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Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1999 16:03:17 -0600
From: Snowbird <snbird@ibm.net>
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Subject: Re: more VFR night instrument flying
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Bruce McCulley wrote:

<...>
> I agree, the logged activity suggests a lack of proficiency to handle
> much beyond an uneventful flight under ideal conditions.

> The thing that went wrong is just what the previous thread was about,
> except the poster of that anecdote was able to handle the situation.
(...)
> The report hints at "get home itis" with the comparision of the
> forecast for that night with the forecast for the next day.  But 
> there was still a warning flag for that night, there was a forecast of > clouds below the level of the highest terrain in the area.  Yes, it 
> was legal VFR, but it was also predictably uncertain that any specific > location and altitude would be above minimums.  Launching a night 
> flight to go over a layer scattered to broken and under an overcast 
> looks like a decision fraught with peril even given reasonable 
> currency and proficiency, because it's too close to IMC with no good 
> way to assure inadvertent VFR into IMC won't follow.

> The *real* cause was flawed judgement in starting the engine, and 
> that's more fundamental than even inactivity.  IMHO, of course!

I guess my personal take on the situation is this:

I am concerned about flawed pilot knowledge.  Judgement is only as
good as the knowledge upon which it's based, after all.

I think pilots should be aware that:

*Any* night flying has the potential to require sudden transitions
to instruments due to loss of horizen and visual clues.  This is true
even over relatively populated areas on CAVU nights, if one happens
to turn to a direction with no visual clues.

*Any flight between layers* is essentially instrument flight.

*Any* flying under an overcast or in haze has the potential for
inadvertant VFR into IMC, day or night.  All it takes is a
situation where there's nothing to see (dark ground, greyish water),
such that the obstruction to visibility called "clouds" can't
readily be discerned.  There is nothing to give depth perspective, 
and by the time you start wondering if the haze is thickening to
clouds up ahead, you might be *in* a cloud.

*Unforcast clouds happen*.  When moist air meets falling temperatures,
pilots should monitor the temperature/dewpoint spread with care and
be prepared to encounter an unforcast layer, especially over the
many regions of the country where wx reporting stations are sparse.

Now if a pilot knows these things, and wilfully lifts off anyway
without being prepared to meet them, I would agree completely that
bad judgement is involved.

But I think a lot of pilots, especially low time pilots, don't 
know these things.  We learn to study wx briefings and stay away
from the clouds they contain, but maybe we don't learn to treat
briefings with the skepticism they deserve.  We might fly at night
over a populated area where the ground lights are lovely and the
flying is smooth and maybe we don't learn how tough night flying
can be when the horizen vanishes and the only visual clue is a 
line of lights 45 degrees off horizontal and your ears start screaming
"YOU'RE TURNING FOOL!" while you're straight and level.  We learn to
assert that pilot error is involved, every time a pilot flies VFR into
IMC and maybe we don't learn to think about, what conditions make IMC
hard to see-and-avoid?

The difference between a pilot who flies a lot and one who lets
the certificate gather dust is, a pilot who flies a lot will 
hopefully gain knowledge about all these things while proficient
enough to meet the challenges they pose.

It's easy to look at someone else's decisions in hindsight, and
critique them.  In fact, if we start with a premise that accidents
almost always involve pilot error, critique of that pilot's
judgement is guaranteed.  But maybe it's not judgement, maybe it's
knowledge.

With regard to proficiency, I don't know.  I personally can tell
if I don't fly for a week and after a month I make myself shudder, 
but I posted about this once before and was informed by several people
that many pilots, especially younger ones, can not fly for months and 
be just as proficient as they were when they got their ticket.  Am
I a marginal pilot who loses it fast, or do other pilots simply not
notice some of what they're losing, I don't know.  Maybe both.

I read that accident report and the excerpts of the wx briefing
they reported, and I thought to myself "God bless that pilot, he 
thought he was doing everything right and that forcast suckered the 
h**l out of him."  BTDT, lived to post about it.

Snowbird

