Tue Jan 22, 2019 10:11 pm
#1667474
Absolutely.
In IMC you want to exit instrument conditions immediately.
If the battery was good enough to start the engine then you have time to do this.
IMC and IFR is a situation where you need to be paying attention to such things.
Whereas in good VMC an electrical problem might not bother me too much, it’s a very different thing in IMC and at night.
The risk goes up exponentially when there are mountains, mountains at night, mountains and potential icing, and mountains with potential icing and at night.
There are risks I do not take.
I take mountains very seriously to the point that I will not do an extended flight in IMC or at night in a single engine aeroplane.
In a twin I want it to be able to maintain MSA on one engine.
I tell my students that I have never flown into weather that I could have avoided.
Indeed in my younger days I flew a Jodel across the Jura in IMC at 6,000 feet, 2,000 feet above the highest peak which was forty miles away. Got Carb icing, lost control a couple of times while looking at the Aerad...
Why can a Jodel 150 fly in trim all day in VMC but roll into a spiral in IMC?
It wasn’t comfortable, but it was very interesting. Didn’t find the VOR frequency for Bern, had to fly the aeroplane, but did bust out over the lake at precisely the position I’d planned on.
Now I am much more a chicken.
A few months ago I had an email from a friend in Canada, ‘please contact him when I arrive there.
No need, after a few days SAR gave up the search for him and his wife, returning from Edmonton over the mountains... Wait for the Spring thaw.
Someone did find a Mooney that was lost a year before, a few yards off the highway...
In IMC you want to exit instrument conditions immediately.
If the battery was good enough to start the engine then you have time to do this.
IMC and IFR is a situation where you need to be paying attention to such things.
Whereas in good VMC an electrical problem might not bother me too much, it’s a very different thing in IMC and at night.
The risk goes up exponentially when there are mountains, mountains at night, mountains and potential icing, and mountains with potential icing and at night.
There are risks I do not take.
I take mountains very seriously to the point that I will not do an extended flight in IMC or at night in a single engine aeroplane.
In a twin I want it to be able to maintain MSA on one engine.
I tell my students that I have never flown into weather that I could have avoided.
Indeed in my younger days I flew a Jodel across the Jura in IMC at 6,000 feet, 2,000 feet above the highest peak which was forty miles away. Got Carb icing, lost control a couple of times while looking at the Aerad...
Why can a Jodel 150 fly in trim all day in VMC but roll into a spiral in IMC?
It wasn’t comfortable, but it was very interesting. Didn’t find the VOR frequency for Bern, had to fly the aeroplane, but did bust out over the lake at precisely the position I’d planned on.
Now I am much more a chicken.
A few months ago I had an email from a friend in Canada, ‘please contact him when I arrive there.
No need, after a few days SAR gave up the search for him and his wife, returning from Edmonton over the mountains... Wait for the Spring thaw.
Someone did find a Mooney that was lost a year before, a few yards off the highway...
Bobcro, Maxthelion liked this
MichaelP
Wandering the World
Wandering the World