Jim Wilson writes: > It is interesting hearing different takes on this. My feeling is > that when I get my license it'll be imperitive to get the > instrument rating...especially the way the weather in Maine is. > > But even as a passenger in the right hand seat I can see I'm more > comfortable seeing the ground...or even with clouds below than > actually being right in it.
Right. The IFR rating won't let you fly any time you want, but it will provide you with many more opportunities -- for example, a low overcast in the morning won't keep you grounded, and a 2000 ft cumulostratus ceiling won't tempt you to scud run. You still won't want to fly in actual when there's a chance of embedded TCU or CB, unless you have a Strikefinder or Stormscope on board -- I'd fly in that case only if I were assured of being well above the cloudtops, so that I could see any exciting stuff coming. And then there's icing. The worst time for icing around here, at the altitudes I can fly, will be early spring and late fall. In summer, the freezing level is usually above my service ceiling, and in winter, the air tends to be too cold to hold anything but ice crystals. It's that -10 to +1 Celsius band that's especially scary, and that's when I really don't want to spend much time in cloud or precip (that's also why the Outside Air Temperature [OAT] gauge is such an important instrument, and one that we need to add to our FlightGear panels). All the best, David -- David Megginson, [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://www.megginson.com/ _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
