Originally Posted by
421dog
“And even if he ended up out of non-IMC options with low fuel over an airport with an overcast layer combined with a cloud base that was not too low, he could have put his aerobatic plane in a spin and held it there until clear of the clouds, then recovered.”
Per the report, Exeter was 500 BKN, 6 km.
Per this aircraft’s POH, it loses 400ft/turn in a perfectly executed spin when loaded to Aerobatic specifications (it wasn’t)
Tell us how that works for you.
Maybe there was a better option…
The better option was finding out good weather airports from ATC and their distance from present position and then getting a vector toward it. That alone would likely have safely resolved the situation this pilot found himself in(at a high altitude above the clouds with low ceilings and vis).
I used the term IF for the spin scenario in my previous post......If a pilot with a likely inability to fly instruments safely were to discover they were over a good weather airport with a fairly high cloud base(say 1500 overcast and good vis), one could spin down through the cloud if they were low on fuel. Would take discipline to do it properly though. That is how it works for me.