Im borrowing this thread a bit: Living in N Sweden and last monday i planned to fly our C150 back to its home airport (ESNX) from my home town (ESNL), a short (75 mile) ride. Ceiling were around 2500 ft (1500agl) and visibility good. Clouds where thin and no wind to talk about. A phone call to my destination said CAVOK. I assumed that this meant that the overcast would disapperar along the route so flying was not a problem.
Took of and climb to 2000ft, little lower than usual but no problems. halfway i noticed that the wind turbines on a mountain where in clouds so i took a small detour around them -still no problem. A few minutes later, now 20 miles from my destination, the stratus dropped closer to ground and suddenly i was in cloud. Not so good i thought and made a 180 degree turn and where out in VMC less than a minute later.

My former FI is at the same time in the traffic pattern at the airport for a training flight and i talk to him over the radio. Still CAVOK around the field so the stratus should disapear within 10 mi from me. So i made my probably not brightest decission. I will simply go a little East and follow the road to the field, just squeeze in under the clouds. Easypeasy, i know this area...

I quickly find the intersection and start going W, starting at 2000ft but the stratus came closer and i decended a bit, a minute later i was down at 1600, maybe 500 agl, i can see the terrain to the right above me, suddenly i find myself in cloud, 500 above ground and its painfully clear that some jackass on this plane had pushed his luck a bit too far. I make a hard 180 degree (>45 degrees) turn to the left, i can see the trees below me but nothing else. i knew that if i dont find the road this is not going to end well. Luckily i see the road when i level out after the turn and can follow it out to VMC. The daredevil is now dead and i take the safest alternative, diverting to an airport at the coast, afraid that a return trip would burn up half of my remaining fuel and with no options left if the wheather had become worse there.

That is a crappy feeling making that turn hoping you can maintain visual with the ground.....or at least that is what I have heard..... The Daredevil was killed on that trip, you will find he is easier to kill each time you scare yourself.

Been there too MFI... NO fun at all!

If you fly a lot or take long trips you will be playing with the the clouds/fog sooner or latter. Here are some of the tricks to stay out of trouble I have learned to stay out of trouble. Turn around early. Keep your head outside the plane (set up everything before you get to the bad stuff so you do not have to look at inside the plane for any reason). SLOW DOWN!!! You will want to get through the bad stuff as fast as you can but it is safer to pull flaps and slow down. Changes will happen much slower and you will have time to react. Get low early, if you can't see under the cloud don't go there. Practice flying at 100 ft AGL and that includes 360 degree turns. Keep the ground in site at all times. Don't get between or above solid cloud layers. Turn around early.
DENNY

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The turn i did in IMC where made mainly on instruments. Its one of the good part of this, i made the descision to turn and made a steep turn only using instruments without any change in altitude and it worked without hesitation and its a positive thing that, aldough previous decisions where bad, i where able to make good decisions and fly the plane safely even under these conditions and where able to break the chain in time to avoid an accident.

MFI,

While I would agree that turning around in IMC is what saved your life, I sure wouldn't bet on your LUCK (as opposed to skill) in holding the next time you put yourself in that situation, and you probably will put yourself there again, if you don't learn from this event.

I'm not trying to pick on you, but the way you survives these kinds of encounters long term is to avoid them.

Good on you for getting turned around in a tough situation. But, please don't assume you'll be able to pull it off again.

FWIW, which may not be much.

MTV

Listen to MTV. Learn from this and don't forget how scared you were.

You try it again and survive the daredevil will just get stronger and you'll push the weather even more. You'll go from just making a turn right after entering IMC to thinking you have the skills to continue the flight as along as the destination is VMC.

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Your tip makes a lot of sense glacier. Making a turn with with almost no instruments and loosing the only visual reference you have sucks; talk about going into freak out mode.

My point was not that i now belive im a full IFR pilot. the situation scared the hell out of me and i dont want to be there again. i just said that im glad that the situation showed that i where able to make a correct decision and fly the plane in a situation far beyond what im trained for.

Often times primary flight instructors beat it into our heads that we are going to die if we get in a cloud. I understand these dire predictions are meant well in order to keep us safe. Some of us heard it so much that when the day comes that it does happen...and it will if we fly long enough...we believe we are already dead and "freak out". I submit that primary flight instruction curriculum should contain more instrument training, and the student should be able to calmly make a 180 degree course reversal in a cloud. I believe this could be taught in such a way as to instill the very immediate danger of the situation, but not totally destroy the student/pilots' confidence in surviving a bad situation.

This is certainly not a trivial matter. Yes, avoidance is best, but unrealistic in the long run.

You survived, MFI. You were either lucky, lots of flightsim experience, or had a good instructor. Do yourself a favor and get some more instrument dual. Work on the rating if able. It's great experience and if used with common sense and knowledge of your personal limits, very rewarding.

Guess its a combination. I did some instrument dual during PPL-training, 5 hours in order to reach those 45 hours. Of course not in real IMC condition but it still helps. I have done a lot of IMC flying in FSX, far from the real deal but again, it helps. Im deaf on one ear and therefore i cannot get a class 1 medical so Instrument rating is not possible for me to get.

This wasn't a "live to tell" moment for me but I believe it fits into the spirit of this conversation.

On my trip last week to Taos all of Central and West Texas as well as the Eastern portion of New Mexico was IFR or MVFR, with a little bit of scattered VFR that transitioned back and forth with MVFR.

Under these conditions I decided to fly between cloud layers as visibility was 15 to 20 miles. At one point during the flight I encountered a stretch where the cloud layers both above and below me were pure white and completely smooth, no visible definition. 15 to 20 miles away was a huge white cloud that visually completed the three sides of white.

Both the upper and lower cloud layers were very thin, certainly no more then a couple of hundred feet in thickness. This allowed the sunlight to penetrate through the upper cloud layer and reflect off the lower.

Instantly I found myself in a flat light whiteout. I initiated a 180 degree turn using instrument references.

The reason for it not being a "live to tell" moment for me is I've nearly completed my instrument training and have been fortunate to have done a good portion of it in actual IFR conditions.

Quite frankly I don't enjoy IFR training, nor flying IFR. I only started this training for the same reason I took aerobatic training, I want to have an understanding of all elements of flying. At this point I'm unsure if I will get my IFR ticket, but if not, I will certainly occasionally continue training with my instructor in both actual and simulated IFR.

IMHO it's worth pursuing IFR training at least to the point where both you and your instructor are confident you can control the airplane should you find yourself in a situation where you need to rely solely on your instruments.

I totally agree that instrument training is a VERY good thing to improve your proficiency. And, you do not need a first class or second class medical to complete an instrument rating. Just go do it.

A caveat, however......a very large percentage of pilots killed in VFR into IMC accidents hold instrument ratings, and a high percentage of those are legally current on instruments.

I suspect that the reason for this is that instrument rated pilots MAY feel more comfortable getting in a little deeper than a non instrument rated pilot. But, bear in mind that this is NOT the same as instrument flight in the system, where you're at a safe altitude, with lots of margin for error.

In contrast, the typical VFR into IMC accident occurs at very low altitude, often in terrain, where there are no assurances of terrain clearance if you need to turn.

Again, avoidance is the best key to survival. That does not mean to imply that you'll die if you are involved in a VFR into IMC incident.......I've done them more than once, I'm embarrassed to say, but I've been lucky enough to survive and learn from these experiences.

Being able to perform a solid, level turn on instruments is an important skill to learn. Just bear in mind that there may be terrain, towers, wires, etc., that might shorten your turn involuntarily.

Avoidance is the key to survival. Have I beat that into the dirt sufficiently?

MTV

MTV, he's in Sweden. FWIW

I have found MTV's stats about many IMC fatalities being rated and current and at low altitude to be true in pipeline patrol situations as well. We encounter marginal weather while already low. The advantages are that we can see the ground much better and visibility is much better at 200' AGL. Also we have a known road out, the pipeline in the direction we came from. The disadvantage is that we are much too low to safely transition to IMC flight. All patrol companies, that I know of, require instrument rated pilots and most I know transition to IMC flight occasionally. I never did, nor wanted to. It is the transition that kills you. I have landed in a fields and on county roads rather than risk the transition.

The 180 at altitude works well. I executed it too late on my solo cross country and spent half an hour IMC, but I had had lots of IMC time with my Dad's partner growing up. For back country guys working low, I would highly recommend staying VMC.

I posted this the other day regarding my efforts to get to Marble on September 5th:

Got home from Marble yesterday afternoon. My attempt to go there on Friday failed--managed to find a big hole through the overcast, and between layers I could see that my usual route over Milner Pass through Rocky Mountain National Park was closed, but Rollins Pass looked open. I headed there, but when I got within maybe 5 miles of Rollins Pass, I could see that it was pretty much socked in on the west side.

So I turned around to head home, and that big hole I'd come up through was totally gone--gorgeous white fluffy undercast as far as I could see. I motored on toward Greeley, just in case a hole might open, but no such luck. So about 7 or 8 miles from Greeley, I called Denver Approach for a clearance into Greeley. After some descending vectors, I was under the overcast so I cancelled IFR and landed.

This is not an unusual scenario, whether it's getting caught when that scattered to broken layer below you comes together in a complete undercast, or when that layer above you comes down and engulfs you.

If a pilot isn't instrument rated and prepared to go on instruments, both such events can be killers. A VFR pilot who allows this to happen is only postponing an accident, so it's very important to simply stay out of those situations. Marginal VFR flying is dangerous flying, IMOH, regardless of the pilot's qualifications.

In my case on Sept 5th, I was not planning to go IFR, but I was ready if necessary. I'm instrument current, reasonably proficient, and my airplane is current and reasonably well equipped. I have all the charts in the airplane. Still, from the size of the hole I'd climbed through, I was surprised that it was gone when I reversed course. I had been at the western edge of it, to avoid the Denver Bravo area, but it stretched eastward at least 7 or 8 miles. So when I found that it was gone, I stayed above the undercast as I flew back toward Greeley, with the intent to descend through any large hole that presented itself. But when I was halfway between Fort Collins and Greeley, it was obvious that wasn't going to happen.

I thought it was interesting that before obtaining the clearance for me, the Approach controller first asked how it was that I found myself above the undercast, so I briefly told him that I had climbed up through a monster hole that had closed in. I'm assuming that they are on the lookout for illegal IFR, but I don't know that.

Cary

Cary,

You're right that if you play the "between cloud layers" game, you'll eventually need a clearance to descend.

I've done that in both IFR equipped airplanes and airplanes that weren't so equipped......REALLY dumb on my part. Fessed up to ATC, asked for vectors to lower terrain (and I did have a GPS) to clear the airspace, and descended. Controller asked if I wanted to declare an emergency? Nope. That too was dumb. Then the controller asked the BIG question: "Are you instrument rated and is the aircraft instrument certified?" My response was "Well, yes and no." Meaning I was instrument rated, but the plane wasn't. He didn't ask any more questions. I descended through about 4000 feet of solid cloud and broke out at 1200 feet, over terrain of about 400 msl. That was a needle, ball and airspeed descent.

Later, I was talking to an old (very old) pilot friend of mine telling him how dumb I'd been. He looked at me kind of funny and noted that he'd done his instrument training in actual in an airplane equipped just like the one I'd been flying that day......I had to laugh....he thought having a GPS and ATC radar was cheating.

That is a little different scenario than the original discussion, though. Turning around or coming down from altitude in IMC is a bit different (though still quite hazardous) than running in to IMC at low level.

MTV

I descended through about 4000 feet of solid cloud and broke out at 1200 feet, over terrain of about 400 msl. That was a needle, ball and airspeed descent.

Later, I was talking to an old (very old) pilot friend of mine telling him how dumb I'd been. He looked at me kind of funny and noted that he'd done his instrument training in actual in an airplane equipped just like the one I'd been flying that day......I had to laugh....he thought having a GPS and ATC radar was cheating.

That is a little different scenario than the original discussion, though. Turning around or coming down from altitude in IMC is a bit different (though still quite hazardous) than running in to IMC at low level.

MTV

Ha Ha! I'm with your old, old pilot friend. Back when there was still real uncontrolled airspace, I've heard of folks playing all day long in their Super Cubs and C180's in actual IMC with nothing more than needle-ball-airspeed. "They" just didn't bother to talk to ATC, because there wasn't any. Not that I would have ever done something like that...

But, if you fly where at times you gotta scud run, or have to deal with whiteout conditions, you need to be proficient at making the transition from VFR close to the ground to IFR close to the ground. And that doesn't mean just going "on the gauges." It means you have Plan B locked and loaded way ahead of time for what you're gonna do once on those gauges. Otherwise you're gonna be a lawn dart.

Gump