see the ground again soon. We will. Scud running, except in very level terrain or over water, is a contact flying sport.

Contact

Very important point!
Scud running is flying VFR!

contactflying wrote:<snip>

Gump, MTV, Cary and I are going to die. <more snip>

This is the one statement in all of this which makes me very uncomfortable.

Cary

I'm gonna try and be the first not to.

So far so good!

Gump

A race worth running. Why is it that many of us get safer when we get older at diminishing returns.

Well, I'm older now than I have ever been.

Cary

And, why drag me into that discussion? Shoot, I'm just a 19 year old with an IPad.

And, I'd never scud run.....

MTV

But your "PVFR" pretend VFR in whiteout is just as bad. Excellent article, by the way.

Yeah right Mike...

We're just lucky we didn't run into each other blasting across the tundra, waiting for our magic 100 and 1 to get into the zone to get home.

Ha Ha. Someone mentioned IFR minimums at 200 ft. How many times did FSS do us a "favor" with the VFR specials when they knew we were covered in ice, outta gas, and fast running outta options to get home. "Kotz weather now ceiling 100 feet, visibility one mile, Yute 94U is clear to enter the zone....." My own bed for the night, here I come!

And then, as soon as everyone was down and safe, that wx would mess with the FSS guys and snap back down to 1/8th mile vis and indefinite ceiling, and make them do another report. Mother Nature is a bitch like that.

Gump

And Contact, as you know, flying in whiteout conditions is true IMC flying. It's not any way, shape or form scud running.

Trying to fly visually in a whiteout, even if you might have 20 mile vis and a 10,000 ft ceiling, will doom you to a CFIT in a huge hurry. Scary stuff, and takes a lot of discipline not to look out the window. And if you do, you'll get the leans and spend the rest of your flight wanting to turn the wing 90 degrees to the ground because you're sure the gauges are lying to you.

Gump

I hear you Gump. Totally different. The only whiteout I ever dealt with was brownout from dustoff landing helicopters. Just hold what you have until you hit. I'm glad I didn't have to deal with whiteout up north. I don't multitask well.

This thread is gold. All you old goats still with us are pretty valuable after all I guess... [emoji48]:)

I've dabbled a little in scud running, but gas is too expensive to be chewing cushion while burning it. It seems like I hear more stories of very experienced long time pilots who finally lost the gamble while running VFR into some incidental IMC. I'm not good enough to pull it off so I won't try. Even if I was able to avoid every potential obstacle, I find low level pilotage extremely difficult.

contactflying wrote:hpux 735,

You might watch for the pipeline pilot that patrols in your area (there are pipelines everywhere) and catch him fueling. Most aerial patrol company's insurance forbids hauling passengers other than for the oil or pipeline company. However, they pay poorly and most of us are old guys with little they can take away. Anyway, I often had a student with me. They did the flying and I did the patrolling. It was safer and they learned a lot about weather and maneuvering flight techniques.

For example, all turns are energy management turns. Seeing the turn in the pipeline ahead, we pull up a bit, wings level, trading the too fast cruise airspeed for altitude. We turn at whatever bank is necessary to put the nose onto the target (right of way in new direction) quickly while allowing the nose to go down naturally (don't pull back on the stick or add power.) We level the wings before pulling up over the right of way in the new direction. The gravity thrust of the dive gives us extra airspeed to trade back for altitude so that we end up at the same altitude at which we began.

After a thousand energy management turns in three to five days on a patrol loop, you will be comfortable making all contact turns energy management. They are much safer turns. They are the only safe turn in maneuvering flight conditions.

Contact

That would be pretty rad. The cfi I flew with for my bfr was a 737-size pattern type of guy. He asked me "what is the one thing different about short field approach?" His answer was "you have to be stabilized by 1000' agl." On that part of the flight he had me fly a one mile final. He was totally unfazed when I said that a lot of time a field is short because there's a mountain there, and responded that the faa guarantees a 3-percent glide slope.

I managed to introduce a low level, pilotage only dual cross country into the syllabus for PPL at the University where I taught after I retired......

We really couldn't (and didn't want to) do this in bad weather, but even in good weather, it gave them a different perspective.

In the tailwheel courses, I took them out in the Cub and we did a LOT of low work.

I encouraged instructors to take every student out in crappy weather at least once, if nothing else so they can see what the inside of the beast looks like. On days with an overcast, but clear above, we took private students who were well along in their training up through the overcast to do maneuvers on top, then flew an instrument approach to get home.

With some frequency, we took students out five miles from "home base" on a low weather day, got them lost, then told them to go home. Without the GPS. Easy to get them lost, not so easy to figure out a way home....."Is the river to the south or north?" "How about highway 2?" "Okay, the highway is to the south, and it goes through.....home." "Let's go."

This was all done in legal weather, not REALLY ugly weather, and with a very firm post flight discussion to emphasize the issues, the student's performance, and the difficulties that we encountered: "Okay, did you notice that tower you flew past off to the right? No? Why not--too focused on what was ahead, or was it because you'd totally lost situational awareness?" etc.

The goal was to lift the skirt of that bitch we call weather and take a peek without getting killed. Flying weather is easy to talk about.....but actually going out and flying in it isn't all that much fun.

My hope is that most of the students we did that with recognize the risks and got just enough of a hint of the difficulties and some of the traps that they'll:

a) Stay the hell away from scud running, or
b) If they do get into some low stuff, they'll at least have had a little taste of it, and hopefully remember some of the stuff we tried to convey.

I came around the north end of Kodiak Island one day. I had waited a little too long to head back to town, and the weather was coming down fast. As I rounded the north end of the island, I called the tower at State airport and told them I was inbound from the north. There was no ATIS, which I wrongly assumed was because it was just before the hour, and I assumed that they were in the process of changing it......

The controller--a friend, replied that the weather was something like 500 and two miles at the airport. I thought "good deal, cause that's not a lot worse than it is here" and requested a special VFR into the surface area, which was granted. I was at the time passing the city of Kodiak, which lies on the shore, and has a seaplane dock on said shore, where I could have landed and parked the Beaver for the night. Or, I could have landed on Lilly Lake or Municipal Airport, in the middle of town, just to my right as I passed town. Any of those three landing sites were within a half mile of my house......but my car was parked out at the state airport, five miles or so ahead. In a bay with a mountain behind it.

So, I proceeded along the shoreline, which would lead me to the airport. About that time, an air taxi pilot called the tower and requested taxi clearance for takeoff (they only had one controller so pilots sometimes would just call for taxi on tower freq). There was a pause by the controller.....who then cleared him to taxi to and hold short.....

As I passed the SeaLand dock off to my right, I realized I was getting closer and closer to shore.....like really close. And, it sure didn't seem like two miles vis. or 500 over. Oh, well, it'll get better soon, I'm almost there.

Tower cleared me to land on a runway the approach end of which is right over the mouth of the Buskin River. The visibility got worse.

Knowing I was really close, I lowered the gear, configured the plane for landing, and that was about when I realized that my options if I didn't find that runway really sucked, because I really couldn't see much of anything except that shoreline, and to turn away from it would be suicide.

About then, I crossed the mouth of the river, and the REILs flashed past, power came to idle and the Beaver settled on, pretty as can be. I couldn't see much, but I found the other runway that'd take me to my parking spot.....so I called tower and told them I was down and taxiing on runway 7/25. She rogered. The other pilot then called for takeoff clearance for a special out of the zone. Tower reported that the weather was now 100 and 1/4 mile, below VFR..taxi to parking.

The next day, I got in touch with the controller and asked her not to do me any favors in future.....I would have been really happy to have parked the Beaver in town for the night and walked home.

Sometimes it's really easy to get sucked into a place where your options go right to zero. As others have said, have a plan B, and C.

Finally, the accident records are literally strewn with instrument rated pilots who died trying to transition to IFR from VFR when the weather finally beat them. That transition CAN be made, but there are a hell of a lot of pretty proficient pilots who've tried it and failed.

MTV