I’ve refrained from posting on this thread up until now due to the calibre of the other posters. We’ve got the high hours commercial / airline pilot who can’t name the light aircraft types he’s talking about and hasn’t flown one since video cameras were too heavy to lift, and the guy who as a student with a few hours of IF training was already better at instrument flying than the high hours commercial instructor sitting next to him. Maybe I’ve got nothing to add, except that the last poster asked what would I tell a person how to get down through cloud who has no other option than to do so.
The answer is that there is always an option, and that option is don’t be there in the first place. So a few rules…
1. Learn how to flight plan. Don’t set off basing your weather briefing on out of date TAFs for airfields that aren’t open, or iPhone Apps that aren’t aviation related. Learn how to properly decode TAFS and METARs. Learn how to relate what they say to what you’re going to see. Think about what 3000 metres in mist and overcast at 500 feet on an area forecast really means when you’re trying to get to an airfield that’s 400 feet above sea level, or 200 feet above sea level. Most instructors who have flown only in the UK don’t have any experience of real Skud running so can’t teach it, and shouldn’t. The value of practice in Skud running is to teach you never to do it again.
2. If your aircraft has instruments, even if it’s just a turn and slip or turn coordinator, or a Venturi driven AH with nothing backing it up, learn to use them. Invest in a few hours with an instructor. Just because you’ve got a thousand hours in your log book and you’re the ace of the base doesn’t mean you can’t learn from an instructor with 500 hours but who has the instrument rating that you don’t have. If you can turn, descend, and fly straight and level you can fly a surveillance radar approach, and that can save you.
3. if you’re Skud running, and the cloud base is getting lower and lower never, ever, keep climbing to stay on top of cloud thinking you’ll find a hole to get down through. You probably won’t. Only climb if your aircraft is properly IFR equipped (not skydemon on an iPad), and you are qualified and current. Forget about keeping wings level feet off the rudders or spinning down through cloud. I’ve flown 5000 hours on SEP and I’m current at IF on them, and 15000 hours in multi crew jet / turboprop and I’m current in them as well, that’s not Willy waving, it’s because despite all that I would never fly IFR in an SEP with less than a thousand foot cloud base, because if the engine stops you need time when you glide out of the cloud to find a place to land, and that’s the same if you’ve got a hundred hours or a million. If I get down to 500 ft AGL below the cloud base I’d turn round and go back, and always would make sure I had somewhere to go back to. And I learned that years ago as a frightened bush pilot doing real Skud running, not reading about it on an internet forum. Always have a plan B.
4. Never be to proud to admit that the conditions are beyond you, and say to your passenger “This isn’t safe, let’s go to the pub instead”. It’s an old saying but a true one; It’s always better to be down here wishing you were up there than the other way around,